A Study On V-N Collocation Errors Of Middle School Students' English Writing From The Perspective Of Conceptual Transfer

In recent years,V-N collocation errors,the most frequent collocation errors that students are likely to produce(Zhang & Li 2004),have attracted widespread attention of scholars worldwide.Previous studies have mainly explored types and possible causes of V-N collocation errors;nevertheless,relatively limited research has provided detailed explanation on reasons for different types of V-N collocation errors on the cognitive level,and most of them focused on advanced learners.Therefore,the present study seeks to investigate middle school students' V-N collocation errors from the perspective of conceptual transfer.Based on the theory of Conceptual Transfer Hypothesis and Error Analysis,this study mainly explores three questions:(1)What types of V-N collocation errors can be identified from middleschool students' English writing?(2)What are the frequencies of identified different types of V-Ncollocation errors?(3)What are the causes of identified V-N collocation errors from theperspective of conceptual transfer?The research subjects are middle school students' V-N collocation errors collected in the subcorpus ST2 of Chinese Learner English Corpus(CLEC).Firstly,they are retrieved by Antconc(3.5.7)and are classified based on the Blend Category Classification Method,and then frequencies of each type of V-N collocation errors are analyzed.Lastly,possible causes of V-N collocation errors are explored.The major findings of this study are as follows:(1)V-N collocation errors of middle school students' English writing can be mainly divided into four types: wrong choice of verb,wrong choice of noun,wrong choice of both verb and noun,and structural errors.Among them,wrong choice of verb can be further subcategorized into five subtypes,including verb errors in transitivity,misuse of lexical verbs for linking verbs,misuse of assumed synonyms,misuse of fixed collocations,and misuse of de-lexical verbs;wrong choice of noun can be further divided into five sub-types,including misuse of assumed synonyms,misuse of fixed collocations,misuse of parts of speech,misuse of noun numbers,misuse of both noun and noun numbers.(2)Among the four types of V-N collocation errors,the frequency of wrong choice of verb which accounts for 67.0% is the highest.The frequencies of wrong choice of noun,wrong choice of both verb and noun and structural errors are 14.0%,11.9%,6.2% respectively.(3)The identified V-N collocation errors are produced due to students' misuse of L1-based lexical and grammatical concepts,misconstruction of shared lexical concepts and L2-based grammatical concepts.Specifically,structural errors,misuse of parts of speech and misuse of fixed collocations all result from misuse of L1-based grammatical and lexical concepts;misuse of assumed synonyms,misuse of de-lexical verbs and wrong choice of both verb and noun are caused by misconstruction of shared lexical concepts;verb errors in transitivity,misuse of noun numbers,and misuse of lexical verbs for linking verb lie in misconstruction of L2-based grammatical concepts.Based on the above findings,some pedagogical implications are suggested.It is of great significance to guide students to pay more attention to L2 synonyms which have higher degree of specificity compared with native language.In addition,adopting concept-based approach in remedial teaching is also a good way to help students minimize confusion about L2-based grammatical concepts,such as noun numbers and parts of speech.