摘 要

词块学习对于大学英语写作的能力提升具有重要的意义，对于中国的二语学习者来说，动词词块的积累更是对作文的水平起着至关重要的作用。本文通过对60名本科非英语专业学生的课堂写作的动词词块使用进行研究，发现学生的动词词块的使用在本科生的议论文中较为普遍，但是存在一些明显的问题。动词词块的使用频率不够；一些词块出现搭配错误；有些简单词组或者与作文题目要求有关的词块被重复使用，导致动词词块缺乏多样性。研究表明，动词词块相比其他类型的词块使用频率还是比较高的， 但是频率、准确性和多样性有待提高。研究强调了动词词块在写作中的重要性， 二语学习者还需要进一步加强词块学习，老师可以进行相应的词块教学并重视词块的积累。

关键词：英语写作；二语学习者；动词词块；搭配错误；准确性；重复率

Abstract

The learning of lexical chunks plays an important role in the improvement of College English writing ability. For the L2 learners in China, the accumulation of verbal phrases helps a lot to promote the level of students’ writing ability. After studying the use of verb phrases in 60 pieces of writing in class of the non-English undergraduate students, the results suggest that the use of verbal clusters in college students’ argumentative writings are quite common, but some obvious problems can be found. The frequency of occurrence of verbal chunks in learners’ writing are insufficient; some incorrect collocations of word combinations are usually found; certain simple phrases or verbal chunks related to the required topics are overused, which lead to the lack of diversity of verb phrases . The study reveals that compared to other types of phrases, the frequency of occurrence of verb phrases are relatively high. However, the frequency, accuracy and diversity of these verb chunks need to be improved. The study emphasizes the importance of verb phrases in writing, so L2 learners are supposed to enhance the study of lexical phrases and teachers can carry out lexical-related teaching to pay attention to the accumulation of lexical bundles.

Key Words: English writing; L2 Learners; verbal chunks; incorrect collocations of word combinations; accuracy; repetition

Contents

1 Introduction 1

1.1 Background 1

1.2 Purpose of the study 2

2 Literature Review 3

2.1 Definitions 3

2.2 Classifications 3

2. 3 The importance of lexical phrases 4

2.4 Previous studies 5

3 Research Methodology 5

3.1 Research Questions 5

3.2 Participants 5

3.3 Instruments 6

3.4 Procedures 6

4 Results 7

4.1 Overview of the frequency, diversity and accuracy of the verb phrases 7

4.2 Difference between high-score students and low-score students on the amount and diversity of verb phrases 9

4.3 Errors in verb phrases 10

5 Discussion 11

5.1 The frequency of the verb phrases of in English writing 11

5.2 Relationship among amount , diversity and accuracy of verb phrases and writing achievements of English learners 12

5.3 Incorrect use of verb phrases 13

6 Conclusion 14

Appendix 18

A Study on Verb Phrases in English Writing of

Chinese Learners

1 Introduction

1.1 Background

Language learning is generally composed of several parts, which includes listening, speaking, reading and writing. For many language learners, the major purpose of mastering a second language is to enhance the communicative skills when they are in need of interacting with foreigners who can not easily understand others’ mother tongue. From the perspective of passing the exams, acquiring the fundamental knowledge of every section that will be checked in the tests becomes the major objective. In fact, the vocabulary is the basic knowledge to be acquired and the verbs are the critical sections in a sentence. If students can learn verb phrases well, their expressions of verb combinations will be more fluent and precise and their language usage will be more authentic.

Compared to other aspects of the learning process, the writing part, which is considered as a form of language output, seems to be more challenging and demanding for most students . When the students are requested to express themselves through writing, the learners require being equipped with ample vocabularies, and are also supposed to acquire the ability to organize the structure of the entire article and have an advantage over their expressiveness. Moreover, the use of authentic expressions is fairly significant to cultivate students English pattern of thought in teaching of writing(Xie， 2012）. Thus, the teachers should impart them the efficient way to learn and use verb phrases so that they are able to attach more importance to the word combinations and the common collocations of verbs.

Writing is considered as a necessary part of the technical capability in the stage of higher education and it will help to enhance the comprehensive application of English. It is viewed as a measurement criterion for language capacity, so many students are eager to stand out in the writing part so as to obtain communicative competence and take control of a given register. Great importance is attached to the teaching of writing in the aim of improving students’ scores in examinations and their actual use of languages. Virtually, most daily teaching and the examination scores suggest that college students still have much trouble in fluently expressing their opinions and correctly applying the grammatical knowledge. In consideration of the current situation, students are likely to lose interest in writing after spending a lot of time practicing their writing skills only to make unconspicuous progress in the test results (Qin， 2014）.Thus, learners are in need to memorize certain sequences of words that are frequently used and favored by expert users of that language or register（Kazemi, Kohandani amp; Farzaneh, 2014). Learning to write well also entails learning to use formulaic sequences appropriately. Nevertheless, a number of studies indicate that second language learners’ employment of word combinations is often problematic （Li amp; Schmitt， 2009）.

Educators normally focus their teaching on the imparting of the basic usage of words and the grammars. However, this kind of simplex language teaching methods make it hard for students to produce fluent and authentic language( Qin， 2014）.Therefore, accumulating the common word combinations seems to be more effective for practicing the applicable use of the vocabulary rather than remembering the word one by one.

Professor Ding YanReng claims that, compared to the grammatical knowledge, commonly used phrases have more predictive functions for improving the second language teaching (Jin， 2010）.Therefore, the phrase-centered teaching methods are better advocated to promote the studying efficiency. For both English majors and non-English majors, the acquisition of certain phrases seems to be rather helpful for their daily expressions and knowledge accumulation for the examinations in English. In view of the language elements, verbs are one of the most significant components that have actual meaning which describe the actions. From the mastery of phrasal verbs, most students’ performances are below the acceptable standards. Studying the influence verbal phrases impose on writing may provide some effective teaching methods to the teaching development.

1.2 Purpose of the study

With learners paying more attention to their accumulation and usage of verbal phrases, more enthusiasms will be found through gradually increasing test grades and skilled lexical applications. This paper studies the verbal phrases in English writing of the Chinese learners to figure out the affection of verbal phrases to writing. In this study, the amount of verb phrases, the diversity and accuracy of expressions will be analyzed to examine the relationship among these factors and the writing quality.

2 Literature Review

This part is intended to introduce the relevant information and previous studies on lexical phrases. It begins with an introduction of the definitions and then the diverse classifications of the chunks will be recommended. Next the importance of lexical phrases and the reasons for studying the verb phrases will be explained. Then an analysis of the former studies about the lexical phrases will be presented. Subsequently, directions, outcomes, achievements and shortcomings of the previous studies will be listed and the importance of the current study about verb phrases will be indicated.

2.1 Definitions

The previous linguists came up with various definitions about the phrases, and lexical phrases are also called lexical chunks. In the current academic communities, over 40 different explanations are found to define the diverse phrases(Jin, 2010）, such as formulaic sequences，clusters (Hyland, 2008), lexical phrases (Nattinger amp; De Carrico, 1992), recurrent word-combinations (Altenberg, 1998), lexical bundles, n-grams etc（Cai, 2016）. Ma（2011） studied the multi-word unit to explore the most appropriate definition for the lexical bundles, he nevertheless found it extremely difficult to give the multi-word unit a clear definition since it is a complicated concept related to so many theories and practical issues(Ma, 2011）.

2.2 Classifications

Ma believes that classifying lexical phrases is as difficult as defining them, and a fixed standard for classification can’t meet the requirements of comprehensively and accurately describing them. Accordingly, we need to classify them from various perspectives such as structure, function, frequency of occurrence and number of words. From the aspect of grammatical functions, lexical phrases can be divided into nominal phrases (bread and butter, life and death), verbal phrases(take care of, pay attention to), adjectival phrases(large and small, right and wrong, a lot of, a piece of), adverbial phrases(all of a sudden, by and large) , prepositional phrases (in accordance with, in addition to) and conjunctive phrases(as soon as, as long as)(Ma, 2011）.From the aspect of word amount, lexical bundles can be divided into 2-word phrases, 3-word phrases, 4-word phrases and phrases composed of more than 4 words. This essay will mainly focus on the study of verbal phrases to analyze the importance of grasping the lexical chunks and the function of verbal phrases.Verbal phrases are one category of formulaic language which is quite common in English, especially in spoken discourse. In the vocabulary research, word frequency is roughly synonymous with usefulness; the more frequent a word in a second language, the more useful it is to know (Ellis, 2002; Nation, 2001; Garnier amp; Schmitt, 2016）.

2. 3 The importance of lexical phrases

Plentiful of research have indicated that mastering abundant lexical phrases improve the language fluency and these bundles are of great importance. Lexical bundles make up a miraculous proportion of discourse, thus the beginners are likely to lack the mastery of language in a given disciplinary community due to the absence of such formulaic sequences. After gradual accumulation of adequate lexical chunks, second language learners are inclined to make language output more easily with ready-made sets of words rather than single lexical words, in another word, the appropriate use of phrases is a maker of a proficient language learner(Cai, 2016）. Memorizing a verb phrase is more effective than learning the verbs separately since a verb phrase contains more than one word and also includes the given combination and corresponding grammar. If students are exposed to more verb phrases, the usual form of word combinations will provide them with more habitual collocations of verbs. Through learning and memorizing the already existing language units, students can be cultivated to imitate the language use and grammatical collocations to output more authentic English. Lexical phrases bring students more convenience to avoid collocation errors and grammatical mistakes. Therefore, the daily teaching must pay more attention to the lexicon-centered teaching method and educators should stimulate learners to attach great importance to the accumulation of verb phrases during their everyday learning.

2.4 Previous studies

Some previous research has revealed that due to verb phrases are so challenging, second language speakers typically use one-word verbs that are more or less synonymous instead. (e.g. postpone instead of put off) (Garnier amp; Schmitt, 2016). The difficulty that Chinese learners encounter in employing formulaic sequences has frequently been attributed to the sparse input and inadequate academic instructions they typically receive.（Li amp; Schmitt, 2009）Some Chinese learners also consider the lexicon-centered teaching method which is put forward by Mechael Lewis (Lewis, 1993) very important. This kind of teaching method is also called lexical approach. Previously, research carried out to demonstrate students’ lexical competence suggests that such ability requires strengthening. Furthermore, the relationship between lexical approach and English language output have been studied to prove the promotion lexical approach brings to oral communication and writing proficiency (Xie, 2012）. However, the research about the verb phrases in English writing of Chinese learners are relatively insufficient.

3 Research Methodology

3.1 Research Questions

Based on the previous studies about verb phrases, the present program of research was conducted with the following four questions in mind:

1. Are there any differences in the frequency, diversity and accuracy of the verb phrases between high-score learners and low-score gainers?

2. Is there a correlation between the frequency of verb phrases and the quality of compositions？