台灣高中生英文作文中詞語搭配使用錯誤研究

A Corpus-Based Study of the Collocational Errors in the Writings of the EFL Learners in Taiwan

陳寶珍(Paochen Chen)

指導教授 ： 陳純音

國立臺灣師範大學/文學院/英語學系在職進修碩士班/碩士(2002年)

摘要

本篇論文研究的是台灣高中生英文作文中「詞語搭配」（collocation）使用錯誤的情形，以便瞭解學生所犯錯誤的類別、原因與性質，希望對教材編輯、教學方法、以及瞭解外語學習困難所在有所助益。「詞語搭配」（collocation）也就是字與字如何組成常用的「詞」，這種組合有某種限制，限制在於語法方面就稱為「語法搭配」（grammatical collocation），搭配的限制若在於詞義方面，就稱為「詞義搭配」（lexical collocation），因此「詞語搭配」分為兩大類，即「語法搭配」與「詞義搭配」。
本實驗收集了台北市立永春高中高三學生三次模擬考卷共90份作文，作詳盡的錯誤分析，先找出錯誤，再作系統的分類與統計，最後並逐句提供修改的建議。在研究的過程中，使用英國國家語料庫（British National Corpus）作為「詞語搭配」錯誤分析的參考與準則。本研究在90篇作文中共找出272個詞語搭配錯誤，其中147個屬於「語法搭配」錯誤，125個屬於「詞義搭配」錯誤。根據研究統計結果顯示L3（形容詞＋名詞）與L1 (動詞＋名詞)是最常見的「詞義搭配」錯誤，而G4（介詞＋名詞）與G8(MNS)（動詞＋補語）則是最常見的「語法搭配」錯誤。「語法搭配」錯誤數目仍多，顯示雖然研究學者多半強調「詞義搭配」的教學，但對台灣高中生而言，「語法搭配」教學仍有待加強。另外，研究統計也顯示「詞語搭配」能力與學生的一般英語能力有關。高分組的同學所犯的「詞語搭配」錯誤，明顯較少。經過研究分析顯示，母語中沒有對應詞語，無法直接翻譯者較容易犯錯，類似同義詞較多的也較容易混淆。本研究所分析的雖然是特定的學生所犯的錯誤，但是許多中國學生所犯的錯誤都是類似的，老師瞭解學生常見的錯誤後，在教單字時 ，宜注意慣用語與搭配詞語的教學。此外，這類的「詞語搭配」錯誤研究，如果以聯考作文或全民英檢之類的全國性的樣本來做長期的大型研究，研究成果將可以作為作文軟體中，「詞語搭配」錯誤檢查軟體研發的依據。

關鍵字

搭配詞 ； 詞語搭配 ； 錯誤分析 ； 語料庫 ； 英語教學 ； 作文 ； 第二外語學習 ； 字彙

並列摘要

The purpose of this study is to investigate the collocational errors in the writings of the high school EFL learners in Taiwan. The subjects were 30 students who enrolled at YongChun High School, Taipei, Taiwan. Ninety exam papers were collected and analyzed for collocational errors, after which the unacceptable grammatical/lexical collocation errors were classified according to types of errors they contained, using a modified classification system originally established by Benson, et al. (1986b). A native-speaker corpus, the British National Corpus, was used as reference for identifying EFL learners’ collocational errors. Suggestions for improvement of each of the ill-formed sentences consisting of these collocation errors were offered.
A total of 272 collocational errors (147 grammatical collocation errors and 125 lexical collocation errors) were identified. It was found that adjective-noun (L3) and verb-noun (L1) were the most frequent lexical collocation error types, and preposition-noun (G4) and verb collocations (G8) were the most frequent grammatical collocation error types. Other common lexical collocation error types in descending order were L7 (v+adv), L4 (n+v), and L6 (adv+adj). The least frequent types were G2 (n+ to infinitive), G6 (adj + to infinitive), G3 (n + that clause) and G7 (adj + that clause). In addition, more grammatical collocation errors (147: 54.04%) were found than lexical ones (125: 49.96%), and there were more collocational errors found in the low achievers’ writings. L1 transfer is a common source of errors, though some appears to be intralingual or communication-based in nature. Literal translation is still a common strategy adopted by the subjects. This implies that EFL teachers should be mindful of these mis-collocations made by learners of a particular first language background, and collocations without first-language translation equivalents require special attention. Finally, it is suggested that further study may look into a large number of subjects in big national tests, such as the General English Proficiency Tests or the Joint College Entrance Exams, to have a better picture of the collocational errors and competence of the EFL learners in Taiwan. A large-scale study of this kind may contribute to a more comprehensive database of the learners’ collocational errors, which may serve as a crucial part of a more “user friendly” computer collocation error-checking software package for the Chinese EFL learners.

並列關鍵字

collocation ； error analysis ； corpus ； EFL/ESL ； interlanguage ； composition ； SLA ； vocabulary

參考文獻

Chiang, T. H. (1981). “Error Analysis: A Study of Errors Made in Written English by Chinese Learners.” Master’s Thesis, National Taiwan Normal University.

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