CLEC-based Error Analysis of Collocations of Chinese English Learners

Taking the Noun-Noun Structure as an Example

Abstract

China’s voice in the international arena is gradually increasing in the present era of economic globalization. In order to further strengthen the multifaceted communication with the world, Chinese students must improve their English learning and application skills. However, due to the distinct difference between Chinese and English, and the lack of an authentic communication environment, English collocation has always been a significant difficulty for Chinese students in the process of learning English. As a result, pragmatic errors frequently occur in their usage. Aimed to address Chinese students’ difficulties in applying collocation, this article takes the Chinese Learner English Corpus (CLEC) as the research object and AntConc as the retrieval tool to collect the noun-noun collocation errors (CC1) in CLEC, then further analyses and interprets the data obtained. It’s discovered that learners’ usage errors in noun-noun collocation are mainly divided into the following three categories: grammar error, Chinese English expression, and overgeneralization. By further interpretation and analysis, it is reckoned that negative transfer of native language, interlanguage fossilization, second-language teaching methods, negligence of collocation structure, and semantic constraints are the main reasons for noun-noun collocation errors. In terms of the above situation, this article proposes corresponding countermeasures for second-language teaching methods and English learning to enrich the current research on English collocations, seeking to provide a reference for the use and teaching of noun-noun collocations.