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Chapter 1 Introduction

1.1 Research Background
Vocabulary is the significant starting point of learning a language. Willkins elucidates that vocabulary is very important in second language acquisition (SLA). He(1972: 11) emphases the significance of vocabulary, that is, “nothing can be conveyed” ifthere’s no vocabulary in a language. Wei (2002) claims that learning vocabulary means acquiring not only its form and meaning, but also their collocations and syntactic restrictions, which will help learners use the language like the natives. However, most language learners take it for granted that the number of vocabulary they can master couldstand for their English competence.

词汇是学习语言的重要起点。 Willkins阐明词汇是非常重要的第二语言习得（SLA）。他（1972：11）观，“没有任何东西可以传达”如果没有词汇的语言，词汇的意义。伟（2002）声称，词汇学习是指收购不仅是它的形式和意义，但也是他们的搭配和语法的限制，这将有助于学习者像当地人使用的语言。然而，大多数语言学习者想当然的词汇的数量，他们可以掌握，可以站在他们的英语能力。

College English Curriculum Requirements promulgated by the Ministry of Education on September 26th, 2007 points out:non-English majors should master about 4795 words and 700 phrases, among which2000 words and expressions should be used correctly and appropriately in both oral andwritten language. College English Syllabus makes a requirement for TEM-4: toacknowledge 5500-6000 words and use 3000-4000 of them correctly and proficiently.For TEM-8: to acknowledge 10000-12000 words and use 5000-6000 of them correctlyand fluently. However, Chinese English learners’ English expressions in conversations orcompositions are not natural or appropriate compared to the native speakers. This mightbe attributed to the fact that English learners have little awareness of collocation. Ellis(1997), Bahns (1993), and Nation (1990) all claim that a significant respect of one’slexical knowledge can be reflected by collocation. Yang (2004) also points out that thecompetence of an English learner and the important characteristics of a language can bemirrored by collocation. Therefore, the competence of learners’ mastering collocation ofL2/foreign language (FL) will influence how well L2 learners can take charge of theL2/FL.
As for teachers, most of them tend to use the traditional teaching method ignoringcollocation which is “fundamental in the study of vocabulary” (McCarthy, 1990: 12). Inclass, vocabulary is taught in the form of the single word. Teachers and learners arefamiliar with the alphabetized list of new English vocabulary with first language (L1)translation. And as a result, Nagy (1997) criticizes learners are just able to remember a large number of isolated and unconnected words and expressions, but they are incapableof applying them to use. Moreover, a great deal of research has discovered that, L2learners, in the procedure of SLA, commit a large number of collocational errors (Gui &Yang, 2003). In Chinese English learners’ writings, there are a large number ofcollocations, but most of which are seem to be grammatical but actually are notappropriate or native-like. According to Chinese Learner English Corpus (CLEC) editedby Shichun Gui and Huizhong Yang (2003), ANCE is the sixth high-frequencycommitted errors among the total eleven types of errors. However, ANCE takes up thehighest percentage in all collocational errors extracted from CLEC. But many linguistsand researchers mainly focus on verb-noun collocation analysis. In fact, the ANCE rankssecond. Geoffrey Leech (1981) puts forward that adjectives, as 本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。