A Corpus-based Study on Chinese EFL learners’ Acquisition
of English Intensifiers in Writings
Rui Liang
Chapter One Introduction
When it comes to intensifiers, degree adverbs and the relationship between them must
be clarified. According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, “an adverb can be defined
as a word belonging to one of the major form classes in any of numerous languages,
typically serving as a modifier of a verb, an adjective, another adverb, a preposition, a
phrase, a clause, or a sentence.” It can be divided into seven semantic categories, which
expresses some relation of manner or quality, place, time, degree, number, cause,
opposition, affirmation, or denial, answering questions asking when, where, in which
way and to what extent. There is confusion in the use of the terms of degree adverbs
and intensifiers, to the author’s understanding, intensifiers may have a broader meaning
than that of degree adverbs for the reason that intensifiers can signal a relatively higher
or lower degree, while degree adverbs may not intensify. The definition of intensifiers
in English as best summarized by Biber et al. (1999) is as follows: “They can be used
to mark that the extent or degree either greater or less than usual or than that of
something else in the neighboring discourse” and that “They occur as both adverbials
and modifiers”.
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Intensifiers describe the extent to which a characteristic holds. Quirk et al (1985) thinks
that intensifiers constitute a gradable category because intensifiers indicate both
increase and decrease of intensity in the word meaning. According to this widely-held
view, intensifiers can be classified into two sub categories: amplifiers and downtoners.
The former are often used to increase the meaning conveyed by relevant words, while
the latter are often used to decrease the meaning conveyed. Quirk et al (1985) then
further classify amplifiers into maximizers (completely, absolutely), and boosters (very,
highly), and downtoners into approximators (nearly, virtually), compromisers (fairly,
quite), diminishers (slightly), and minimizers (hardly, scarcely), which can be seen as
follows.
Categories
amplifiers
downtoners
Examples
maximizers
completely, absolutely
boosters
very, highly
approximators
nearly, almost
compromisers
fairly, quite
diminishers
slightly, somewhat
minimizers
hardly, scarcely
The importance of studying intensifiers lies in their fundamental roles playing in
communication, as Partington (1993) says, “The importance of intensification in the
communicative process is that it is a vehicle for impressing, praising, persuading,
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insulting, and generally influencing the listener’s reception of the message.” What’s
more, as one of the main devices of emphasis, intensifiers are frequently used to
reinforce the speakers’ tone and attitude, which directly influence the realization of
interpersonal function. This makes intensifiers quite difficult for Chinese students to
have a good command of for the possible reason of cultural differences. Therefore,
whether intensifiers are used properly can be a significant measure of learners’ language
proficiency, which may be of great value of the teaching of English grammar.
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Chapter Two Study Findings and Discussion
2.1 Previous Studies
Maocheng Liang, the author of A Corpus-based Study of Intensifiers in Chinese EFL
Learners’ Oral Production, has three findings in her study: 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 compromizers are preferred by native speakers. After reading
her paper, some questions come up into the author’s mind that are these findings can
be applied to Chinese learners’ written English as well, that if there are any exceptions
and that could there be any other findings? Thus the author wants to do her own study
exploring Chinese learners’ use of English intensifiers in their writings.
2.2 Data Collection
The data the author collects comes from COCA and CLEC. COCA, Corpus of
Contemporary American English, is composed of more than 450 million words from
more than 160,000 texts, including 20 million words each year from 1990 to 2011. The
most recent update was made in the summer of 2012. The texts come from a variety of
sources, shown as follows:
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Data Type Sources of Data
Spoken
Words
Transcripts of unscripted conversation from nearly 150 85,000,000
different TV and radio programs
Fiction
Short stories and plays, first chapters of books 1990– 81,000,000
present, and movie scripts
Popular
Nearly 100 different magazines, from a range of domains
magazines
such as news, health, home and gardening, women's, 86,000,000
financial, religion, and sports
Newspaper Ten newspapers from across the US, with text from
different sections of the newspapers, such as local news, 81,000,000
opinion, sports, and the financial section.
Academic
Nearly 100 different peer-reviewed journals. These were
Journals
selected to cover the entire range of the Library of 81,000,000
Congress classification system
Another corpus is called Chinese Learner English Corpus(CLEC), containing 1.07
million words of English compositions collected from Chinese learners of English with
differing levels of proficiency, covering senior secondary school students, Englishmajor, and non-English-major university students in China. The corpus is error tagged
according to an error marking scheme of 61 types of error, including various lexical,
grammatical, semantic and sentence level errors, which is quite suitable for the author’s
study. The data collected in the CLEC is shown in following table:
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Data Type
Sources of data
Words
ST2
Senior high school students
208,088
ST3
CET-4 writing, 1st, 2nd year non-English 209,043
major college students
ST4
CET-6 writing, 3rd, 4th year non-English 212,855
major college students
ST5
1st, 2nd year English major
214,510
ST6
3rd, 4th year English major
226,106
Both of these two corpora collect authentic data from a wide range, therefore, they are
great sources for the author’s study.
2.3 Study Focus
The focus of the author’s study are mainly put on the study of some frequently used
intensifiers such as very, really, somewhat, rather, absolutely, extremely. Because the
author believes that the frequently used intensifiers, which provide the author more data
for the study, can reliably represent the real situation. Actually, there are more than
these six intensifiers that are worth attentions, however, such huge data cannot be fully
analyzed in the limited time. However, because these words belong to different
categories of intensifiers, for example, absolutely and extremely are maximizers, very,
really are boosters while both somewhat and rather are downtoners. This distribution
may ensure the reliability of the study as well.
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2.4 Findings Analysis
The first table shows the frequency of intensifiers across COCA and CLEC, while the
second table shows the frequency of the collocation of intensifiers with adjectives
across the two corpora. Since there are so many types of words that intensifiers can
modify, the author just narrow it down to the collocation of intensifiers with adjectives
in order to make it clear.
Maximizers
Boosters
Intensifiers COCA
Per/million CLEC
Per/million
absolutely
14009
31.13
33
30.84
extremely
17173
38.16
37
34.58
total
31182
201.64
70
65.42
very
242434
538.74
7892
7375.70
really
147770
328.38
441
412.15
total
390202
867.12
8333
7787.85
17183
38.18
15
14.02
rather
96534
214.52
219
204.67
total
113717
252.70
234
218.69
Downtoners somewhat
Table 1
Table 1 gives a general picture of the frequency of intensifiers across COCA and CLEC.
Since the total amounts of data contained in the two corpora are different, the total
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numbers in CLEC are much smaller than those in COCA. However, we can see from
the total numbers that native speakers and Chinese learners have similar tendency that
they both use boosters more frequently than maximizers and downtoners. And
maximizers remain the least frequently used. As we compare the total numbers of
per/million in COCA and CLEC, we can see clearly that Chinese learners use boosters
much more frequently than native speakers do while the opposite happens to maximizer
usage. At the same time, Chinese learners do not use downtoners as frequently as native
speakers do, too. From this table, the most obvious is that Chinese learners do use very
far too much. The total numbers of very used by Chinese learner are more than 7,000,
while that of native speakers are only 538.74.
Maximizers
Boosters
Intensifiers COCA
Per/million CLEC
Per/million
absolutely
5349
11.89
20
18.96
extremely
15111
33.58
44
41.12
total
20460
45.47
64
60.08
very
153647
341.44
3430
3205.6
really
26135
58.08
230
214.95
total
179782
399.52
3660
3420.55
8436
18.75
11
10.28
rather
11591
25.76
115
107.48
total
20027
44.51
126
117.76
Downtoners somewhat
Table 2
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Now we will have a close look at the differences between native speakers and Chinese
learners in term of the usage of intensifiers with adjectival collocations. This table
actually shows similar situation of the first table. That is, in general, both native
speakers and Chinese learners prefer boosters when collocate with adjectives. However,
when it comes to maximizers and downtoners, native speakers have similar frequency
using these two kinds of intensifers, while Chinese learners tend to use downtoners
much more frequently than maximizers. If we look at the total numbers of each type of
intensifiers, we can find that Chinese learners still use boosters much more frequently,
nearly 9 times of that of native speakers. Furthermore, Chinese learners seem to use
maximizers and downtoners more often than native speakers do, which is different from
the findings of the previous studies. Maybe it is because of the words the author has
chosen, however, the high use frequency of boosters of Chinese learners has been
verified.
The following three table are collocations of intensifiers with adjectives found in COCA
and CLEC corpora with the numbers indicating the frequency of the combination
occurred. The numbers after the adjectives are the numbers they co-occur with the three
types of intensifiers: maximizers, boosters and downtoners.
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Maximizers COCA
absolutely
CLEC
necessary 395 right 292
necessary 3 valuable 2
essential 245 sure 218
negative 2 good 2
certain 213 true 130 critical 92
clear 89 perfect 81
convinced 79 correct 65
beautiful 65 free 58
crucial 56 wonderful 54
vital 51 wrong 49
amazing 46 impossible 45
crazy 41 silent 40
gorgeous 37 brilliant 36
false 35 delicious 34
incredible 34 ridiculous 34
fine 33 fabulous 33 stunning 31
difficult 869 important 836
important 4 brutal 2 expensive 2
high 594 rare 381 low 374
hard 2 ill 2 painful 2 serious 2
popular 207 dangerous 179
extremely
sensitive 165 small 159
hard 145 valuable 144
useful 141 helpful 126
unlikely 123 large 120
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complex 119 good 114
expensive 112 strong 111
poor 107 successful 107
effective 105 hot 99
powerful 94 careful 93
vulnerable 79 competitive 77
thin 73 short 70 cold 69
bright 67 painful 67
proud 66 serious 65 limited 64
close 63 interesting 61
active 60 heavy 59
busy 58 violent 58
happy 57 weak 56
concerned 55 slow 55
attractive 51 complicated 51
wealthy 51 common 50
rich 50 tough 49
uncomfortable 48
Table 3
As we can see from the above table, absolutely can co-occur with adjectives having
both positive and negative meanings, in which sense Chinese learners use it in a right
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way. However, the collocation of valuable, negative, good do not appear in COCA,
which may show Chinese learners’ inaccurate collocation of intensifiers. For the native
speakers, absolutely could co-occurs with the negative words no and not to show that
one disagrees with someone else’s opinion or belief instead of negative.
Extremely is found that it could both intensify positive and negative adjectives, such as
extremely important, extremely difficult, which are most frequently used by native
speakers. Studying all the collocations appear in CLEC, the author found that extremely
is always used by Chinese learners together with negative items except for important,
which appears 4 times.
Boosters
very
COCA
CLEC
good 8532 different 5374
much 441 important 251
important 4763 difficult 3254
happy 233 good 144
high 2795 small 2713
well 129 hard 87
large 2344 close 2204
beautiful 78 interesting 68
hard 2111 low 1943 strong 1798 short 66 difficult 58
long 1780 nice 1777
fast 52 poor 49
young 1732 similar 1403
useful 47 busy 47 serious 44
happy 1387 real 1319
quickly 44 excited 44 glad 43
clear 1271 serious 1198
tired 42 bad 42 angry 39 hot 34
bad 1169 interesting 1141
necessary 30 sorry 29 easy 29
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old 1085 big 1034 special 1004
popular 25 harmful 25 small 24
expensive 995 simple 988
often 22 kind 22 high 20 long 19
short 976 proud 884
lonely 19 early 19 young 18
careful 787 effective 774
soon 18 low 18
popular 750 poor 748
limited 18 sad 17 nice 17
successful 745 limited 742
large 17 worried 16 wonderful 16
easy 726 likely 725
simple 16 little 16 friendly 16
specific 718 powerful 709
dangerous 16 cold 16 careful 16
useful 660 funny 655
pleased 15 interested 14
quiet 638 dangerous 632
different 14 afraid 14
hot 628 helpful 625
rich 14 expensive 13
interested 589 positive 589
dirty 13 delicious 13
best 587 beautiful 582
common 13 bright 13
rare 577 rich 570
strict 12slowly 12, late
active 569 smart 566
strange 12 helpful 12
comfortable 559 early 559
great 12 exciting 12
thin 547 strange 543 sad 536
clever 12 surprised 11 strong 11
concerned 534 tough 533
clear 11 warm 10 clean 10
bright 531 pleased 531
proud 9 old 9
fine 530 cold 526
valuable 8 silly 8 nervous 8
attractive 523 dark507
grateful 8 fat 8 terrible 7
busy 489 sensitive 485
reasonable 7precious 7
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common 474 excited 474
famous 7 anxious 7
pretty 467 personal 458
rare 6 noisy 6 lucky 6
sorry 445 exciting 442
lovely 6 instructive 6 funny 6
angry 440 upset 429
fresh 6 few 6 disappointed 6
lucky 428 significant 414
tired 399 complex 390
tall 346 slow 244
really
good 2614 bad 847 hard 783
good 21 happy 10
important 759 big 751
important 9 great 9 hard 9
nice 627 great 544
bad 9 sorry 9 equal 6
cool 355 sorry 339
wonderful 5 useful 4 long 4
happy 297 interested 295
fresh 4 tired 3 suitable 3
sure 264 interesting 253
successful 3lovely 3 harmful 3
tough 243 serious 215 hot 210
difficult 3 capable 3 beautiful 3
fun 194 true 180 smart 172
short 2 sad 2 quiet 2 poor 2
necessary 172 beautiful 172
memorable 2 lucky 2 invisible 2
difficult 171 stupid 168
instructive 2 exciting 2 easy 2
special 167 funny 167
dazzled 2 dangerous 2 colorful 2
strong 166 weird 161
anxious 2 aware 2 afraid 2
glad 154 scared 153
proud 150 mad 148
exciting 148 sick 146
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long 144 sad 138 tired 137
angry 135 excited 129
surprised 127 old 124
high 118 strange 115
wrong 114 different 113
easy 113 concerned 111
lucky 111 cold 106
scary 103 only 101
dead 101 ready 100
small 97 close 97
cute 95 amazing 95
Table 4
Even without the table, we can know that very is the most commonly used booster to
modify adjectives by both native speakers and Chinese learners. It can be used to
modify various adjectives such as good, different, important, difficult. Very sometimes
modify adjectives like interesting, exciting, and encouraging, which could be found in
both COCA and CLEC. However, the fact that no one can denies is that Chinese learners
use very far too much. They also tend to use the collocation very much more than native
speakers do.
Really is commonly used by both native speakers and Chinese English learners. And
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there seems to be no huge difference between the native speakers and Chinese English
learners on the usage of really.
Downtoner
COCA
CLEC
different 630 similar 178
higher 163 surprising 136
somewhat
lower 131 larger 97 smaller 95
difficult 77 surprised 70
misleading 62 older 61
better 61 important 60
greater 60 controversial 57
unusual 52 ironic 48
arbitrary 45 awkward 42
unique 42 easier 39
familiar 39 likely 38
mysterious 38 confident 36
contradictory 35
embarrassed 34 short 34
ambiguous 32 younger 31
distant 30 problematic 29
inconsistent 28
disappointing 27 vague 27
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unexpected 27 skeptical 26
disappointed 25
rather
different 223 large 205
good 9 poor 6 low 4 flat 4
small 167 like 106
cold 4 bad 4 practical 3
limited 88 good 85
fresh 3 young 2 serious 2
simple 82 unusual 82
long 2 expensive 2 easy 2
difficult 78 low 75 high 75
boring 2
obvious 67 short 67
narrow 56 odd 54
nice 51 political 50
modest 48 complex 47
vague 47 strange 42
ordinary 42 dull 41
long 40 unique 37
weak 36 interesting 36
complicated 35 active 35
surprised 34 common 34
easy 34 heavy 33 silly 33
rare 33 sad 33 remarkable 32
Table 5
Somewhat is used to indicate that “something is the case to limited extent or degree”
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(Collins Cobuild). As we can find from the table that Chinese learners do not collocate
somewhat with adjectives while native speakers do use it a lot. Even though it is not
used as frequently as other intensifiers. Why Chinese learners do not use somewhat may
because they are not familiar with this word in terms of meaning and usage.
Rather is a common word in COCA. When we compare the collocation used by native
speakers and Chinese learners, we can find that Chinese learners usually collocate
rather with some positive adjectives, however, in fact, rather can indicate some
negative meanings as native speakers sometimes collocate it with words like dull, silly
and sad.
From the above analysis, we can easily conclude that Chinese learners do have
problems using intensifiers, for example, a) they use boosters far too much, especially
very; b) they have limited acquisition of the collocations of intensifiers; c) the diversity
of the adjectives Chinese learners acquire is much less than that of the native speakers.
2.5 Reasons Analysis
(1) Knowledge Limitation
One of the possible cause of Chinese EFL learners use intensifiers in a different way
from the native speakers may result in that the Chinese EFL learners do not acquire
comprehensive knowledge of vocabulary. Their limited vocabulary makes the tendency
of using words that they are most familiar with, acquire most early and the also the most
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frequently used by native speakers. They tend to avoid the expressions that they are
uncertain about or not familiar with. And this is why the Chinese students overuse the
intensifiers such as very. They are not aware of there are numerous ways to express the
meaning of very. For example, they could have use expressions like significant, critical,
vital of great importance to substitute very or quite important. What’s more, native
speakers may use emotional words to indicate very, extremely, especially in literatures.
For example:
(1) Our host made it painfully clear that we should leave.
(2) I'm desperately sorry.
(3) It's been bitterly cold here in Moscow.
(4) Jacqui was pleasantly surprised to hear she had got a B for history.
Also, such meanings can be expressed by words showing abundance, immensity, etc.
For instance:
(5) The issue was an immensely complex one.
(6) I found him greatly aged.
(7) I'm enormously grateful for your help.
(8) I have made that abundantly clear.
This may also true in terms of other expressions in English. For instance, the Chinese
EFL learners use but, so, too far too much as well.
(2) Mother-tongue Interference
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Another reason may be the interference of the native language of Chinese EFL learners.
As a matter of fact, the way Chinese EFL learners learn English leads to their producing
of responses solely through translating Chinese into the target language when writing
or speaking. In fact, not only Chinese EFL learners, most of the second language
learners have this kind of tendency. They tend to rely on their native language structures,
translating native language into foreign language word by word, which may produce
unnatural English. In this case, the factor of the cultural differences between Chinese
and English need to be taken into consideration as well. Chinese learners tend to use
boosters too much may rely on the Chinese culture that Chinese people attach much
importance on balance, that is to say, Chinese people won’t say something exaggerate.
Among various language elements, words carry a lot of cultural meaning load.
Therefore, there may not exist a totally counterpart in another language even though it
appears to indicate a same meaning. It may have some different implied meanings. Take
collocations in English, which greatly call for the Chinese EFL learners’ attentions, as
an example. Chinese learners usually produce expressions such totally true as the
counterpart of Chinese“完全正确”instead of absolutely true. This may because totally
and absolutely are synonyms in Chinese meaning.
Therefore, we can come to the conclusion that the translation method used in China
would hinder Chinese EFL learners’ acquisition of not only intensifiers but also other
grammatical constructions.
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(3) Intralingual interference
From the articles the author has read, another negative factor affecting Chinese EFL
learners’ successful acquisition of intensifiers is intralingual interference. As it is stated
by Brown (1994) that, “It is now clear that intralingual transfer (within the target
language itself) is a major factor in second language.” From the author’s point of view,
the intralingual interference refers to expressions produced by the learners which reflect
incorrect generalizations of certain constructions. According to Partington, words may
experience a change from only having the negative meaning to having both the negative
and positive meanings. For example, most of the Chinese EFL learners tend to neglect
the positive meaning of word like awfully and terribly because they have a fixed
impression because word like awful or terrible has a strong negative meaning. This is
a kind of inaccurate generalization, which posts a negative effect on the acquisition of
the intensifiers.
2.6 Pedagogical Implications
When compare the findings of the author’s study with those of previous studies, we can
see that the same thing actually occurs in Chinese EFL learner’s writings: Chinese EFL
learners use the booster word very far too much and the learners have different
preference when choosing among the intensifiers, which show their deficiency in this
area. Therefore, in order to improve their acquisition in this area, some pedagogical
suggestions will be put forward.
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First, teachers should make the students raise their awareness of the differences between
their mother tongue and the target language. That is to say, teachers should make the
students notice that they may produce quite awkward English if they simply translate
Chinese into English. At the same time, the importance and the necessity of the
acquisition of the intensifiers should be explained explicitly by teachers. If great
importance is attached to and enough attention is paid to intensifiers, the second
language learners may acquire them successfully.
Second, the traditional translation method used in Chinese need to be discarded at this
moment, instead, English teachers could apply corpus in teaching English intensifiers.
As we all know, language is such a complicated and comprehensive system, which
changes almost every day. Therefore, it is impossible for teachers to explain every detail.
Furthermore, the learners’ various levels and needs also increase the difficulty of the
teachers’ work, thus, it will be a great idea if students are able to learn by themselves
using, in this case, corpus, which can provide timely and abundant authentic language
materials.
The last suggestion provided by the author is that teachers should adopt the collocationbased teaching rather than the teaching of single word in order to avoid the different
usages between English and Chinese caused by different cultures and language using
habits. In this way, the language learners may achieve better accuracy when expressing
their ideas.
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Chapter Three Conclusion
Thought the author’s study does find some problems occur in Chinese EFL learners’
acquisition of English intensifiers: a) they use boosters far too much; b) they have
limited acquisition of the collocations of intensifiers; c) the diversity of the adjectives
Chinese learners acquire is much less than that of the native speakers, the study has
certain limitations, such as, the amount of intensifiers being investigated is too small,
and the analysis of the study findings may not be complete. Therefore, further studies
need to be conducted in order to help Chinese EFL learners’ acquisition in this area.
English teachers, especially who teach in China, need to change their traditional
teaching method, which has already been out of date. Teachers had better to adopt
various methods and make assessment of students an ongoing process in order to
achieve more productive of teaching English.
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