A Genre and Collocational Analysis of the Near-Synonyms "Teach, Educate and Instruct": A Corpus-Based Approach

This study investigated three synonymous verbs, "teach," "educate," and "instruct," in terms of their collocational patterns and distribution across genres. Data were drawn from the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (2021) and the Corpus of Contemporary America...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:TEFLIN journal 2022, Vol.33 (1), p.75-97
Main Authors: Kruawong, Thana, Phoocharoensil, Supakorn
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Academic Degrees
Academic Language
American English
COCA
Collocations
Computational Linguistics
corpus
Corpus analysis
Dialect Studies
Dictionaries
Discovery Learning
English
English (Second Language)
English as a second language learning
English Instruction
Evidence
Fiction
Genre
Grammar
Language
Language Usage
Learning
Linguistics
Literary Genres
Native Speakers
North American English
noun collocates
Nouns
Phrase Structure
Rote Learning
Second Language Instruction
Second Language Learning
Semantics
Synonyms
Teaching
Teaching methods
Verbs
Vocabulary
Word Frequency
Writing Ability
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Summary:This study investigated three synonymous verbs, "teach," "educate," and "instruct," in terms of their collocational patterns and distribution across genres. Data were drawn from the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (2021) and the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA). The findings from this investigation revealed that from distribution patterns among text types, "teach" is far more widely and commonly used than "educate" and "instruct," with the highest frequency among eight genres. The frequency data also revealed that all three synonyms are preferred in formal genres than in spoken conversation, as represented by academic literature. The results also revealed that grouping of noun collocates into categories offers more insightful information about each target synonym's co-occurring authentic use. This can be more helpful to EFL students than simply looking up a term in a dictionary or relying on native speakers' intuition, which may not be dependable or trustworthy.
ISSN:0215-773X
2356-2641
DOI:10.15639/teflinjournal.v33i1/75-97