Investigating Chinese college learners' use of frequency adverbs: A corpus-based approach

Abstract

The present study aims at finding out the differences between Chinese college English learners and the native speakers with regard to the use of frequency adverbs. This paper, based on corpus linguistics, is intended to examine how Chinese college English learners use the 20 most frequently used frequency adverbs, or TTFAs, the top twenty frequency adverbs in their written and spoken English and how they use these TTFAs differently from the way native speakers use them as recorded in the native speakers' corpora. From the research result, we can find that Chinese college learners tend to overuse and underuse certain TTFAs in their speech and writing. The overusing tendency is slightly stronger than the underusing tendency in both speaking and writing. The use of TTFAs is found to be problematic for Chinese college English learners. Compared with the native speakers, Chinese college learners seem to have a multifold problem. From the perspective of language learning, the research findings shed light on the problems for the learners in their vocabulary acquisition and EFL learning. Chinese college learners should try to enlarge their vocabulary and vary their choice of TTFAs in their writing and speaking. At the same time, they also should develop a register-awareness in choices of frequency adverbs. © 2014 ACADEMY PUBLISHER Manufactured in Finland.