| Abstract |
Adverbs, especially those occurring in adverb+adjective collocations, play a central role in the language that advanced learners are expected to produce in their argumentative writing. Submodifying adverbs of degree such as closely, deeply, strongly and widely, however, have been identified as being problematic for learners of English: Italian learners over-use very and really to the virtual exclusion of any other adverb (Philip 2007). This situation is due in part to the EFL curriculum, but monolingual and bilingual learner.s dictionaries appear to do little to address the issue. This presentation examines the way in which lexical adverbs of degree are treated in the five major English dictionaries for advanced learners (CALD, COBUILD, LDOCE, MED and OALD). It also evaluates the way these same forms are treated in four bilingual dictionaries specifically aimed at Italian learners of English (Longman, Oxford Study, Rizzoli-Laroussse, and Oxford-Paravia). The analysis reveals that these dictionaries do little or nothing to help students expand their working knowledge of adverbs of degree. In general, the presentation of lexical adverbs is regarded to be subservient to the adjectives from which they are derived. The information boxes which most modern learner.s dictionaries include seem to focus on elementary matters of grammar and word choice rather than on the collocation of these polysemous, metaphorically-motivated language items. The presentation concludes by suggesting some ways in which monolingual and bilingual learners. dictionaries might modify their treatment of lexical adverbs in order to enable students to identify and use alternatives to very, really and a lot. |
| BibTex |
@InProceedings{ELX08-131,
author = {Gill Philip},
title = {Adverb Use in EFL Student Writing: From Learner Dictionary to Text Production},
pages = {1301-1310},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the 13th EURALEX International Congress},
year = {2008},
month = {jul},
date = {15-19},
address = {Barcelona, Spain},
editor = {Elisenda Bernal, Janet DeCesaris},
publisher = {Institut Universitari de Linguistica Aplicada, Universitat Pompeu Fabra},
isbn = {978-84-96742-67-3},
} |
