摘要
词块是融合“形式”和“功能”的综合体,能够体现出语义、句法及语用之间的关系。对词块的学习有助于提高学习者语言的地道性、流利性和得体性。因此近年来词块研究受到许多学者的重视。对词块的研究主要分为理论驱动型和语料库驱动型两大类。语料库驱动的研究基于真实的语言使用,涵盖了各种结构的词块类别,比理论模式更具研究意义。词块在语言习得中有着重要作用,而对于学习者词块的使用情况进行研究则更为重要。但是,由于目前的研究主要以理论探索为主,而以中国英语学习者为对象的实证研究还不多见,尤其针对写作这一产出类型中词块运用的研究为数甚少。因此本文基于自建语料库对中国大学生写作中词块的使用情况进行了研究。
本研究首先收集山西师范大学英语和非英语专业学生的作文500篇,并自建语料库,在此基础上,使用语料库分析软件AntConc提取三至六词长词块,并采取人工筛选的方法,得到最终词块。然后基于自建语料库的文本的词容量和难度,从英国国家语料库中选取出词容相当,难度接近的文本,作为参照语料库,采用相同的方法提取出三至六词长词块。然后参照Altenberg(1998)的分类标准,将词块分为三类：完整分句,分句成分和不完全词组,并分析了各种词块的功能。
分析结果表明中国大学生和英语本族语使用者的写作中都存在大量词块,且三词词块所占比例最大,词长与词块数量成反比。在三类词块中,分句成分所占比例最多,不完全词组次之,完全分句最少。与本族语使用者相比,我国大学生作文中词块数量较多,而词块越长,数量差异越明显。在词块功能方面,本族语使用者在写作中所使用的功能类型在我国大学生的写作中同样也被用到,但是由于我国大学生倾向使用简单的、口语化的语言,使得文章的表达不地道,不得体。研究结果表明,作文中的词块并非越多越好。中国学生词汇量不足,下意识地采用逃避学习策略并使用简单化的语言来解决这个问题。且英文写作中易受母语影响,喜欢使用英汉语义对等的对口语体和书面体语言表达的文体概念不清。基于此,本文提出了一些教与学的建议,希望能对中国的英语写作教与学有所帮助。
Lexical chunks are a unity of forms, meanings and functions, and can reflect the relationship of the semantic meanings, grammar structures and pragmatic functions. By learning chunks, learners can improve their language competence in ease, fluency and appropriateness. So many researchers pay much attention to the chunks. There are mainly two types of studies in the field of chunks:theory-driven study and the corpus-driven study. Based on samples of the natural language using, the corpus-driven studies can enlarge the study field, which makes them have the superiority over the theory-driven studies. Lexical chunks play an important role in language learning and the research on the chunks of the learners'should be more essential. However, the recent studies mainly focus on the theories and seldom make empirical researches on the learner's language, especially the study of the written language of the learners.
The present study makes a corpus-based study on the characteristics of chunks in Chinese college English writing. Firstly, the present study collects 500 compositions from Shanxi Normal University, and then uses these data to make the self-built corpus. With the help of the Antconc Tools, the 3-6-word chunks are chosen, and then under the procedure of manual filtering, the final useful chunks are selected. According to the number of total tokens and difficulty of the self-built corpus, some texts are chosen from the BNC (British National Corpus) to be the reference. By using the same methods,3-6-word chunks also be successfully chosen. According to Altenberg (1998), chunks are classified into three categories:full clauses, clause constituents and incomplete phrases and the function of these chunks also are discussed in this thesis. The result shows that chunks are prevalent in both Chinese college English writings and native English writings. In both corpora, the three-word chunks occupy the largest proportion, and the numbers of chunks declines as the chunk length increases. Clausal constituents come first in number, the incomplete phrase is the second, and the last is the incomplete clauses. Comparing with the native English people, Chinese college students use more chunks in their writings and the difference is more significant in longer chunks. Chinese learners overuse and underuse some chunks and have a colloquial tendency. As for the functions, in their writings, Chinese college students nearly can use all of the functions used by native English people in their writing. However, they tend to use simple and oral expressions. Chinese college students also tend to use the chunks which have equivalent meaning in both Chinese and English. Because of the above reasons their writing is nonnative and inappropriate.
The research result suggests that it is not always true that the more chunks in a composition, the better the composition. The Chinese college students have a limited vocabulary and try to solve this problem by using the avoiding strategy and using simple expressions. They are easily affected by native language in the process of writing and cannot make a definite distinguish between the style of spoken English and written English. Based on these findings, the present study proposes some suggestions and hope they are useful for the future English teaching and learning in China.
引文
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