Teach Semantic Prosodies of English Words

魏丹純

Abstract：The acquisition of semantic prosody is a problematic area of vocabulary learning among Chinese English learners.This article provides some pedagogical suggestions based on the results of a study on the semantic prosody awareness of Chinese undergraduates，with the purpose of reducing students’ errors with vocabulary use.

Keywords：semantic prosody;pedagogical suggestions;vocabulary

1 Introduction

Most Chinese students frequently use English synonyms indiscriminately or adopt inappropriate word choices into an unsuitable context or collocational environment.According to a research conducted by Chia-Hui（2009），which aims to test Chinese English learners’ ability to differentiate the meanings of the same-L1-translation English paired words（e.g.suspect and doubt），shows that they are not able to differentiate the fine shades of meanings of some paired words，or even if they know，they fail to articulate the exact differences.The lack of ability to differentiate “fine shades of meanings”，which is termed as semantic prosody，leads to ESL learners’ interchangeable use of synonyms and incorrect word choices.

With the aim to examine to what extent Chinese English learners use words with their associated semantic prosody in comparison with native speakers，a controlled elicited vocabulary task is conducted among 57 Chinese undergraduate students with intermediate English level.The results confirm that the acquisition of semantic prosody is a problematic area of vocabulary learning and some teaching implications are drawn below.

2 Some implications for vocabulary teaching

First，language teachers should equip themselves with the knowledge of semantic prosody especially for words with hidden feature beyond teachers’ introspection.Then explicit instructions about semantic prosody should be given to learners.Here is one example produced by one participant：“It is the electricity that causes the development of science，even the development of the whole society”.The use of cause in this sentence is inappropriate to collocate with “the development of science” because cause has a negative semantic prosody.If students are informed of such word knowledge，they will consider other word choices，such as improve，help，promote，etc.Thus，teaching the typical semantic prosody is a prior step to deepen the understanding of a word or phrase.Nevertheless，cause could also be used in academic genres with a neutral affective meaning，which implies that the semantic prosody may vary across genres.Therefore，there is a necessity to raise students’ awareness that the semantic prosody is not an issue of black and white and it is changeable depending upon contexts and genre types.If students doubt the appropriateness of a word in a new context，they are highly recommended to do some corpora research.

Second，when teaching near-synonyms，in addition to address the denotational meaning，more attention should be given to the word usage.As Tognini-Bonelli pointed out（2001），using synonyms is a potential trap for learners since it places more emphasis on the similarity of word meaning rather than their usage.Without closely looking at the collocational environments and exploring the preferred semantic collocates of near-synonyms，learners will not notice the prosodic differences，which prevent them from using those words interchangeably.Therefore，the semantic prosody is supposed to be included in teaching synonyms and a contrastive analysis is of great use.It is suggested that teachers provide chances for learners to consciously figure out the differences by themselves.Specifically，teachers may select a certain amount of concordances from native corpora，edit them in advance before bringing these materials to the classroom for students to analyze.For more advanced learners，more autonomy could be assigned in learning by asking them to research using native corpora（e.g，BNC，COCA）on their own and bring the findings to classroom for sharing.

Third，Chinese translation equivalent should not be overlooked.It has been agreed that providing translation in learners’ first language（L1）facilitates the understanding and memorization of the target language.However，the conceptual and semantic features in L1 and the target language may have some distinctions，thus L1 translation leads to negative transfer resulting in misuse of words.Here is an example.One of the Chinese translations of bring about is引起.A native Chinese speaker would use引起in the following collocational environment：引起興趣（interest），引起注意（attention）or 引起爆炸（explosion）.Obviously，引起（bring about in Chinese）can be used with a positive，negative or neutral affective meaning and it is said that L1 Chinese learners can use their intuition to detect the usage of a word with its semantic prosody.Due to the L1 semantic knowledge transfer，new learners would use bring about in the way they use the Chinese translation——引起，with the transferred semantic prosody.The same situation could occur to other words.Therefore，teachers need to take Chinese translation equivalent into account when thinking about the anticipated problems in vocabulary teaching.

3 Conclusion

The mastery of semantic prosody knowledge would increase the accuracy of vocabulary use.Therefore，the issue of semantic prosody among English learners should be given more weight in further research on English teaching and learning.

References

[1]Chia-Hui，C.ESL learners’ semantic awareness of English words.Language Awareness，2009，18（3/4）：294-309.

[2]Tognini-Bonelli，E.Corpus Linguistics at Work.Amsterdam：John Benjamins，2001.