Title: Use and misuse of high frequency verbs by French-speaking learners of English
Abstract: High frequency verbs are notoriously problematic in SLA. While learners learn the basic meaning of such verbs early on in the acquisition process, they tend to have trouble with the other uses, especially the collocational and idiomatic uses. Here, two high frequency verbs will be investigated, namely 'take' and 'give'. It will be determined to what extent their use by French-speaking learners of English differs from their use by American native speakers. The approach will be both quantitative, examining whether certain senses of the verbs are over-/underused by learners, and qualitative, focusing on the possible misuse of these verbs. Then, on the basis of contrastive data, an explanation will be sought for the differences. More precisely, it will be investigated whether the use of high frequency verbs by French-speaking learners can be the result of transfer from their mother tongue or whether other factors have to be put forward.
Publication Year: 2005
Publication Date: 2005-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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