A Corpus-Based Study On The Use Of With By Chinese English Majors

With as a function word is frequently used by English learners in their oral and written English,but with is often misused.This thesis studies the use of with by English majors in Chinese universities.It aims to analyze the problems in using with and put forward some suggestions for improvement in teaching and learning with.According to contrastive analysis,error analysis and interlanguage theory,corpus is used and quantitative and qualitative methods are combined to study the specific problems existing in the use of with by English majors.Data sources in this study are Spoken and Written English Corpus of Chinese Learners(SWECCL)and LOCNESS as a reference corpus.This study analyzes frequency distribution,semantic distribution,collocation and colligation of with and explores the reasons for the misuse of with.The study shows that English majors overuse with compared with English native speakers.English majors use with more frequently in written English than oral English.English majors have not fully mastered all senses of with.Compared with native speakers,they overuse three senses of them.English majors have some significant differences in using with-collocation with native speakers,they overuse some of the collocations and phrases,for example,cooperate with.English majors tend to use base form of verb+with,while native speakers prefer to choose past patiticiple of verb+with.English majors overuse with+N in their written English,but in their oral English,they overuse with+Pronoun.The reasons for the misuse of with are identified:negative transfer of mother tongue,overgeneralization and misuse of the rule of collocation.The significance of the study includes:learners can find out their problems in the use of with;Students' and teachers,awareness of collocation is enhanced;Based on the existing problems in the use of with,teachers can take corresponding measures to improve students' learning.According to the findings of this study,some suggestions on the teaching of with are proposed.The paper puts forward the limitations of the research,which provides reference value for future research on with.