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Article published In:
Journal of Second Language Studies
Vol. 1:2 (2018) ► pp.310–333

A corpus study of Chinese EFL learners’ use of circumstance, demand, and significant

An in-depth analysis of L2 vocabulary use and its implications

| The University of Alabama

This study investigated Chinese EFL learners’ use of circumstance, demand, and significant, three challenging words each being a member in a synonym set: circumstance in the case/circumstance/event/situation set, demand in the ask/demand/request/require set, and significant in the important/meaningful/significant set. Via an expert rating and a close examination of all the uses of the three words in Wen, Wang, and Liang’s (2005) Spoken and Written English Corpus of Chinese Learners, the study has uncovered various inappropriate usages as well as successfully acquired usages involving the three words. The results reveal a failure by many Chinese EFL learners to understand the three words’ semantic usage differences with their respective synonyms. The study has also identified L1 interference, inadequate descriptions of these words in dictionaries, and insufficient instructional attention to the semantic usage differences among synonyms as likely reasons for the learners’ inappropriate usages. Pedagogical and research implications are also discussed.

Keywords: learner corpus, L1 interference, (near)-synonym, vocabulary learning
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Review of related research
    • 2.1Studies on synonymy and other related lexical items
      • 2.1.1Nature and importance of synonymy and research on L1 use of synonymy
      • 2.1.2Research on L2 learning and use of synonymy
    • 2.2Learner corpus studies exploring L2 vocabulary use
  • 3.Methodology
    • 3.1Corpus used
    • 3.2Data retrieval and analysis
  • 4.Data analysis, results, and discussion
    • 4.1Results of quantitative analysis
    • 4.2Results of qualitative analysis
      • 4.2.1Circumstance
      • 4.2.2Demand
      • 4.2.3Significant
  • 6.Conclusion: Pedagogical and research implications
  • Note
  • References
Published online: 27 August 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jsls.00006.liu
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