PLATAFORMAS DE TELEMEDICINA

2.3.1.1 Studies in western academia

Theoretical and descriptive studies on English collocation have been carried out by many researchers (Blum & Levenston, 1978; Kellerman, 1979; Channell, 1981;

Dechert & Lennon, 1989; Ghadessy, 1989; Fayez-Hussein, 1990; Biskup, 1992;

Bahns & Eldaw, 1993; Zhang, 1993; Farghal & Obidedat, 1995; Howarth, 1996;

20 Literature review

Lennon, 1996; Elyildirim, 1997; Lombard, 1997; Caroli, 1998; Granger, 1998a;

Gitsaki, 1999; Kaszubski, 2000; Nesselhauf, 2003). However, most studies are based on questionnaires, cloze tests, translation tests, fi ll-in-the-blank tests or case studies. Typical studies on English learner collocation by using a corpus method include Zhang (1993), Howarth (1996), Lombard (1997), Granger (1998b), Kaszubski (2000) and Nesselhauf (2003).

Zhang (1993) collects the writing tasks from a writing test of thirty native and thirty non-native speakers of English at Indiana University of Pennsylvania and employs a blank-fi lling collocation test used to measure the students’ collocational knowledge. Zhang fi nds that native writers perform signifi cantly better than non-native writers on the collocation test and also outperform the non-non-native writers in terms of the use of accurate collocations in writing. Zhang concludes that colloca-tional knowledge is a source of fl uency in written communication among college freshmen and that the quality of collocations in terms of variety and accuracy is indicative of the quality of college freshmen writing (Nesselhauf, 2003; Hsu, 2007).

Howarth (1996) manually investigates verb-noun combinations in a corpus of ten essays (about 22,000 words) written by non-native speakers with different L1s and compares them to combinations in native speaker writing. No correlation has been found between the general profi ciency test score of the learner and ranked collocational score, which is contrary to the fi ndings of Zhang (1993). He gives the following explanation:

Perhaps this language test is a wrong measure to choose and that another more global test might correlate better. Alternatively, it could be better that appro-priate collocational performance, in the sense of approximating to NS norms of conventionality, is a highly individual matter of style, which follows a quite separate path of development from measurable levels of general language profi ciency.

(Howarth, 1998: 36) Lombard (1997) examines idiosyncratic English collocations produced by Man-darin native speakers in written assignments for an MBA English preparation course. The collocations are identifi ed, categorized and examined in a series of qualitative and quantitative analyses. Aiming to synthesize a characterization of learner collocation, the preliminary qualitative analysis identifi es four categories of idiosyncrasy in learner collocations: lexical transfer, phonological infl uences, grammatical infl uences and semantic infl uences. Further analyses reveal that learner collocations tend to involve an idiosyncrasy in either form or meaning, but rarely both. Learner collocations involving semantic idiosyncrasy are further ana-lyzed in terms of two parts: a headword and a functor, which refers to an entry word (or a node word) and its collocate. She fi nds that the site of the idiosyncrasy is most often the functor and rarely occurs on both parts of the same collocation.

Her study provides insights into the nature of learners’ diffi culties in production problems with collocation and supports the creation of effective teaching materials and reference works correspondingly.

Literature review 21 Granger (1998b) investigates the use of adverbs ending in - 1y and functioning as amplifi ers of adjectives in the French sub-corpus of the International Corpus of Learner English (ICLE) and in a native speaker corpus. The comparison indicates a statistically signifi cant underuse of amplifi ers in the non-native corpus, both in terms of the tokens and types. Granger observes that one of the possible reasons for the overuse of some amplifi ers is that the few overused collocations by the learners typically have a direct translation equivalent in French. Thus learners’

overuse of amplifi ers is traced to the L1 transfer (1998b: 150).

Kaszubski (2000) studies the idiomaticity degree and the expressions of six core verbs ( be , have , do , take , make , give ) in learner English as a foreign language (EFL), especially advanced Polish learner English compared to that of native speakers. Seven corpora, stratifi ed into fi ve groups according to the profi ciency level are used in his research. Kaszubski draws a number of conclusions from his research. The six verbs vary among themselves in frequency and idiomatic behav-ior in text: the more frequent verbs appear to be those which are more fl exible, or

‘open’ collocationally (Kaszubski, 2000: 240); EFL writers rely on the open-choice principle substantially more than on the idiom principle (Sinclair, 1991) compared with native English users; learners’ overuse of the core verbs is explained intralin-gually and interlinintralin-gually; core English phrases are frequent and neutral in register and over-applied by learners; the Polish educational system insists on accuracy, which also encourages Polish learners to employ those expressions and patterns which they regard as “right” (Kaszubski, 2000: 241). This tendency also refl ects the learners’ application of lexical simplifi cation strategies in expressing them-selves, which can be attributed to L1. In the end, he also suggests two paths, which lead to skewed/faulty application of core-verb expressions.

Nesselhauf (2003) focuses on verb-noun combinations of thirty-two essays from the German sub-corpus of ICLE, written by third or fourth grade English major German university students. The average length of an essay is about 500 words.

All verb-noun combinations from each essay are manually extracted and catego-rized into F (free combination), RC (restricted collocation) and I (idioms) groups based on two dictionaries and the judgments of the native speakers. A fi ve-stage scale acceptability is developed: clearly acceptable, largely acceptable, unclear, largely unacceptable and clearly unacceptable. It is found that though collocations with a low degree of restriction are the most diffi cult type of combination for learn-ers, the magnitude of mistakes does not have a major impact on the types and amount of mistakes learners make; the L1 infl uence on the production of colloca-tions is rather strong. The less congruent combinacolloca-tions in the target language to the L1 are, the more diffi cult it is for the learner to command. Nesselhauf points out that “even advanced learners have considerable diffi culties in the production of collocations, so collocations do deserve a place in language teaching” (Nes-selhauf, 2003: 239). Therefore, she suggests that when collocations are taught, it is insuffi cient to merely teach the lexical elements that go together, but it is also necessary to teach entire combinations including prepositions, articles, etc. In addition, it is also important to make learners aware of Ll-L2 differences, and verbs should be emphasized since they are the most diffi cult parts for learners.

22 Literature review

The aforementioned studies on learners’ collocational knowledge have revealed learners’ idiosyncratic features in using EFL and provided pedagogical implica-tions. However, most of the research concentrates on either the verb collocations or verb-noun collocations (Howarth, 1996; Kaszubski, 2000; Nesselhauf, 2003).

Some studies use only small-sized corpus (Lombard, 1997; Zhang, 1999), and some just concentrate on a limited range of word groups (Granger, 1998b). To sum up, there is still room for improvement of collocational study and more large-scale and systematic studies on learners’ collocational behaviors are expected.

2.3.1.2 Studies in China

Corpus-based collocational study in China has witnessed a surge in recent years (Wei, 1999, 2001, 2002a, 2002b, 2002c, 2006, 2007, 2011; Wang, 2005; Sun, 2006). Wei (2002a) has systematically studied collocation by presenting and com-paring the research theories and systems of different schools. Wei examines the distinctive characteristics of lexical combinations on the syntagmatic axis in terms of semantic transparency and structural mutability. A distinction has been made among free combinations, restricted combinations and idioms in his research. He specifi es six defi ning features of collocation (conventionality, meaning-form restraints, recurrent syntagmatic association, statistical measurement of collocabil-ity, relevance of register and considerations of length) and introduces a corpus-driven research method by examining collocations on the dimensions of syntactic restraints, semantic interactions and discourse functions. Wei fi nds that syntactic generalities and lexical particularities are co-selected in communication, and col-locations have to be analyzed with reference to colligations. There exists a seman-tic prosodic structure in relation to the collocational behaviors of words; the EAP (English for Academic Purpose) text is basically composed of phrases and various collocations. All those fi ndings provide insights into language use and text con-struction, and they have practical value for pedagogy and research.

Wang (2005) observes six types of collocational errors in Chinese learners’

writing. A close examination of the error types indicates that the main collocational errors of the learners are back-translation, synonymous errors, substitution, sim-plifi cation, redundancy and misuse. Most errors could be clearly traced back to L1 interference. Chinese learners’ collocational developmental features are also dis-cussed by comparing the competence of different profi ciency learners in using a group of intensifi ers. It shows a U-shaped development of the collocational knowl-edge of groups of Chinese learners.

Sun (2006) explores the developmental features of Chinese learners’ use of noun collocations and clusters across three profi ciency levels. Chinese Learner English Corpus (CLEC) and Louvain Corpus of Native English Essays (LOCNESS) are used. Her research indicates that there is a clear developmental continuum among Chinese EFL learners across three profi ciency levels as far as colligation, colloca-tion and clusters are concerned. Unsurprisingly, the evidence points clearly to the fact that there is a lack of nativeness, accuracy, complexity and variety in learners’

output. Regarding the sources of problems, many factors are entangled with one

Literature review 23 another. It is argued that L1 transfer is prevalent in learners’ use of both colliga-tions and collocacolliga-tions, whereby infl uencing the syntactic complexity and semantic accuracy of their language production. Other factors such as the strategy of approximation or transfer of training are also recognized.