A Corpus-based Study Of Chinese EFL Learners' Conceptual Transfer Errors In Noun-noun Collocations

Collocation study has been a hot spot in Second Language Acquisition(SLA)research and the study on collocation errors are drawing more attention. In Chinese Learner English Corpus(CLEC), noun-noun collocation errors rank the second among all other types of collocation errors, but few and often not in-depth researches have ever touched it.With the help of CLEC, BLCU(Beijing Language and Culture University)Chinese Corpus(BCC) and Corpus of Contemporary American English(COCA), this paper explores conceputal transfer errors in noun-noun collocations by way of four comparisons: Interlanguage(IL) vs(Native English) NL2,(Native Chinese) NL1 vs IL, NL1 vs NL2, and ILa vs ILa. Meanwhile, by means of comparing Chinese and English “noun-noun” structure, the paper aims to discover regularities of conceptual transfer errors in noun-noun collocations made by Chinese EFL(English as a Foreign Language) learners and explain the underlying reasons of such errors at the level of lexical and grammarticized concepts. Furthermore, the correlation between the English proficiency of Chinese EFL learners and conceptual transfer errors in noun-noun collocations is analyzed. Besides, on the basis of the research result from the corpora, a translation test is used to further fathom out the use of noun-noun collocations of Chinese EFL learners and the interview is adopted to further discern the causes of noun-noun collocation errors.The result shows that conceptual transfer errors in noun-noun collocations do take a relatively large proportion in the total number of noun-noun collocation errors made by Chinese EFL learners. The underlying reasons may lie in the ignorance of the conceptual differences between Chinese and English noun-noun collocations among Chinese EFL learners, which thus leads to the mis-use of L1-based concepts,mis-construction of shared concepts and L2-based concepts. What's more, with thechange of learners' English proficiency there are no significant differences among conceptual transfer errors. However, the conceptual transfer errors at the level of lexis would decrease with the increase of learners' English proficiency and the difference is significant, while the conceptual transfer errors at the level of grammar would not.Based on the research findings, some pedagogical implications on foreign language teaching and the acquisition of English noun-noun collocations for Chinese EFL learners are stated.