A Study of Collocation Errors Among Chinese Learners of English (With Reference to Chinese College Students of Tongji University in China)
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A STUDY OF COLLOCATION ERRORS AMONG CHINESE LEARNERS OF ENGLISH (WITH REFERENCE TO CHINESE COLLEGE STUDENTS OF TONGJI UNIVERSITY IN CHINA) YE HONG FACULTY OF LANGUAGES AND LINGUISTICS UNIVERSITY OF MALAYA KUALA LUMPUR 2014 A STUDY OF COLLOCATION ERRORS AMONG CHINESE LEARNERS OF ENGLISH (WITH REFERENCE TO CHINESE COLLEGE STUDENTS OF TONGJI UNIVERSITY IN CHINA) YE HONG THESIS SUBMITTED IN FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENT FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY FACULTY OF LANGUAGES AND LINGUISTICS UNIVERSITY OF MALAYA KUALA LUMPUR 2014 UNIVERSITY OF MALAYA ORIGINAL LITERARY WORK DECLARATION Name of Candidate: Ye Hong (I.C/Passport No: G50433939) Registration/Matric No: THA050019 Name of Degree: Doctor of Philosophy Title of Project Paper/Research Report/Dissertation/Thesis (“this Work”): A Study of Collocation Errors among Chinese Learners of English (with Reference to Chinese College Students of Tongji University in China) Field of Study: Writing I do solemnly and sincerely declare that: (1) I am the sole author/writer of this Work; (2) This Work is original; (3) Any use of any work in which copyright exists was done by way of fair dealing and for permitted purposes and any excerpt or extract from, or reference to or reproduction of any copyright work has been disclosed expressly and sufficiently and the title of the Work and its authorship have been acknowledged in this Work; (4) I do not have any actual knowledge nor do I ought reasonably to know that the making of this work constitutes an infringement of any copyright work; (5) I hereby assign all and every rights in the copyright to this Work to the University of Malaya (“UM”), who henceforth shall be owner of the copyright in this Work and that any reproduction or use in any form or by any means whatsoever is prohibited without the written consent of UM having been first had and obtained; (6) I am fully aware that if in the course of making this Work I have infringed any copyright whether intentionally or otherwise, I may be subject to legal action or any other action as may be determined by UM. Candidate’s Signature: Name: Ye Hong Date: Subscribed and solemnly declared before, Witness’s Signature Date: Name: Dr. Karunakaran Krishnamoorthy Designation: Supervisor ii ABSTRACT This study focuses on collocation errors among Chinese learners of English. The main purposes are: 1) to describe and contrast the collocations of Chinese (Mandarin) and English; 2) to explain the occurrence of the major types of errors of English collocations committed by the Chinese learners of English; 3) to identify the areas of difficulty including the MT interference and hierarchy of difficulty encountered by the Chinese learners in the use of English collocations using CA and EA. To achieve these goals, both English and Chinese collocations are described and compared, which has been received little attention in the past. The data was collected from one writing task administered during classroom hours. The learner corpus consisted of 117 pieces of written texts. In the data analysis, received categories about linguistic errors were critically scrutinized. Wordsmith Tool with concordance lines of BNC and LC was employed to highlight selected KWIC. Oxford Advanced Learner Dictionary was also used to identify and analyze errors. SPSS and MicroFinder were employed to count the numbers and percentages of errors in the EA. CA involves two methods - theoretical CA and applied CA, the latter of which is also Error Analysis (EA). The former is aimed at predicting potential learning difficulties by analyzing the differences between the structures of MT and TL. The latter is aimed at identifying and explaining actual errors committed by the students. In fact, both approaches are useful in the explanation of errors in a TL. This study gave a detailed description of the procedure of EA in concurrence with the CA method. This study identified seven categories of English collocation errors. They were errors on noun + noun / prepositional phrase collocation, noun + verb / phrasal verb iii collocation, verb / phrasal verb + noun collocation, adjective + noun collocation, verb + adverb collocation, adverb + adjective + noun collocation, and a / numeral + quantifying noun + of + head noun collocation. Errors on English subject-predicate structures were found to be the most common among all subcategories of English collocations among Chinese learners of English, followed by English verb + noun collocation errors, and adverb + verb and adverb + adjective + noun collocation errors were the least common. English attributive modifier + head noun collocations are less common than verb + noun collocation errors. Intralingual source of errors found in the context such as ignorance of restrictive collocation rules of English was found to be most responsible for English collocation errors committed by Chinese learners of English. From lexical and grammatical levels of collocations, violation of English lexical collocations is found more than that of grammatical collocations. They are grammatically and semantically plausible but inappropriate use in the context. In terms of syntax, English collocation errors were traced back to interference from the MT. Chinese compounds, Chinese non-phrasal verbs and non-inflectional morphology in part-of-speech were structurally different from English and thus interfered with the learning of English collocations among Chinese learners of English. Areas of difficulty in the learning of English collocations and the hierarchy of difficulty identified from CA were found to keep agreement with those found from EA. Hence, this verifies that Contrastive Analysis (CA) is a useful tool to predict potential problems facing learners. Intralingual errors and errors due to circumlocution (using more words than necessary) identified from EA indicate that EA is a complement to CA in identifying all possible learner errors. Therefore, blending of CA into EA to construct an iv integrated theory and approach is significant in the identification, explanation and identification of TL errors. Pedagogically, the finding implies that CA-based methodology will enable students to locate and focus on the difficulties in learning English vocabulary to enhance teaching effectiveness. EA can be helpful in identifying all possible errors and thus overcoming them. Learning strategies such as collocation strategy is important for learners in the learning of English vocabulary. v ABSTRAK Kajian ini berfokus pada kesilapan kolokasi di kalangan pelajar Cina yang mempelajari Bahasa Inggeris. Tujuan utama kajian ini adalah: 1) untuk mengenal pasti aspek-aspek kesukaran dan tahap kesukaran yang dihadapi oleh pelajar Cina dalam penggunaan kolokasi Bahasa Inggeris; 2) untuk menerangkan kejadian jenis kesilapan utama kolokasi Bahasa Inggeris yang dilakukan oleh pelajar Cina dalam mempelajari Bahasa Inggeris, dan 3) untuk mengesyorkan strategi dan prosedur yang sesuai untuk membantu pelajar Cina mengatasi masalah mereka dalam pembelajaran kolokasi Bahasa Inggeris. Untuk mencapai matlamat ini, kedua-dua sistem kolokasi Bahasa Inggeris dan Cina, yang kurang mendapat perhatian pada masa lalu, diterangkan dan dibandingkan. Data dikumpulkan dari satu aktiviti penulisan yang di jalankan semasa waktu kelas. Korpus pelajar terdiri daripada 117 helai teks bertulis. Dalam analisis data, kategori tentang kesilapan linguistik telah diteliti secara kritis. Wordsmith Tool dengan garisan konkordans BNC dan LC telah diguna untuk menyerlahkan KWIC yang dipilih. Oxford Advanced Learner Dictionary juga telah digunakan untuk mengenal pasti dan menganalisis kesilapan. MicroFinder dan SPSS digunakan untuk mengira peratusan kesilapan dalam Analisis Kesilapan (EA). Analisis Bandingan atau Konstratif (CA) melibatkan dua kaedah - teori CA dan gunaan CA, di mana gunaan CA adalah juga Analisis Kesilapan (EA). Teori CA bertujuan meramalkan potensi kesukaran pembelajaran dengan menganalisis perbezaan antara struktur bahasa ibunda (MT) dan bahasa sasaran (TL). Gunaan CA pula bertujuan untuk mengenal pasti dan menerangkan kesilapan sebenar yang dilakukan oleh pelajar. Malah, vi kedua-dua pendekatan berguna dalam menjelaskan kesilapan dalam TL. Kajian ini memberi penerangan terperinci tentang prosedur EA yang berkait rapat dengan kaedah CA. Kajian ini mengenal pasti tujuh kategori kesilapan kolokasi Bahasa Inggeris. Struktur subjek-predikat adalah yang paling biasa digunakan dalam semua sub-kategori kolokasi Bahasa Inggeris manakala gabungan adverba + kata kerja adalah jarang digunakan. Dalam Bahasa Inggeris, kolokasi kata pengubahsuai sifat + kata nama di posisi depan adalah kurang ditemui kalau dibandingkan dengan kesilapan kolokasi kata nama + kata kerja. Punca kesilapan intralingual yang berkait dengan konteks seperti kekurangan pengetahuan tentang peraturan terhad kolokasi leksikal Bahasa Inggeris didapati menjadi sebab utama untuk kesilapan kolokasi Bahasa Inggeris. Kolokasi ini munasabah dari segi penggunaan tatabahasa dan semantik tetapi tidak sesuai berdasarkan konteks. Dari segi sintaksis, punca utama kesilapan kolokasi Bahasa Inggeris adalah gangguan dari bahasa ibunda (MT). antara beberapa aspek Bahasa Cina yang mengganggu pembelajaran kolokasi Bahasa Inggeris adalah kata majmuk Bahasa Cina yang berupa perumpamaan yang terbentuk daripada empat aksara, kata kerja yang bukan frasa kata kerja, kategori nahu kata yang tidak mengalami perubahan infleksi dan yang berbeza dari segi struktur berbanding dengan Bahasa Inggeris. Ramalan tentang aspek yang sukar