A study of Collocation in texts used on Spanish Reading: based on Cosas de la ciudad

• Main Authors: Ting-Yu Liu, 劉亭佑
• Other Authors: none
• Format: Others
• Published: 2011
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/39812344799661609573

碩士 === 靜宜大學 === 西班牙語文學系研究所 === 99 === In recent years, many linguists (such as Michael Lewis 1993, 1997, 2000; Corpas Pastor 1997; Koike 2001 etc.) have broadly and profoundly researched on the importance of collocation in language, and discovered that possessing knowledge of collocation would help both language pedagogy and acquisition. For instance, Michael Lewis (2000) asserts based on his theory that teachers should draw their students’ attention on the complex lexical unites rather than on individual words, it is for pointing out how words are usually co-occurring in sentences or in specific texts. Moreover, Barrios Rodríguez (2006) also believes that it would be a pragmatic lesson for L2 acquisition learners in learning collocation no matter what language it could be. This thesis aims to discuss the application of collocation in texts used on Spanish Reading. Based on Koike’s classification (2001), with the instrument of Spanish Collocation Tool, this study intends to analyze the frequency of how collocations would be used in reading texts. Furthermore, the researcher does the contrastive analysis by the Spanish Corpus (Corpus del Español) on the differences in the frequency of collocation between reading texts and the native speakers. The results of the study are as follows: Generally speaking, in both Spanish Collocation Tool and the Spanish Corpus, the structures of high-frequency collocations are verb + preposition + noun, and followed by noun + preposition (de) + noun. On the other hand, the structures of low-frequency collocation, with the help of Spanish Collocation Tool, are adverb + adjective/ past participle. In contrast, the structures of low-frequency collocation are verb + noun (direct object) in the Spanish Corpus. Strictly speaking, in Spanish Collocation Tool, the structures of high-frequency collocations are verb + noun (direct object) and verb + adverb at times. In contrast, the structures of low-frequency collocations are noun (subject) + verb and noun + preposition (de) + noun while in the Spanish Corpus the structures of high-frequency collocations are verb + preposition + noun and verb + noun (direct object) at times; and noun + preposition (de) + noun in low-frequency collocations. In conclusion, in both Spanish Collocation Tool and the Spanish Corpus, verb + noun (direct object) belongs to the high-frequency collocations while noun + preposition (de) + noun belongs to the low-frequency collocations. This thesis intends to provide some referential analyses to help teachers in designing reading materials in the future, and suggest that teachers should put the priority of the pedagogy on teaching high-frequency collocations with some grammatical and semantic knowledge for improving the learners’ vocabulary ability.