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CLEC-based Error Analysis of Collocations of Chinese English 
Learners 

--Taking the Noun-Noun Structure as an Example 
Ziqi Zhu 

Zhejiang University of Technology, Zhejiang, China. 
201906100131@zjut.edu.cn 

Abstract. China’s voice in the international arena is gradually increasing in the present era of 
economic globalization. In order to further strengthen the multifaceted communication with the world, 
Chinese students must improve their English learning and application skills. However, due to the 
distinct difference between Chinese and English, and the lack of an authentic communication 
environment, English collocation has always been a significant difficulty for Chinese students in the 
process of learning English. As a result, pragmatic errors frequently occur in their usage. Aimed to 
address Chinese students’ difficulties in applying collocation, this article takes the Chinese Learner 
English Corpus (CLEC) as the research object and AntConc as the retrieval tool to collect the noun-
noun collocation errors (CC1) in CLEC, then further analyses and interprets the data obtained. It’s 
discovered that learners’ usage errors in noun-noun collocation are mainly divided into the following 
three categories: grammar error, Chinese English expression, and overgeneralization. By further 
interpretation and analysis, it is reckoned that negative transfer of native language, interlanguage 
fossilization, second-language teaching methods, negligence of collocation structure, and semantic 
constraints are the main reasons for noun-noun collocation errors. In terms of the above situation, 
this article proposes corresponding countermeasures for second-language teaching methods and 
English learning to enrich the current research on English collocations, seeking to provide a 
reference for the use and teaching of noun-noun collocations. 

Keywords: CLEC, AntConc, Noun-Noun Collocations, Error Analysis, Second-language Teaching 
Methods 

1. Introduction 

1.1 Research Background 
In recent years, China has become more and more internationally connected in terms of politics, 

economy, and cultural spheres, which has made English proficiency an integral part of cultivating 
Chinese students’ overall ability. However, Chinese students often make frequent mistakes in 
applying English expressions, and the status of English mastery is not optimistic. Most Chinese 
students rely on classroom teaching due to the long-term lack of language environment and the 
significant language differences between Chinese and English. As a result, a large majority of them 
tend to do simple translations of English based on their current understanding of the Chinese language. 
One of the most common specific manifestations lies in the irregular use of collocations. Even for 
English majors who have studied English for a long time and have a good range of vocabulary, the 
level of mastery of collocations is not proportional to the amount of vocabulary they’ve accumulated. 
Moreover, grammar errors occur from time to time. Some studies have shown that Chinese learners’ 
knowledge of English collocations lags far behind their total vocabulary volume. (Tang Wenli, 
04(2005):45-488) 

Based on this situation, the study of English collocation errors plays a crucial role in the process 
of improving Chinese learners’ English proficiency. Therefore, the study of collocation is significant 
and necessary to enhance Chinese learners’ usage of English. Among the studies of English 
collocation, the error analysis of English collocation is an essential breakthrough in studying English 
learners’ learning process. The analysis of the causes of errors, the generalization of different types 
of errors, and the strategies to reduce the error rate can help teachers and learners improve their 



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understanding of English learning, reduce the occurrence of similar errors and, to a certain extent, 
help find more effective methods of English teaching and English learning. 

In the study of collocation of words, noun-noun collocation bears certain representativeness and 
significance. First and foremost, nouns contain various categories and are widely and frequently used 
in daily communication. Moreover, English and Chinese language forms are very different as they 
belong to two completely different language systems: In Chinese, language users tend to use more 
verbs, and narrative is dynamic. In English, users tend to use more static parts of speech, such as 
nouns, prepositions, and adjectives (Liu Linghui, 2010:71-76). Compared to that of Chinese, the use 
of English noun collocation is more frequent, and the rules of use are relatively more complicated. 
Thus, Chinese students present a high error rate when using English noun-noun collocations, which 
affects the output of correct English to a large extent. Therefore, in this article, noun-noun collocation 
errors are selected for targeted analysis and in-depth discussion in order to improve the current 
situation. 

1.2 Literature Review 
Many scholars in China have conducted studies on English word collocation errors based on the 

CLEC. There are two main types of studies among the existing studies on noun-noun collocation 
errors. One type of study compares the characteristics of noun-noun collocations between different 
corpora by taking representative words as examples, e.g., Zhang Yi’s “A corpus-based study on the 
characteristics of Chinese students’ English noun-noun collocations. “In this article, the author selects 
eight representative nouns, characterizes their collocation errors, and compares them with the 
frequency and similarity of the exact words in the corpora of native English speakers such as BNC or 
FLOB to identify the corresponding causes of errors. These causes include the negative transfer of 
native language, different learning strategies, and teaching and learning environments. Another type 
of study analyzes the causes of noun-noun collocation errors using some groups of students as 
examples, such as Zuo Shangjun’s “A Study of English Learners’ Noun-Noun Collocation Errors.” 
The article takes the noun-noun collocation errors of English majors as the main object of study, 
which deals with the analysis with the concepts of lexical node, semantic prosody, and psychological 
vocabulary in psycholinguistics. Learning English is analyzed at a psychological level, and the causes 
of errors are looked into through the “source language shining-through effect,” leading to appropriate 
teaching and learning strategies. Both studies have explored the causes of noun-noun collocation 
errors from the perspective of corpus comparison and psychological analysis of the learning process 
and have provided specific strategies for improvement. 

However, there is a lack of overall cross-sectional research, i.e., the study of different types of the 
majority of students and as many types of noun-noun collocations as possible, analysis of the causes, 
and specific learning methods and possible teaching strategies.  

1.3 Research Content 
1.3.1 Research objective 

In the existing corpus-based studies of noun-noun collocation errors, there is still a lack of 
complete cross-sectional comparative studies for the general English learner population. Based on 
this, this article will collect and analyze different noun-noun collocations according to the causes, 
finding out the similarities and differences of noun-noun collocation errors for all Chinese English 
learners at all levels in the CLEC. The study also identified the reasons behind different types of 
errors led by the second language acquisition and second-language teaching method theories. Finally, 
strategies are provided to help Chinese English teachers and learners to develop a clearer 
understanding of different noun-noun collocation errors and a more effective way of mastery.  
1.3.2 Methodology 

CLEC is used as a corpus in this article, which covers a variety of marked errors in English 
compositions of five levels of student groups, including high school students (ST2), freshman and 



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sophomore of non-English majors (ST3), junior and senior of non-English majors (ST4), freshman 
and sophomore of English majors (ST5) and junior and senior of English majors (ST6). This corpus 
of more than one million words provides a good collection of the characteristics of English 
expressions and linguistic errors of students of five levels. Most of the research so far has focused on 
the use of verb-noun collocations, which are the most frequent in CLEC collocation errors (65.18%), 
and adjective-noun collocations, which are the second most frequent in CLEC collocation errors 
(16%). The study of noun-noun collocation errors, which accounts for 12.71% of the total number of 
collocation errors, is not extensive and in-depth enough. Therefore, this article chooses to study the 
noun-noun collocation in the CLEC corpus to get a more accurate and objective picture of the mastery 
of noun-noun collocation in different levels of Chinese English learners, categorizing the 
characteristics of the errors and analyzing their causes in different contexts. 

AntConc 3.5.8 is a full-featured corpus retrieval software that can support a variety of data 
collection operations such as concordance, cluster extraction, word list generation, file view, word 
distribution, word collocation, and so on. It can retrieve data from the CLEC in different directions 
and enhance the efficiency and accuracy of the overall research data. In this article, AntConc 3.5.8 
was chosen as the retrieval tool. Its functions, such as error code retrieval, word retrieval, collocation, 
and cluster, were mainly used to collect noun-noun collocation errors. The article also compares 
different student groups’ errors and error characteristics, carrying out error cause analysis concerning 
the context of the incorrect collocations. 

In the process of analyzing the causes of errors and exploring the feasible strategies, this article 
combined the interlanguage theory, language fossilization theory, and the second-language teaching 
methods in the second language acquisition to analyze the fundamental causes of errors and put 
forward corresponding teaching strategies. 

2. Data Analysis and Interpretation 

2.1 General Discourse 
The 374 noun-noun collocation errors retrieved from CLEC were analyzed for the high-frequency 

errors made in this study. The comparative analysis revealed that the use of interlanguage in noun-
noun collocation was common among learners of different levels and that language fossilization 
occurred as English learning time increased. Of the total number of all noun-noun collocation errors, 
the number of errors caused by the negative transfer of native language due to the influence of Chinese 
accounted for more than 80%. 

Selinker holds that language fossilization begins with the phenomenon that a second language 
learner can use the target language correctly in one context but not in another. Such linguistic 
fluctuation can be defined as language fossilization if it lasts for a long period (probably at least 2-5 
years). (Selinker, L. 1972: 209-231) The concept of interlanguage, also proposed by Selinker, refers 
to the transitional language between the native language and the target language that second language 
learners construct when they learn the target language and is a psycholinguistic system belonging to 
second language learners. The linguistic features of the interlanguage lie between the first language 
and the target language and are constantly approaching from the first language to the second language 
during the language learning process. The process is characterized by the disappearance of the lower 
level of the interlanguage and the emergence of the higher level. At a certain point, the learner 
develops language fossilization of the interlanguage. Among the language fossilizations exhibited by 
Chinese English learners, interlanguage fossilization is very common. 

The interlanguage fossilization in this corpus of noun-noun collocation errors is manifested in the 
following ways. 

(1) Errors affected by the negative transfer of native language frequently occur in each learner 
group. For example, in the collocation errors, the learners do not fully understand the meaning of the 
words and the context in which they are used but instead follow the Chinese word-for-word 
translation. This phenomenon does not diminish as their mastery of English increases or as their 



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learning time increases. However, it is more prevalent among intermediate and high-level (ST4-ST6) 
learners, involving more words and a higher error rate. 

(2) The expressions of interlanguage are similar and less varied. ST4-ST6 show more similarities 
in the use of the interlanguage, the types of errors are more similar, and new forms of interlanguage 
rarely develop. 

(3) The fossilization of interlanguage is not only reflected in the degree of collocation but also 
grammar and vocabulary. Both interlanguage fossilization and interlanguage convergence in noun-
noun collocation indicate that collocation is a significant obstacle for Chinese learners to break 
through the progress bottleneck. Therefore, it is necessary to understand the underlying causes and 
mechanisms of noun-noun collocation errors and propose different teaching and learning strategies 
according to different types of errors. 

After screening, this article excludes a small number of invalid data that do not meet the standard 
of noun-noun collocation errors, resulting in a total of 345 valid errors. The 345 noun-noun 
collocation errors were divided into three main categories: 

(1) Chinglish expressions such as “today morning”, “singers match”, “a good matter”; 
(2) Grammar errors, such as “people computer”, “everything time”, “freedom life” and other basic 

grammar errors; 
(3) Overgeneralization, such as “the test in the middle of the term”. 
All three types above can be classified as interlanguage, an intermediate language between Chinese 

and English created by Chinese learners of English in the process of learning English. Specifically, 
grammar errors are divided into two types: part-of-speech errors and spelling errors; Chinglish 
expression is divided into three types according to the characteristics and causes of errors: (1) Word-
for-word translation; (2) the order of Chinese expression; (3) semantic repetition. 

2.2 Percentage of Three Types of Errors Among Chinese English Learners 

 
Fig.1 The Proportion of Three Types of Errors 

Among the 345 noun-noun collocation errors, Chinglish expressions ranked first with 269, taking 
up 77.9% of the total. Grammar errors ranked second with 63, taking up 18.26% of the total 
overgeneralization ranked third with only 13 and 3.76%. It can be concluded that Chinglish 
expressions are the primary source of noun-noun collocation errors. 

From a maximum of 95 and 78 errors in ST2 and 3 to 38 and 47 errors in ST5 and 6, the frequency 
of this error was highest in the lower grades of learning and lowest in the English major learners, and 
there was a decreasing trend of noun-noun collocation errors for learners at each stage. According to 
the proportion of noun-noun collocation errors committed by Chinese English learners at each level, 
Chinglish expressions accounted for 69% or more of the noun-noun collocation errors for learners at 
each level, even 94.7% for ST5. Grammar errors were the second most common. In contrast, 
overgeneralization accounted for a minor proportion, decreasing as learners’ levels increased. 

 



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Table 1.The Number and Percentage of Errors in the Total Number of Errors in Each Level of 
Chinese English Learners 

 
 

 
Fig.2 Percentage of Each Type of Errors in the Total Number of Errors in Each Level of Chinese 

English Learners 
By comparing the percentage of noun-noun collocation errors of each group of students, it is 

evident that the frequency of Chinglish expression is the highest in both lower and higher levels of 
learners. There is also a clear rising tendency at increasing stages of English learning, such as ST2 to 
ST3, suggesting to some extent that negative transfer of native language has dramatically affected the 
formation of interlanguage. Grammatical errors are present at every stage of English learning, with a 
tendency to decrease during the period of learning ST2-ST4, but account for the most significant 
proportion of errors in ST6, as much as 29%. This indicates that English learners’ grasp of grammar 
gradually increases, and the rate of grammar errors in noun-noun collocations decreases after a long 
period of English learning. However, a higher proportion of grammar errors in noun-noun 
collocations are found among learners of ST6 who have passed the test for English majors band 8. 
Moreover, the level of mastery of basic grammar is neglected even though the vocabulary of the 
English majors’ compositions in the corpus is large, and many grammar errors occur where the 
distinction between phrases and words, their specific usage, and the part of speech is not yet clearly 
understood. As to the last type, overgeneralization accounts for a low percentage of the three errors 
and tends to decline significantly as English is learned and mastered throughout the time, suggesting 
that overgeneralization does not play as much of a role in the formation of interlanguage in noun-
noun collocation as negative transfer of native language and has a relatively small impact. This type 



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of error is more likely to occur among ST2-4, who have learned specific usage rules but have not 
fully mastered the use of context and phrases. Overgeneralization is, therefore, more likely to occur 
for lower and intermediate learners but is less common among higher-level learners and professional 
learners of English. 

2.3 Chinglish Expression 
Chinglish refers to the fact that when Chinese people learn and use English, they apply Chinese 

language rules to English language rules and speak or write abnormal language that is not in 
accordance with English cultural habits due to the interference and influence of the Chinese way of 
thinking and corresponding cultural background knowledge. (Ma Qinglin & Ji Jianfen, 2003:158-160) 
This is mainly due to the negative transfer of native language and the dominance of Chinese over 
students’ language thinking skills. Students tend to use translation as the primary understanding tool 
for learning English in the first place, making English an equivalence to the current Chinese 
expressions rather than a separate language with distinct differences. In the analysis of noun-noun 
collocation errors, most of the errors were caused by the native language interference. Therefore, in 
the error analysis, this article will focus on collating the relationship between the negative transfer of 
native language and interlanguage, as well as the causes of interlanguage fossilization, finding 
appropriate strategies to reduce the occurrence of such errors. 

According to the characters and causes, Chinglish expressions are mainly divided into three 
categories according to the expression characteristics of different errors: word-for-word translation, 
the order of Chinglish expressions, and semantic repetition. 

 

 
Fig.3 The Proportion of Three Types of Chinglish Expressions 

The highest proportion of all Chinglish expressions is dominated by the wrong thinking pattern of 
direct translation, i.e., word-for-word translation, at 82.52%, and is consistently present in ST2 - ST6. 
The order of Chinese expression, on the other hand, accounts for 14.12% of Chinglish expression and 
is more common in ST4-6. The last type of Chinglish expression is defined as “redundant twins” in 
the “The Translator’s Guide to Chinglish”. More specifically speaking, it is shown as semantic 
repetition and redundant expressions in the CLEC’s noun-noun collocation errors, accounting for 
3.34% of all Chinglish expressions. 
2.3.1 Word-for-word Translation 

Word-for-word translation accounted for the most significant proportion of Chinglish expression. 
The errors can be divided into two forms, with a few of them being the translation of keywords into 
English after removing some of the information expressed in Chinese. For example, in the case of 
“spirit story”, the student wanted to tell the meaning of “a story that shows a great spirit”, but he 



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directly combined the word “spirit” with the word “story”. For another example, the student wanted 
to express the meaning of “a teacher who helps to practice the language”, but only the three words 
“practice”, “language” and “teacher” were converted into the corresponding English words, leaving 
the rest of the meanings behind. This kind of mistake mainly exists in ST2 middle school students, 
because some students have only been introduced to English in the third grade of primary school. 
Even in junior high school, these students have just started to systematically learn English. They do 
not have enough ability to master English expression as a whole and its expression grammar and rules. 
As a result, they can only use keywords to express the overall meaning. 

Table 2. Word -for-word Translation 

 

A more significant part of the errors is manifested in the direct and rigid combination of English 
words that correspond to Chinese equivalent words in the dictionary, such as “today morning”, “trains 
chance”, “select beauty match”, and “mother school”, “English study life”, “knowledge aspect”, “job 
chance”, “money-burning”, “society work”, “struggle history” and so on. Furthermore, when students 
use noun-noun collocation expressions, they first generate the meaning they want to express in 
Chinese and then convert such Chinese words into English equivalences in the dictionary, forming a 
very rigid word-for-word translation error. This type of error is evident at all levels of students, for 
ST5-6, where the errors show a more rigid translation of a richer vocabulary. Such word-for-word 
translation results from students’ lack of suitability in collocations and their lack of enough memory 
to use them in the correct context. As a result of accumulating an extensive base of vocabulary and 
memorizing words based on vocabulary books for a long period, the memory of word use is only at 
the most superficial level. Their brain only contains the literal meaning of words translated into 
Chinese in the dictionary, and they can hardly integrate fragmented words, semantic units, or meaning 
groups to memorize them, let alone appreciate the possible meanings and contexts of use of English 
words beyond the mere Chinese translation in the dictionary. 
2.3.2 The Order of Chinese Expression 

The main feature of this type of error lies in expressing the meaning of English in the 
corresponding Chinese word order. Two categories can be concluded for this type of error: the 
improper use and confusion of the possessive nouns, e.g., “labor’s fruit”, “country’s people”, “the 
subject’s teacher”, “the old’s authority”, “the freedom of life” etc. Taking the first case as an example, 
the student wanted to express the meaning of “the fruit that belongs to the labor” but expressed it 
directly in Chinese order, without understanding the usage of the subordinate preposition “of” in “the 
fruit of labors”. This error was caused by students’ confusion about the difference between the English 



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and Chinese languages. There are very few clear rules and usage of subordinate prepositions in 
Chinese. The most common preposition in Chinese indicating subordinate relations between nouns is 
“de”, so it is easy for students to convert Chinese into English by directly using “s” in English to 
replace “de”, resulting in the improper use and collocation of the possessive nouns. 

Table 3. The Order of Chinglish Expression 

 

The main feature of this error is to use of Chinese grammatical order to express the meaning of 
English, which can be divided into two categories: the improper use and confusion of the possessive 
case of nouns, e.g., “labors’ fruit”, “country’s people”, “the subject’s teacher”, “the old’s authority”, 
“the freedom of life” etc. Taking the first case as an example, the student wanted to express the 
meaning of “the fruit that belongs to the labor” but expressed it directly in Chinese order, without 
understanding the usage of the subordinate preposition “of” in “the fruit of labors”. This error was 
caused by the difference between the English and Chinese languages. There are very few clear rules 
and usage of subordinating prepositions in Chinese. The most common preposition in Chinese 
indicating subordinating relations between nouns is “de”, so it is easy for students to convert Chinese 
into English by directly using “s” in English to replace “de”, resulting in the improper use and 
collocation of the possessive nouns. 
2.3.3 Semantic repetition 

Table 4. Semantic Repetition 

 

Semantic repetition refers to the lack of clear understanding of the meaning of words, so that words 
with similar meanings are stacked together according to Chinese expressions or cause semantic 
redundancy. For instance, “wit person”, “sunshine beam”, “the sound of laugh”, “activity 
movements”, “body health”, etc. The first two examples were caused by students not fully grasping 
all the meanings and parts of speech of a word. In the first example, due to not being fully aware that 
“wit” not only has the adjectival lexical form but can also directly mean “an intelligent person”. The 
student mistakenly assumes that the word “wit” can only appear as an adjective, so he/she “wit” and 
“person” together, constituting a semantic repetition in English. The fourth example is influenced by 
the Chinese category words, as there are more category words in Chinese, such as “problem”, “status”, 
“situation”, and so on. Students can easily translate the category words into English directly, which 
leads to many unnecessary words in the English expression. The fifth error is caused under the 



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influence of the customary Chinese phrase “shentijiankang”, which means “body health” in literal 
translation, whereas, in English, the word “health" itself means “health of the human body” , there is 
no need to add the word “body” to the English expression. In a nutshell, it can be concluded that the 
negative transfer of native language mainly causes such semantic repetition.  

2.4 Grammar Errors 
English grammar is the study of the inflection of “parts of speech” and “words” used according to 

specific usages or other means of expressing their mutual relations as well as the functions and 
relations of words in sentences. English grammar errors are common among Chinese English learners 
in English expressions. Studies have shown that English expression, noun, subject-verb agreement, 
word spelling, prepositions, tense, sentence pattern, numerals, and articles are common grammar 
errors made by Chinese English learners.(Wen Yaguang,04(2003):41-46) According to different 
expression characteristics, this article divides the grammar errors in noun-noun collocation errors into 
two major categories: part-of-speech errors and spelling errors. 

 
Fig.4 The Proportion of Two Types of GrammarErrors 

The part-of-speech error was the most common of all grammar errors and was present in ST2-6, 
accounting for 90.47% of all grammar errors; the spelling error accounted for a minor proportion of 
all grammar errors at 9.52% and was more prevalent in the lower levels of students in ST2-4. 
2.4.1 Part-of Speech Errors 

Part-of-speech error is the largest type of syntax error, which is mainly manifested as the confusion 
of the part of speech and its usage. These errors can be divided into four categories, depending on the 
characteristics of the error. 

One is the lack of ability to master the part of speech of a word or words containing multiple parts 
of speech, which accounts for a proportion in all groups of ST2-ST6. For example, “people computer”, 
“freedom life”, “color fish”, “doom day”, “society service” and so on. When students make this 
mistake, they often mistakenly believe that an attributive collocation can be simply formed by just 
putting two nouns in English together. Such misunderstanding and the subjective assumption are also 
influenced to some extent by the negative transfer of native language and the fact that Chinese has 
fewer variations in word forms. In contrast, English has many variations in words, tenses, lexis, and 
tone. The lack of clarity and proficiency in their application, coupled with the differences between 
English and Chinese in the meaning of words, leads students to make mistakes easily when applying 
English. (Wang Ying: 2010: 88-89) In Chinese collocations, the distinction between word tenses is 
not as strict as in English, and the boundaries between different parts of speech are not as 
straightforward as in English. For example, the word “ziyou” in Chinses, which is literally translated 
as “freedom” or “free” in English, can be used as both a noun and an adjective, while in English, 
“free” can only be used as an adjective or an adverb, and “freedom” is the noun form. The lower level 
of English learners tends to ignore the word family composed by adding the derivational affix behind 



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a stem and instead memorize only the English word corresponding to the Chinese word, resulting in 
an indistinguishable word. Another type of error is caused by mistaking the word as an adjective and 
forgetting to add an inflectional affix such as “-ed” or “-ing” after the word, e.g., “colored fish" is 
miswritten as “color fish” because the students haven’t fully grasped by adding “-ed” after the noun 
“color” to make it an adjective modifying the noun.  

Table 5. Part-of Speech Errors 

 

The second type is the misuse of determiners and errors in the singular and plural of words, such 
as “true man” without adding “a” or “the” before it and taking “water” as a countable noun with the 
wrong quantifier. This is also partly due to the negative interference of the mother tongue due to the 
difference between the English and Chinese languages. There are no strict rules for determiners in 
Chinese, but in English, there are determiners such as “a”, “an” and “the”; singular and plural and 
countability are another grammatical rule that distinguishes English from Chinese. Therefore, for new 
or recently exposed learners of English, finite and singular plural is an unfamiliar concept. As a result, 
they are often overused, underused, or misused by lower levels of learners and even by English majors 
with a high mastery level. 

The third category is the misuse of the preposition, such as the omission of “of" in the phrase 
“opinion each other” in ST3, where “of” plays a subordinate role, and the omission of “a” and “of” 
in the phrase “series law” in ST4. 

The fourth category is a lack of familiarity with how particular noun phrases are used, and this 
type of error is more common in ST5-6. For example, in the phrase “from the health/time point of 
view”, which appears in ST6, the student does not clearly recognize that “point of view” is a noun 
and that “the point of view” needs to be preceded by an adjective or a possessive noun to modify it 
and cannot add a noun directly.  

In short, the part-of-speech error in the Chinglish expression can be boiled down into four 
categories: the lack of knowledge of different parts of speech, the misuse of determiners, the misuse 
of prepositions, and the misuse of set expressions. 



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2.4.2 Spelling Errors 
There are few spelling errors in the noun-noun collocation errors and mostly appear in ST2-3. 

Spelling errors in CLEC are often found between two words with similar word forms, such as “word” 
and “work”, or between two words with similar pronunciations, such as “hill” and “heal”. Chinese is 
a hieroglyphic script, while English is an acrophonetic script. Chinese learners who are accustomed 
to the memory of their mother tongue are very unaccustomed to the English model, which favors 
memorization through pronunciation, and are often disturbed by their mother tongue’s memory mode, 
subconsciously memorizing through the “shape” of words and then making spelling mistakes. (Wu 
Hui, 2015(6):54-55) Students may rely on the Chinese pinyin rules for words with similar 
pronunciation to spell English, resulting in spelling errors. Students intentionally combine word form 
and pronunciation when memorizing words but lack the awareness to integrate similar words and 
remember them as a whole. This also suggests that negative native language transfer is a significant 
cause of spelling errors for Chinese learners of English.   

Table 6. Spelling Errors 

 

2.5 Overgeneralization 
Overgeneralization refers to the overuse and generalization of a certain grammar, voice and word 

meaning by English learners in the process of English expression, that is, the grammar and forms that 
are only applicable to one kind are naturally imposed on another kind of English expression that is 
not suitable for this kind of grammar and forms, so as to form a language that does not conform to 
the rules of English. This type of error occurs more frequently among lower and intermediate learners 
in ST2-4. It is similar in character to the Chinese word order error mentioned above in that it is an 
incorrect use of the preposition “of” and the possessive nouns to express subordination. However, in 
overgeneralization, the learner is reinforcing the use of “of” and the possessive nouns, not because of 
the influence of the negative transfer of the native language. For example, in the expression “the test 
of the middle of the term”, “the history’s test” , and “the technology of science”. Students making 
such errors have acquired a certain amount of the usage of the preposition “of” and possessive nouns 
in their previous English courses but are indiscriminately using the preposition “of” and the 
possessive nouns by imposing them on the English expressions that do not fit into the usage. 

Table 7. Overgeneralization 

 



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For example, in the case of “the test of the middle of the term”, the English expression “mid-term 
examination” is more commonly used. However, the student mistakenly believes that it is necessary 
to show all the semantic meanings of “semester”, “middle” and “exam” in the English by using the 
subordination “of” to connect them. For another example, in the case of “ability of social life” the 
student confused the relationship between “social life” and “ability”, misunderstanding “ability” and 
“social life” as a subordinative relationship. However, in fact, the student wanted to express the ability 
to live independently in society, not “social ability”. In this type of error, the student’s 
overgeneralization is manifested by confusing the relationship between nouns, misusing 
subordination or coordination, and thus using “of” and possessive nouns incorrectly. Over 
generalization of noun-noun collocation tends to occur in ST2-4 because lower and intermediate 
English learners are more likely to confuse the relationship between different nouns in a phrase and 
meaning group. While, English majors have a higher mastery of subordination and coordination in 
noun-noun collocations, thus making fewer errors in overgeneralization.  

2.6 Strategies of Teaching-Based Method 
2.6.1 Focus on the Development of Students’ English Thinking Ability 

A longitudinal comparison of the data reveals that Chinglish errors and grammar errors account 
for the largest proportion, and are the most common errors in noun-noun collocation by English 
learners, among which negative transfer of mother tongue has a significant impact. Furthermore, 
students rely excessively on their mother tongue for thinking and expressing meaning in English and 
then translate their mother tongue expressions rigidly into the Chinese equivalent of dictionary 
interpretations. Therefore, in the teaching process, the grammar-translation method should be reduced. 
Instead, English communication and situational teaching should be the primary teaching methods, 
focusing on the students’ mastery of the overall grammar and the cultivation of their English thinking 
ability so that students can enhance their grasp of grammar in the process of daily use instead of mere 
rote memorization. 

The development of English thinking ability, in short, is to make students reduce the step of 
translation into native expressions in the middle from the expressed meaning to the output content, 
thus avoiding the Chinglish expressions when translating from Chinese to English. For ST2 students, 
when teaching the word usage, teachers should emphasize the meaning of the word in English and 
use English to paraphrase the meaning of the word, the context, and the collocation in different 
contexts, instead of just asking students to explain the meaning of the word in translation methods. 
For ST3-4 students, teachers should focus on students’ English input and output, enhance the English 
context in the classroom and students’ interactivity, and present the daily use of collocation in a way 
that students can efficiently output English expressions. For example, teachers ought to explain how 
noun-noun collocation is used in a specific context. Then students will be asked to make sentences or 
simulate the specific usage of this noun-noun collocation in the same way to deepen their impression. 
For ST5-6 students, the effectual output is an area that should be emphasized and reinforced. In both 
speaking and writing, teachers should include more assessment of English output skills in 
assignments and classroom instructions and strengthen students’ ability to describe and summarize 
specific situations and conditions in English. 
2.6.2 The Teaching of Words Should Pay More Attention to the Context, Scope, and Parts of 
Speech of the Words Used 

Since word-for-word translation accounts for the most significant proportion of Chinglish 
expressions, teachers should emphasize the differences between the Chinese and English languages 
when teaching vocabulary so that students can learn to tell the differences and convert between 
Chinese and English expressions. For errors in the suitability of collocations, students ignore the 
word’s derivation, the context in which it is used, and its suitability for other words but simply 
translate the Chinese equivalent into the meaning of the word they have memorized in their 
vocabulary. Accordingly, teachers should also focus on the use of the word in the entire context, 



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explaining the meaning of the word in English, or expanding the use of the word from the very 
beginning, using example sentences and conversational situations to enhance students’ familiarity 
with the phrase and their awareness of its suitability when using it together with other words and 
phrases. For Chinese word order errors, the ST4-6 student group was more likely to be less rigorous 
in ordering words to express subordination and coordination by relying excessively on the order of 
the native language. This indicates that students do not have a good grasp of the possessive nouns 
and the use of the preposition “of” to imply subordination. Therefore, teachers should focus on 
teaching the expressions that indicate subordination, using different examples and contexts to make 
students aware of the differences between Chinese and English in terms of subordination and to avoid 
such errors in practice. 

Among the part of speech errors, ST2-3 learners are primarily unaware of the original lexical 
nature of words and the most commonly used parts of speech, thus confusing the parts of speech of 
nouns, verbs, and adjectives. The ST4-6 learners were more likely to poorly understand word 
morphing and the creative use of specific noun phrases that did not fit the usage pattern. The second-
language teaching method to the errors of different groups of learners should be reinforced. For a 
small number of spelling errors, teachers should integrate three different categories of errors, 
pronunciation, morphemes, and morphology into their teaching methods for memorizing words that 
are likely to be confused and strengthen students’ awareness of the distinction to avoid spelling errors. 
2.6.3 Enhancing the Teaching of the Differences Between Chinese and English 

In elementary English teaching, teachers often use the grammar-translation method and the audio-
lingual method, which favor a one-sided description of the grammatical features of English but ignore 
the contrastive teaching from both sides of the language. Only for English majors can students get 
some systematic knowledge of the differences between Chinese and English. However, as Chinese 
students grow up in the Chinese context, although they are proficient in using Chinese, they do not 
have a macroscopic understanding of the grammatical and expressive features of Chinese. In the 
absence of systematic knowledge of the linguistic features of Chinese and English and their 
differences, learners often mix up the linguistic expressions of both, thus tend to use Chinese 
expression habits to output English, or even worse, to use English expression habits to express 
Chinese meanings. Therefore, in order to address a series of collocation problems and interlanguage 
fossilization brought about by the negative transfer of native language, teachers should keep 
converting clearly to students the differences between Chinese and English in their daily lectures and 
that there are, in fact, different collocations and ways of presenting seemingly similar expressions, so 
as to improve students’ awareness of the differences between Chinese and English languages, and 
thus consciously and effectively avoiding similar mistakes when converting between Chinese and 
English. For ST2 students, basic knowledge about the part of speech differences, word order 
differences, and sentence pattern differences should be emphasized in daily instructions. For ST3-4 
students, more specific knowledge about typical Chinglish expressions and grammar errors caused 
by the negative transfer of native language should be taught to students, with aimed lessons about the 
specific noun-noun collocation errors committed by students. As to the English major students, 
systematic lectures about the differences between English and Chinese should be continuously given 
to students, with further instructions on avoiding errors caused by the negative transfer of native 
language. 

3. Conclusion 
This article searched the CLEC for noun-noun collocation errors and combined second-language 

teaching methods, negative transfer of native language, interlanguage and language fossilization 
theories to focus on the noun-noun collocation errors of ST2-6 learners, compare the data, summarize 
the characteristics and analyze the causes, then propose complementary teaching strategies based on 
the findings. 



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It’s found that negative transfer of native language played a role in the formation of collocation 
errors among ST2-6 learners and had a more significant impact on the correct usage of English 
expressions. The overgeneralization of noun-noun collocations is shown as incomplete mastery of 
noun phrases and possessive nouns, which occurred mainly in the lower and intermedium students of 
ST2-4. The overgeneralization of ST4-6 was primarily due to over-memorization of dictionary 
definitions of words and neglect of collocations, contexts of use, and transformation of parts of speech, 
which was evident in the low collocation degree, Chinese word order an incorrect part of speech 
despite the rich vocabulary. 

Based on these findings, this article concludes with the following teaching strategies for 
improvement. First, due to a lack of systematic knowledge of the differences between English and 
Chinese, a sufficiently natural and authentic language environment, and the influence of negative 
native language transfer, students rely too much on their native language knowledge for simple 
translation of English learning. In this regard, teachers should first focus on developing students’ 
English thinking ability when and reduce the use of the grammar-translation teaching method. By 
increasing the frequency and variety of language input and using words and phrases in context rather 
than in isolation, learners can actively transform language material into memory when they receive 
it, deepening their impressions and memories of a range of word families and phrases. In this case, 
they can find more accurate expressions from their existing memories regarding language output. The 
second is to focus more on the use of the words. Secondly, more attention should be paid to the use 
of word collocations in a variety of contexts, scopes, and parts of speech so that students’ superficial 
understanding of dictionary interpretations can be expanded to include a broader range of uses and 
students’ awareness of the suitability of noun-noun collocations can be developed. Teaching 
strategies and key knowledge points should be changed flexibly according to the characteristics and 
reasons for different learners’ mistakes in various stages of English learning. Finally, teachers should 
include more systematic teaching of the differences between Chinese and English in teaching English 
grammar and expressions to develop students’ awareness of the differences in the use of English and 
enable them to think more fluently and accurately in the conversion between English and Chinese. 

Through the analysis above, this article summarizes the above teaching methods for reference in 
different stages of English teaching in the hope that Chinese English learners can use noun-noun 
collocation more naturally and accurately. However, the major limitations of this study are as follows: 
Firstly, the existence of subjective judgments cannot be avoided due to the manual screening, 
judgments, and analysis after the corpus is retrieved and initially processed through the tools. 
Secondly, in the analysis of the causes, there may be an incomplete summary of the reasons. The 
attribution of some language errors is not limited to the reasons summarized in this article but may 
have more fundamental and deep-seated reasons. Furthermore, the attribution of some language errors 
is not only limited to the cases outlined in this article. However, the noun-noun collocation errors 
may have more diverse and more profound causes. Finally, despite the comprehensiveness of the data, 
CLEC is a fixed corpus established in 2003, and being unable to update the data exert some influence 
on the findings of this article. It is hoped that experts and scholars of noun-noun collocation can make 
up for and improve the above deficiencies and further study noun-noun collocation. 

References 
[1] Liu, Linghui. “Static and Dynamic: Differences in Wording and Conversion in Translation” Journal of 

Southwest University of Political Science and Law 12.01(2010):71-76. 
[2] Ma, Qinglin and Jianfen, Ji. “A Cognitive Analysis of the Origin of Chinglish” Journal of Northwest 

University (Philosophy and Social Sciences Edition) 04(2003):158-160. 
[3] Pinkham, Joan. The Translator’s Guide to Chinglish. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research 

Press, 2000. 
[4] Selinker, L. “Interlanguage” IRAL-International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching 

10:3(1972): 209-231. 



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[5] Tang, Wenli. “English Collocation Ability and the Quality of English Output” Foreign Languages 
Research 04(2005):45-48. 

[6] Wang, Ying. “Inspiration From ‘Error Analysis’ for English Grammar Teaching” Journal of Teaching 
and Management 03(2010):88-89. 

[7] Wen, Yaguang. “On Negative Transfer of Native Language and English Grammar Teaching” Journal of 
Lanzhou Institute of Education 04(2003):41-46. 

[8] Wu, Hui. “The Negative Transfer of Native Language from the Perspective of College English Learners’ 
Writing Vocabulary Errors” Journal of Educational Institute of Jilin Province 2015(6):54-55. 

[9] Zhang “A Corpus-based Study of the Characteristics of Chinese Learners’ Noun-noun Collocation” 
Henan University of Science and Technology, 2009. 

[10] Zuo, ShangJun. “An Investigation on English Learners’ Misuse of Noun/Noun Collocation” Journal of 
Fujian University of Technology 2012,10(02):182-187. 


	1. Introduction
	1.1 Research Background
	1.2 Literature Review
	1.3 Research Content
	1.3.1 Research objective
	1.3.2 Methodology


	2. Data Analysis and Interpretation
	2.1 General Discourse
	2.2 Percentage of Three Types of Errors Among Chinese English Learners
	2.3 Chinglish Expression
	2.3.1 Word-for-word Translation
	2.3.2 The Order of Chinese Expression
	2.3.3 Semantic repetition

	2.4 Grammar Errors
	2.4.1 Part-of Speech Errors
	2.4.2 Spelling Errors

	2.5 Overgeneralization
	2.6 Strategies of Teaching-Based Method
	2.6.1 Focus on the Development of Students’ English Thinking Ability
	2.6.2 The Teaching of Words Should Pay More Attention to the Context, Scope, and Parts of Speech of the Words Used
	2.6.3 Enhancing the Teaching of the Differences Between Chinese and English


	3. Conclusion
	References