大学英语语料库report样本

Student No. 20080101060 Name: 李xx

1.Target word:kind of (as an adverbial phrase)

2.Corpus:

Z:\EFL\BOOk\H\J\RJ\JEFC (Junior English for China)

…

3.Grammar patterns

(1)BE + kind of + Adjective (? out of 200 examples, ?%)

e.g. My heart was kind of weak.

I was kind of afraid.

…

(2)Link Verb + kind of + Adjective (? out of 200 examples, ?%)

e.g.I’ve felt kind of worried for God sometimes.

…

(3)kind of + V erb (? out of 200 examples, ?%)

e.g. I kind of like them.

It kind of makes me homesick.

4.Semantic preference

Kind of means slightly, a little. It is often followed by adjectives about feelings and qualities of something or someone. Its meaning is neutral. It can be used with words with positive connotations, such as nice, interesting, pleasant, etc.. It can also be used with words with negative connotations, such as bore, mad, afraid, harsh, etc.

…

5.Collocates

The adjectives used BE + kind of + Adjective tend to fall into two meaning categories. One shows feeling or attitude of a person, mostly the first person I.

e.g. Well, I’m kind of sorry I did it.

I’ve felt kind of worried sometimes.

Well, I was kind of bored on the train.

The other shows the characteristic of a person or the feature of someone or something.

e.g. She is kind of interesting as Matthew says.

Tom’s kind of nice.

It’s kind of small.

6.Set phrases

(1)xxx

(2)xxx

7.Implications for teaching

Kind of as an adverbial phrase is an expression of vagueness. It’s particularly useful in conversation. However, it does not seem to appear often in textbooks. It is not often used by Chinese students, either. Therefore, when students come across this phrase, teachers should have the consciousness to guide them to try to master the form, the meaning as well as the use of it. It is especially important to explain to the students about the style of this expression, i.e. it is typical spoken language so that the students are aware of when and where to use it appropriately.

When teaching, the teachers can make use of native speaker corpora, especially spoken corpora, as important complementary materials to the textbooks. Examples from corpora can be used to help the students notice the authentic use of the phrase and acquire it. In addition, teachers can consciously use the phrase in class after it is introduced so that the students have a deeper and more vivid impression of it. …