GENDER DIFFERENTIATION OF CHINESE COLLEGE EFL LEARNERS IN THE USE OF INTENSIFIERS BASED ON COLSEC 

Abstract
This paper examines the use of amplifiers in Chinese College Learners' Spoken English from a corpus-based perspective. This paper finds out which amplifiers are most frequently employed in the oral communication of Chinese college students and discuss the gender differentiation in amplifier using and collocations. Five parts are included in this paper. We start with definition and classification of intensifier and then review relevant research at home and abroad. Then we investigate the analyze the data from COLSEC and discovers that Chinese learners overuse very in their oral production mainly because of their limited English proficiency and the males have a stronger tendency to overuse and misuse very very. The study also offer some pedagogical implications which could shed light on teaching English as a foreign language.
Key words: amplifier; intensifier; gender differentiation; corpus;
Contents
Chapter 1 Introduction .1
1.1 Background Information of Amplifier 1
1.1.1 Definition and Classification of Intensifiers 1
1.1.2 Position and Collocation of Amplifiers 3
1.2 Motive for this Study .4
Chapter 2 Literature Review.5
2.1 Gender Differentiation in General5
2.2 Gender Differentiation in Oral Expression .5
2.3 Gender Differentiation in Written Expression6
Chapter 3 Methodology 8
3.1 Research Questions .8
3.2 Corpus 8
3.3 Concordance Software 8
3.4 Data Collection and Processing Procedures8
Chapter 4 Data Analysis and Findings 10
4.1 Choice of Amplifiers and Frequency 10
4.2 Collocations .11
4.2.1 Analysis of Amplifier Collocations 11
4.2.2 Case Analysis of Very, Very Much and Very Very 13
Chapter 5 Conclusion.16