大学生对Excellent一词的理解及应用情况的调查研究论文

0全 日 制 本 科 生 课 程 论 文 封 面姓 名：刘巧红学号（编号）：20140304042 (5)论 文 题 目：大学生对褒义词 excellent 的理解及应用情况调查研究以华南师范大学外文学院大二学生为例成 绩：学年、 学期：2016 2017（1）科 目：英语词汇学任 课 教 师：何恒幸院 系：外国语言文化学院专 业：英语师范年级、 班别：201 5 级 5 班提 交 日 期：2017 年 1 月 2 日1University Students Understanding and Use of Commendatory Word ExcellentTaking an example of Students from School of Foreign Language in South China Normal UniversityAbstract: The present study, with its focus on the commendatory word Excellent, does a questionnaire survey as its research data and provides a systematic analysis of its understanding and use among university students in School of Foreign Language in South China Normal University.The research finds that most researchers can understanding the meaning of Excellent when put together with Good,So-So and Acceptable, and that in positive situations, some students chose Good,acceptable or so-so instead of Excellent. Besides, personalities and places have something to do with their choices of the word .Key words: commendatory word; excellent; place; personality1. IntroductionIn recent years, with the development of commendatory words analysis, commendatory words have attracted many scholars attention both at home and abroad. Commendatory words are widely used in our daily communications and a good command of commendatory words is of great help to achieve coherence in the communication as well as to convey information effectively between both sides. In particular, the reasons why people choose this commendatory word instead of that one worth a great deal of attention. The study of peoples reasons for choosing one commendatory word can enrich the study of commendatory and contribute to the English learners understanding and proper use of commendatory words, providing English teaching and social intercourse with reference.The currently existing studies (such as xiaoqian Liu 2012; shuang Gu 2011; yan Sun 2015; yonggang Fu 1999) show that having a clear understanding and use of commendatory words and derogatory words in different fields like communication words, animal words, plant words, etc, is of great importance in a trend where Chinese is being wildly learned around the world and cross-culture communications are becoming more popular. Besides, they also show that the use of different commendatory words and derogatory words have much to do with history, culture differences and so on. When it comes to the discussion about the understanding and use of commendatory words, the current research mainly focus on the comparison between commendatory words and derogatory words and the different understanding of the same word in Chinese and English. Besides, they also focus on significance of having a correct and clear understanding of commendatory words and derogatory words in teaching and translation work. All these research do not focus on one certain and specific commendatory word or derogatory word. Therefore, the present study attempts to analyze excellent systematically.22. Research designFor the purpose of analyzing why people choose different commendatory words in different positive situations,the research is carried out by means of quantitative analysis of the data collected by questionnaire.(totally 34 effective) The researchers of the questionnaire are sophomores of English major. They have been English major learners for nearly half a year and have improved a lot in English learning. Commendatory words like excellent, good, etc are popular and frequently used in our daily communications. In a certain positive situation, one student may choose excellent while another may choose good or so-so. By collecting the data and analyzing the different situations and personalities of the researchers, the research is trying to answer the following two questions: (1) In what circumstances will university students use the word Excellent and why do they use it?(2) Does the use of Excellent have something to do with their personality and places?3. Result and analysis3.1. Brief introduction to commendatory wordsIn linguistics, a commendatory word is a word or phrase that is relatively syntax-independent and can express a full meaning. It is often used to express a persons praise, compliment or assessment of something or somebody. Examples of commendatory words include “excellent”, “good”, “great”, “incredible”, etc.When it comes to the understanding and use of commendatory words, people hold similar opinions. Yonggang Fu(1999) believed that the peoples using of commendatory words and derogatory words has three aspects: (1) the development of history promotes the transition between some commendatory words , derogatory words and neutral words, which is called the development of language; (2) different culture and social background have great influence in peoples understanding and use of these words; (3) in terms of semantic relations, there exists some similarities in Chinese and English commendatory words and derogatory words. 3.2. Understanding and use of excellentWithout the use of SPSS, this paper is not going to have an analysis about gender differences in the understanding and use of excellent. Excellent, a very beautiful and useful word which we use frequently in our daily life is also a typical commendatory word which means (1) extremely good; (2) used to show that you are very pleased about something or that you approve of something. For example, excellent service and You can all come? Excellent!Totally five circumstances with different degree of successes or we call achievements are included in this research. Each multiple choice has four choices which also has different degree of commendatory words. They are excellent, good, so-so, acceptable separately.Here comes the results of the research. 3Pie chart 1 shows that most researchers have or once had the desire to express his or her praise or assessment to something or someone. This shows that most researchers are positive or at least not negative towards life because they do want to or wanted to express their compliments or assessments to the things or people around them.Chart 1. Percentage of researchers desire to express praise or assessments to something or somebodyIn circumstance one where your classmate won the first prize in an English Speech Competition, a large majority researcher chose excellent but not good ,so-so or acceptable. It was surprising that even some students chose so-so or acceptable, all of which takes up nearly 8%.Chart 2. Percentage of researchers choice of excellent and other words in situation oneReasons for students choosing different commendatory words also vary from one to another, among which most researchers said that their choices were the true reflection of their own inner thinking. Whats more interesting is that nearly 22% researchers chose the words which were higher than their real thoughts in order to 4make others happy so their relationships may be improved or because their personalities are prop to be modest so they would choose better words than their real thoughts to praise others success.Chart 3. percentage of researchers reasons for their choicesHowever, in situation two where your class won the second place in the basketball match, the percentage of researchers choice of excellent dropped nearly half, reaching approximately 45%, while at the same time nearly 14% turned to so-so. There is no obvious change of percentage in the researchers choice of good. Chart 4. Percentage of researchers choice of excellent and other words in situation twoWhen it comes to the reasons for their choices in situation two, one reason remains taking up the majority. That is the choice was their true feeling of such a 5situation. However, there is an obvious change of percentage in the reasons that nearly 20% students chose some commendatory words which were lower than their real thinking because they wanted to be more cautious as well as serious on choosing the words ,which shows that they are sincere. According to some psychological theories, modest people tends to be more cautious and hesitated in using the words for the reason that they care more for others thinking of them compared with arrogant people. And they would choose the words which could show their modesty.Chart 5. percentage of researchers reasons for their choicesIn both situation three and five where your classmate finished his plan in advance and your friend has learned a new computer technique, both about 60% students would choose good and 33% chose excellent. From my point of view, that change of percentage is because that in most students mind, excellent is more used to express ones compliment to others extremely good behavior or to something extraordinary well done. Therefore, in situation three and five, these two behaviors have not reached the extreme good point like in situation one where one won the first prize, so the majority researchers would not choose excellent but choose good ,which sounds more suitable for such situations.6Chart 6. Percentage of researchers choice of excellent and other words in situation threeChart 7. Percentage of researchers choice of excellent and other words in situation fiveAnd also the reasons for such choices only have small changes, among which the reason for wanting to show off his talent takes a little percentage(3%-6%).Lastly, in situation four where your classmate got a chance of studying abroad, the choice has slightly different and so does their reasons for their choice. Only a very small percentage students said that they are arrogant so they chose lower commendatory words to comment others success.3.3. The influence of personality and places in the researchers choiceFirst of all, according to the result, there are only about 11% students whose personality is more arrogant than modest. As has analyzed above, in every situation, most researchers made their own choice following their real feeling of the situation, and even those whose are not are not because they are arrogant so that choose lower commendatory words to make compliments on others, but, on the contrary, among those minority, nearly all of them choose higher commendatory words to praise others success. Therefore, a conclusion can be safely draw that peoples personality does have something to do with their use of their understanding and use of commendatory words such as excellent,good, etc. That is- modest people tends to use higher commendatory words to commend others and their choices are their actual thinking. Whats more, when asked whether public place and private place have an influence on their choice of different commendatory words, a bright spot is that nearly 45% students admit that in public place, they would choose higher commendatory words rather than lower commendatory words , which was much higher than their real thought. From this result, a conclusion can be made that students choice of commendatory words was affected by the places, and taking other people around you in public place into consideration, students would most probably not to follow their hearts and turn to choose higher commendatory words. However, there were also some students who will not change their choice wherever they were. These students 7are firm enough to have confidence in themselves and are not afraid of others opinion of their decision. Besides, there are also approximately 14% students said that in private place, they were more likely to choose higher words than their real thoughts. Analysis of this choice can be understood that in private place, those who tend to be modest but not arrogant were more free at expressing their feelings and a private atmosphere can make them feel more happy as well as more high-spirited so they would choose high commendatory words to praise others achievements.Chart 8. Percentage of researchers choice of excellent and other words indifferent places Finally, most students (nearly 85%) agreed that when they used commendatory words, they were aware of the meanings and differences of those commendatory words and they did back that the degree of excellent, good, so-so, and acceptable representing of compliment varies in different situations. One weakness of this research is that there is no certain limit of the five situations given whether they are in public place or private place, so no results can be found for the researchers reasons for their change of commendatory words in different places and whether their choices are in coherence with their real thinking. 4. Discussion4.1. Significance of the present research to cross-culture communicationExcellent is a popular commendatory word that shows our reflection of certain positive circumstances. In the meantime, it is a vital word that can promotes communications between different cultures because when people use the correct commendatory words to express their feelings to something or somebody with being too flattering, making people from other countries better feel your sincerity and friendliness and improving true friendships between people from various cultures. Besides, when you are able to use excellent properly, it means that you have had a quite good understanding of what people from different cultures want to express actually and you are, at the same time, having a good idea about how they think from their cultural perspective.84.2. Revelations of the present research to English teachingCommendatory words like excellent, good, so-so,etc, are of great significance in both oral English and written English. However, how to use commendatory words is difficult for English learners especially who study English as the second language. Thus the English teachers may pay more attention to help students have a full understanding of different commendatory words, like excellent, good and so on. In addition, Teachers are also supposed to help students make it clear that what real meanings do they have in fact, whats the