Computer Assisted Language Learning. 13(2): 167-182 An ESL Writer ’ Collocational Aid

Abstract

Collocation is one of the most difficult aspects in second language learning, but has been largely neglected by researchers and practitioners. A questionnaire survey shows the advanced Chinese learners ’ collocational ability in English to be significantly inferior to that of native speakers. Our research attempts to correct this problem by developing an on-line correcting program which is able to detect some collocational errors in the learner ’ English writing and offer examples of standard collocations from a large corpus for reference. The system is based on two kinds of corpora: a Learner Corpus which is used for the study of known collocational errors, and a Reference Corpus which is used to extract standard English collocations. The system also makes use of a Dictionary of Synonyms derived from WordNet to discover the potential collocational errors in learner ’ input, as well as a Paraphrase Database gathered from the learners themselves to help diagnose un-collocational learner phrases. Altogether, it is hoped that the result of this research not only produces a usable on-line collocational aid, but also demonstrates a simple and efficient way of using learner corpora and reference corpora to support CALL software design. 1