The present research has carried out a systematic CIA study of intensifi ers in the learner corpora and the native corpora. The overall data distribution of intensifi ers has been derived from both the learner corpus and the native corpus. The develop-ing features of usdevelop-ing intensifi ers across different profi ciency levels by Chinese learners have been explored. Patterning and meaning features of intensifi ers in learner English have been studied in depth within the framework of Sinclair’s model of EUM in terms of collocation, colligation, semantic preference and semantic prosody. The underlying factors contributing to features of learner Eng-lish were analyzed. Major fi ndings of this research are summarized as follows:
(1) Native data in the present research lend strong support to the co-selection theory of Sinclair.
This study provides authentic data demonstrating that lexis and patterns, pat-terns and registers, pragmatic meanings and lexis are co-selected. They convinc-ingly show the explanatory power of Sinclair’s idiom principle. A large amount of language use consists of words occurring in conventional combinations (Stubbs, 2001). The co-selection phenomenon revealed in this research also echoes with the Firthian contextual theory that the meaning of a word is always contextual.
Meaning of any lexical item is always context-dependent.
On the other hand, this research shows that Chinese English learners have weak awareness of the co-selections at different linguistic levels. Abundant instances indicate that learners violate the native speaker co-selections and produce inap-propriate or even unacceptable English; for example, the overuse of TOO MUCH modifying countable nouns and TOO MANY modifying single nouns, employing the pattern VERY VERY adj in written registers and the mixed semantic prosodies displayed by the fi ve investigated maximizers – completely , entirely , totally , abso-lutely , fully – in learner English. The violation of the co-selections in learner
124 Conclusions and implications
English points to an important fact that learners have limited collocational profi -ciencies. Their inadequate mastery of prefi xed chunks causes them to put indi-vidual words together according to grammatical rules, which results in awkward learner English.
(2) The data distribution of intensifi ers in the learner corpus exhibits remarkably different features from those in the native corpus.
The research data show a general trend that Chinese learners of English overuse intensifi ers signifi cantly in terms of tokens and underuse intensifi ers signifi cantly in terms of types.
The tokens of the investigated INT-adj collocations, intensifi ers and adjective collocates of intensifi ers in the learner English all display non-positive relation-ships with the learners’ English profi ciency level. The overuse of intensifi ers in the learner English cannot be attributed to the overuse of adjectives because learners use fewer adjectives than the native speakers in general.
The types of the investigated INT-adj collocations, intensifi ers, double intensi-fi ers and adjective collocates of intensiintensi-fi ers display the same trend that the type number increases slowly and steadily with the learners’ English profi ciency level.
This trend is especially typical of intensifi ers. Thus it is suggested that the type number of intensifi ers can be a good indicator of learners’ English profi ciency level.
Learners over-rely on the high-frequency intensifi ers and underuse the medium- and low-frequency intensifi ers in comparison with the native speakers. And they are more likely to focus on amplifi ers than downtoners, compared with native speakers.
All the aforementioned trends indicate Chinese learner English lacks variation in the use of intensifi ers and intensifi er collocations. Learners have limited skills for employing intensifi ers to realize meaning and function.
In addition to this, learners also demonstrate other distinctive features. They use INT-adj collocations, intensifi ers and adjective collocates that are unique and idio-syncratic, and not employed by native speakers at all. These expressions are found to be congruent with features in their mother tongue Chinese, which is an indica-tion of L1 transfer in the L2 acquisiindica-tion.
(3) Compared with native English, Chinese learners’ English shows its unique patterning features.
Patterns in learner English lack variation in comparison with those in native English. The higher the learners’ English profi ciency level, the more likely they have similar pattern distributions as the native speakers. Learners over-rely on familiar patterns and avoid unfamiliar patterns. They fail to employ alternative expressions and tend to avoid using unfamiliar patterns, which results in fewer pattern varieties and awkward English.
Conclusions and implications 125 Patterns in learner English are over-simplistic in comparison with those in native English. The investigation indicated that some typical patterns used to soften absolute attitude and help make the expressions more acceptable in native English are absent in learner English. This shows that learners’ linguistic output tends to be impolite in attitude, which will easily cause barriers and even misun-derstandings in communication.
Many problematic patterns exist in learner English. Learners create many pat-terns which are peculiar to learners and are never used by native speakers of English. The coined patterns in learner English are sometimes grammatically incorrect or may be grammatically perfect but semantically unacceptable. The grammatically unacceptable expressions are mostly infl uenced by learners’ L1 knowledge. The grammatically perfect but unacceptable expressions show that learners have inadequate pragmatic knowledge.
(4) Learners exhibit special traits in using intensifi ers in terms of semantic preference and semantic prosody.
They use synonymous intensifi ers interchangeably showing no awareness of their different semantic preferences and semantic prosodies, which reveals their inadequate pragmatic profi ciency. However, Chinese learners can use diminishers properly both in terms of semantic preference and semantic prosody, which can be mainly attributed to the positive sociopragmatic transfer. Another feature is that Chinese learners of English employ adjective collocates of narrower semantic fi elds than native speakers of English, which are manifestations of learners’ weak collocational competence. On the other hand, similar to learners of other mother tongue backgrounds, Chinese learners display sound knowledge in the employ-ment of familiar intensifi ers but weak skill in using unfamiliar intensifi ers. The input material and the received attention during the teaching process account for this phenomenon.
The aforementioned fi ndings have shown a world of difference between the native English and the learner English in using intensifi ers. The underlying factors accountable for the particular patterns and meanings in learner English are as follows:
(1) L1 transfer plays an obvious role in causing the overuse, underuse and misuse of certain intensifi ers. The intensifi er patterns overused by Chinese learners are found to have their frequently used equivalent expressions in Chinese. The differences between Chinese and English are the main factors responsible for the abnormal patterns and awkward expressions in English.
A lot of problematic expressions in learner English are literal translations from Chinese into English.
(2) Biased input in the learning process, for example, the textbooks and diction-ary content, is an important factor to shape learners’ behavior in using intensifi ers. The present research has found that patterns which occur
126 Conclusions and implications
frequently in textbooks are likely to be overused by learners. Learners rarely use some patterns that are regularly occurring expressions in native English because they have appeared infrequently in textbooks. The lack of pragmatic information in dictionaries available to the learners can account for why learners have weak pragmatic knowledge and are not aware of the semantic prosodies of intensifi ers.
(3) Learners treat synonyms as interchangeable items, and this causes their non-nativeness language production. This research shows that synonyms cannot substitute one another because they share denotational meaning but have different connotational, syntactical and functional meanings in most cases. Our analyses show that learners tend to treat synonyms as interchange-able items in communication. This will, in many cases, lead to unacceptinterchange-able collocations and failure in fulfi lling the communicative purpose. Learners need to understand that restricted collocations make up a signifi cant part of a typical native speaker’s production in both speech and writing (Howarth, 1998: 186). Textbooks and dictionaries available to Chinese learners more often than not fail to provide information regarding collocation, colligation, semantic preference and semantic prosody of synonyms. The pragmatic differences of synonyms are often neglected by book editors, teachers and learners themselves.
(4) Learners have inadequate register awareness. Learners are not aware of linguistic variations across registers. The present study shows that learners may easily employ oral patterns in written texts. This is more likely to hap-pen when learners fail to fi nd a proper word and therefore they resort to repeating an intensifi er to realize meaning. Learners often adopt this com-municative strategy without realizing that it may be improper to repeat the intensifi er in this specifi c register. Raising learners’ register awareness is helpful to guarantee the production of native-like English.
(5) Learners possess weak pragmatic skills. Learners’ invariable and rigid expres-sions are a product of their weak pragmatic skills. Semantic prosody has a leading role to play in the extended units of meaning, and it expresses an attitude. However, learners tend to use certain intensifi ers for all kinds of attitudes, including positive, negative and neutral ones, which causes mis-understanding in communication. At the same time, weak pragmatic knowl-edge causes learners to produce exaggerated expressions, which result in barriers in communication.
7.2 Implications
The present study on patterning and meaning features of intensifi ers has potential as well as practical theoretical, methodological and pedagogical implications.
Theoretically, the EUM is a powerful theoretical framework for descriptive lin-guistic studies. The present research was carried out within the framework of EUM.
Co-selections were observed and described on four linguistic levels: collocation, colligation, semantic preference and semantic prosody. In contrast to traditional
Conclusions and implications 127 grammars, which see a single word as the unit of meaning, the EUM model regards a phrase, a collocation and even a pattern as a unit of meaning. The present study shows that lexis and patterns, patterns and registers, lexis and pragmatic meanings are co-selected. The attitudinal meaning determines the co-selection of lexis and grammar. That is, the semantic prosody plays the leading role in the co-selection of vocabulary, colligation and semantic meaning in language.
Methodologically, this study has offered insights for enriching the CIA method.
Specifi cally, this research is based on the pos-tagged corpora. By tagging the native corpus LOCNESS and the learner corpus CLEC, all intensifi er-adjective colloca-tions have been extracted from corpora, which makes it possible to obtain a whole picture of the overall data distribution of intensifi ers in the learner corpus in com-parison with that in the native corpus. All the data were checked manually to remove the inaccurate intensifi er-adjective collocations. Furthermore, the intensi-fi ers studied in depth were retrieved from the raw corpora and double-checked manually. Therefore, the research data representativeness and reliability can be guaranteed. This shows the possibility of combining a variety of methods and techniques in a study of this kind. In future studies, the multiple dimensions for data observation and the combination of quantitative and qualitative analytical methods, used in the present study, can be of practical use and reference.
Pedagogically, the present study has important practical implications.
(1) Patterns deserve to be included in teaching syllabus, textbooks and dictionar-ies. The awareness of pattern is important to language teaching and learning because it can facilitate the development of both accuracy and fl uency (Hunston, 2002). Only when learners have acquired a considerable number of collocational patterns can the creative element be relied on to produce phrases that are acceptable and natural to the native speaker (Kjellmer, 1991).
One obvious limitation of the current teaching syllabuses from primary school to university is that they just specify the amount of vocabulary that should be mastered, but have no specifi c requirements for the collocational patterns. The defi ciency in the production of the phraseological patterns of textbooks is responsible for learners’ overuse and underuse of certain lan-guage items. And the available dictionaries do not present enough information on collocations. This is certainly a problem if the student is looking for a particular collocation. Furthermore, the content and design of teaching mate-rials need to give more emphasis to the proper coverage of a wide range of patterns (Gouverneur, 2008). The selection and the presentation of the phrase-ology in syllabus, textbooks and dictionaries are worth investigating and the phrasal expression lists should be included in the teaching and learning materials (Martinez & Schmitt, 2012).
(2) Explicit teaching of patterns is of necessity. Explicit knowledge contributes to the development of implicit knowledge (Ellis, 1994; Dekeyser, 1998, 2003). The present study shows that L1 transfer is a key factor in learners’
errors in language production. Therefore, it is suggested that in English classrooms, teachers present every new word and its patterns, which are
128 Conclusions and implications
distinct from learners’ L1. Explicitly drawing learners’ attention to colloca-tions can make learners aware that developing one’s vocabulary lies in learning new words, but also in learning familiar words in new combinations.
Collocational patterns must become part of their planned language input.
Control over patterns can aid fl uency as well as accuracy (Hunston, 2002).
Only by storing an adequate amount of patterns can learners retrieve them as a whole rather than generate them from grammars and produce accurate and fl uent English.
(3) Corpora and the data-driven learning (DDL) method are recommended in language teaching and learning. Corpora should be introduced into the classroom. Corpora are representations of authentic language use, which offer valuable data for teachers and learners. Concordance lines can provide much richer contextual information than dictionaries. Displaying key words in this format can lead to a more effi cient exploration of the collocates of a word. Teachers may also guide students to explore corpus materials, either in following a path of investigation determined by the teacher or in explor-ing an issue in a more open-ended way (Barlow, 1996: 30; Partexplor-ington, 1998).
The DDL approach exerts a considerable infl uence on the process of language learning, stimulating enquiry and speculation on the part of the learner, and helping the learner develop the ability to see patterning in the target language and to form generalizations to account for that patterning (Johns, 1991a, 1991b). DDL can draw learners’ attention to word combinations of all types (collocations, prefabs or semi-prefabs) (Granger, 2002: 14).
(4) Explicit input of register knowledge is needed. Problems of register confu-sion also regularly arise among learners. Particularly striking is learners ’ tendency to use expressions which are more typical of speech in their writ-ing. This is visible in their overuse of adverbs expressing a high degree of certainty. For example, the patterns of VERY VERY adj, REALLY adj or ABSOLUTELY adj are characteristic of speech rather than writing. The pres-ent research and many others (Altenberg, 1991, 1997; Gilquin et al., 2007;
Gilquin & Paquot, 2008) have shown that some problems in learners’ writing result from the lack of register awareness. Gui (2008) argues that Chinese learners of English face the problem of register awareness. Chinese learners tend “to write what they speak,” and they use the same register to express different social needs. Given learners’ lack of register awareness, it is impor-tant to include in the curriculum consciousness-raising activities aimed at underlining the differences that exist between written and spoken registers.
Consciousness-raising and other register-related activities should ideally extend beyond the classroom and fi nd their way into pedagogical materials (Gilquin & Paquot, 2007). Raising the learners’ register awareness can enable them to use the second language properly as far as register is concerned.
(5) Explicit input of pragmatic knowledge should be enforced. Pragmatic com-petence is one of the vital components of communicative comcom-petence. It is necessary to understand and create language that is appropriate to the situation in which one is functioning, because failure to do so may cause misunder-standing (Thomas, 1983). Pragmatic errors may hinder communication
Conclusions and implications 129 between speakers, may make the speaker appear abrupt in social interactions or may make the speaker appear rude or uncaring. This research has found that learners have weak pragmatic knowledge, which causes the rigidity of expression. Many other studies (Bardovi-Harlig et al., 1990, 1997) have also concluded that grammatical development does not guarantee a corresponding level of pragmatic development and that even advanced learners may fail to comprehend or to convey the intentions politely. Billmyer (1990) and Bouton (1994) have found that learners show improvements as a result of instruction in pragmatics in second language learning. The increased pragmatic aware-ness should be a goal of classroom instruction (Bardovi-Harlig, 1996). Class-room activities which raise L2 pragmatic awareness provide learners with the necessary information and choices to help them become competent users of the target language (Bardovi-Harlig & Griffi n, 2005). Therefore, we sug-gest that classroom teaching encompass such activities.