A Study Of Verb-Noun Collocation Errors In English Writing By Chinese Non-English-Major College Students

Collocation has been one of the hot topics of the linguistic researches in recent years.Collocation competence is also regarded as one of the important indexes to estimate the language acquisition.However,previous studies indicate that it is common for EFL(English as a foreign language)learners to have difficulties in using collocations,especially during the process of English writing.As a subject of applied linguistics,error analysis can be used to effectively study the language use of learners.With the development of science and technology,large-scale corpora and concordance softwares emerge.Approaches to collocation research through corpus linguistics have been accepted.According to the results obtained in Chinese Learner English Corpus(CLEC),among the eleven types of errors,collocation error ranks the sixth.While among the six types of collocation errors,verb-noun collocation error ranks the first.Therefore,on the basis of self-built corpus,and with the help of concordance software--AntConc,adopting the main viewpoints of collocation and error analysis theories,the author conducts a quantitative and qualitative study of Chinese non-English-major college students' verb-noun collocation errors.The author aims to describe the features of these errors,find out the possible motivations of these errors in order to provide some implications for ESL teaching and learning.This thesis mainly addresses the following two questions:(1)What are the main types and characteristics of Chinese non-English-major college students' verb-noun collocation errors?(2)What are possible causes of these verb-noun collocation errors?The author collects 200 English compositions written by Chinese non-English-major sophomores and builds a corresponding corpus.At first,by observation and analysis,the author classifies the verb-noun collocation errors inthese writings into six categories.Then,based on the frequency parameters,the author chooses three verbs have,make and accumulate,and three nouns ability,knowledge and experience to conduct a detailed analysis.At last,the author makes a tentative analysis of the possible causes of Chinese non-English-major students' verb-noun collocation errors.The major findings are as follows:(1)From the perspective of linguistic features,these errors can be divided into six types: literal translation,misuse of delexical verbs,mixture of parts of speech,assumed synonyms,mis-selection and unidentifiable errors.(2)From the perspective of causes,these errors can be classified into five classifications: interlingual errors,intralingual errors,communicative strategy-based errors,induced errors and identifiable errors.Among these errors,interlingual errors which are caused by negative transfer of the mother tongue are the main type of errors.Based on the investigation,from the aspects of teaching,the use of teaching materials and the learners,the author offers some implications:(1)Teachers raise their awareness on collocations and adopt systematic approaches to teach vocabularies and collocations;(2)Corpora could be applied to the teaching process;(3)EFL learners could learn more collocations from native speakers and try to overcome the influence of negative transfer of their mother tongue.