An Empirical Study On The Acquisition Of English Binomials By Chinese EFL Learners

English binomials refer to one type of lexical collocations that are defined as lexical pairs,in which two words related to the same lexical category are joined together in a fixed order by a conjunction.Using English binomials can help enhance the accuracy and fluency of language expressions,and make spoken and written language interesting.Up till now,previous research has paid more attention to the word order of English binomials and to the contrastive analysis of English and Chinese binomials.However,little empirical research has been done on the acquisition of English binomials.Therefore,this study explores to what extent Chinese English as a Foreign Language(EFL)learners can acquire English binomials and also the L1 effects on the acquisition.Based on the Thinking for Speaking Hypothesis and the Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis,this study tries to address the following two questions:(1)To what extent have Chinese EFL learners acquired English binomials?(2)How does L1 affect Chinese EFL learners’ perception and production of English binomials?90 English majors,30 in each group,representing 3 proficiency levels from the Foreign Studies College of a university were recruited at random and were required to finish an acceptability judgment task and a Chinese-English translation task.The data were collected and then analyzed by means of SPSS.The major findings of this study can be concluded as follows:(1)Overall,the Chinese EFL learners only have partially acquired English binomials.To be specific,Chinese EFL learners have little awareness of English binomials.The learners’ performance on the production of English binomials is poor.Besides,learners’ acquisition of different syntactic categories of the internal components of English binomials has no significant difference.In addition,the English proficiency level is directly in proportion to the acquisition of English binomials.Learners of higher English proficiency acquire English binomials better in terms of perception and production.However,in terms of production,the juniors outperform the postgraduates.(2)The L1 plays a positive role in Chinese EFL learners’ perception and production of English binomials,but the L1 thinking-for-speaking impact still remains.If the binomial has an equivalent in Chinese and has the same word order as in English,the participants perform better.However,if the order of the binomials in Chinese is reversed or is different from that in English,the participants perform poorly which showcases the influence of the L1 thinking-for-speaking patterns.The main findings indicate that the extent of the acquisition of English binomials by Chinese EFL learners is limited,and their overall acquisition needs to be improved.Language proficiency level influences the acquisition of English binomials.And the learners’ L1 thinking-for-speaking still affects the expressions of English binomials.This study reveals some common characteristics in the process of acquiring English binomials,which is significant for teaching and learning similar constructions.Due to the limited number of sample size,this study only partially displays the features of the acquisition of English binomials by Chinese EFL learners.