A Corpus-Based Study On Amplifiers In Academic Writing By English Majors

As one type of functional word,amplifiers are more expressive than other general adverbs.Semantically,amplifiers serve the function of increasing the intensity of emphasis,and syntactically,the presence of amplifiers makes statement more natural.Based on relevant theories of amplifiers and interlanguage,this study adopts the method of Contrastive Interlanguage Analysis(CIA)and uses self-built corpora to explore the use of amplifiers in academic writing by Chinese English majors.The present study focuses on the following questions: 1)What are the characteristics of amplifier frequency demonstrated in Chinese English majors' academic writing? 2)Compared with native English speakers,what are the amplifier collocation similarities and differences that Chinese English majors show in academic writing?The research materials comprise 60 BA theses written by Chinese English major bachelors,20 MA theses from Chinese English major masters from Qingdao University of Science and Technology,and another 20 MA theses in comparison from English native speakers majoring in linguistics,English literature and English teaching,which are chosen from Dissertation Discovery System(DDS)and ProQuest.Those theses were all finished in the last five years from 2013 to 2018.The study adopts both quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis.Quantitative data is processed by corpus statistical software,and qualitative analysis is made upon the quantitative data for detailed discussions.Based on comparison analysis across corpora,the present study has some findings as follows: 1)Both overuse and underuse of amplifiers are found in the theses written by Chinese English majors.2)Compared with English native speakers,L2 learners have a similar understanding of the semantic prosody of amplifiers,and can correctly use most amplifier collocations,while the misuse frequently occurs and some simple collocations are overused.Under deeper analysis,the possible causes of these problems on the use of amplifiers by Chinese English majors include L1 influence,the deficiency of the adverbial synonym acquisition and the inappropriateness of traditional teaching method.The findings of this study have a certain significance for research of the acquisition of amplifiers,and also provide reference and help for the L2learners' vocabulary learning and teachers' instruction of academic writing.