A Corpus-based Study of Intensifiers in Chinese EFL Learners' Oral Production
Maocheng LIANG
Nanjing University, PRC
This paper investigates the use of intensifiers in a
corpus of Chinese EFL learners' spoken English and compares it with that in an
English native speakers' corpus. The corpus-based analysis reveals: (a) that Chinese
EFL learners use the booster word very far too much, and this results in a tendency
of overstatement; (b) that the overuse of some and underuse of other intensifiers,
and the misuse of intensifiers as modifiers to non-gradable adjectives indicate
a low accuracy of the learners' use of intensifiers; and (c) that the learners
often resort to the booster word very when maximizers and compromisers are preferred
by native speakers. Pedagogical implications of the study are also discussed to
shed light on teaching English as a foreign language.
