Abstract
This paper sets out to illustrate differences between learner language and the language of native speakers by a number of tests carried out with students of English at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg.
The first part of the experiment aims at testing knowledge of collocations: In order to compare to what extent combinations of certain words are stored in the constructica of native speakers and advanced learners of English, we used the test battery developed by Dąbrowska (2014): although, as was to be expected, on the whole, native speakers displayed a much greater competence at judging which combinations of words can be regarded as established collocations, interestingly, some learners outperformed some native speakers.
The second part of the project was designed to explore the number and types of different valency constructions informants produce on being provided with a verbal stimulus. It is very interesting to see that, given the stimulus word caught, for example, the non-native speakers would predominantly produce sentences with police, thief, murderer, suspect etc. which do not rank amongst the 50 top collexemes of caught in the British National Corpus.
We would thus argue that an analysis of the words used in particular slots of argument structure constructions (i.e. the collexemes or itecxes) provides a useful means of characterizing the language of advanced learners and to underscore the importance of collo-phenomena in language teaching.
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Appendix
In the first part of this experiment, we ask you to write up to five different sentences with the word(s) given.
________________ demonstrated ________________
________________ earned ________________
Imagine ________________
________________ twittered ________________
________________ showed ________________
________________ caught ________________
________________ bought ________________
________________ gave me ________________
________________ told ________________
________________ e-mailed ________________
________________ gave ________________
________________ earned ________________
________________ caused ________________
________________ proved ________________
________________ were twittering ________________
________________ met ________________
Underneath each stimulus, five boxes were provided for the participants to fill in their sentences.
In the second part of this experiment, we ask you to simply complete the following fragments to form sentences that sound perfectly natural.
This gave me//They gave me/My wife gave me
She explained us the/She explained us that
The professor e-mailed her students/The professor e-mailed her students/The professor emailed to his students/The professor e-mailed to his students
They have done much better since they bought
She said to him/She said him/She said that
She earned/She earned her/This earned
This could tell/This could tell us/She could tell us/She could tell us
They were available/It was available
She gave the/This gave
She was true/It was true/She was true of
This proves
She avoided to/She avoided that
They were able to show/She showed/This shows/This shows to
She was responsible/She was responsible/It was responsible
They twittered/They twittered/He twittered
They were certain/They were certain/They were certain
Manchester United haven’t lost a single game since they bought
They agreed/They agreed/They agreed/He agreed
It was good/He was good/He was good
She was nice/She was nice/It was nice/It was nice/She was nice
©2019 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
