【正文】 even his own parative analysis of the actual work of more or less ignored this goal. Although people are now aware of the importance of cultural parison, existed researches are still confined at the theoretical level, from which only a handful of them are really and truly based on cultural background of language. In this thesis, the author will try to explore the cultural reason behind errors, especially verbal collocation errors, which appear in students’ positions. As mentioned before, cultural transfer is a part of language transfer. To conduct a research on language transfer must include a careful insight on cultural transfer and vice versa.3. Verbal Collocation General Studies on Verbal CollocationThe study of collocation started in a real sense in 1957. J. R. Firth said, “Meaning by collocation is an abstraction at the syntagmatic level and is not directly concerned with the conceptual or idea approach to the meaning of words. One of the meanings of night is its collocability with dark” [14]144. It was he that first used the term “collocation” in its linguistic sense. J. R. Firth is often quoted having said “you know a word by the pany it keeps (Firth, 1957). Knowledge of appropriate collocations is part of the native speakers’ petence. Collocation therefore deserves to be a central part of vocabulary learning. Effective performance of ESL learners depends on their stock of conventional collocations, which are characterized by varying degrees of restrictedness. verbal collocationContents1．Introduction 1 Research Background 1 Significance of the Study 2 Method of the Study 2 Organization of the Thesis 32. Language Transfer 4 General Studies on Language Transfer 4 Contrastive Analysis 5 Interlanguage 6 Cultural Transfer 63. Verbal Collocation 8 General Studies on Verbal Collocation 8 Lexical Collocation 9 Grammatical Collocation 10 Corpora based collocation 104. Empirical Study 12 Overall Design 12 Defining Errors 12 Error Analysis 13 Subjects 13 Data Collection and Analysis 14 Writing Assessment 14 Data Analysis 14 Suggestions for teaching and learning 165．Conclusion 17Acknowledgements 18References 191．Introduction Research BackgroundA lot of researches have approved that first language plays an important role in second language acquisition. Gass and Selinker thought that researches on the effect of first language are actually the studies of language transfer, which refers to a psychological process of transferring one’s previous learning experience into a new environment. According to Odlin, research on language transfer refers to “an influence caused by differences between target language and any other languages”[1]279. Ke Ping has mentioned in his work that language transfer has two forms: positive transfer and negative transfer. According to some typical examples, language transfer means errors and mistakes made by language users when they try to use a similar pattern from their first language to express ideas in target language. When Chinese English learners want to express “hei mian bao” or “hong cha” in English, they would often say “black bread” and “red tea”. However, both of them are not equivalent expressions in real English[2]35,36. Lado (1957) has e up with a goal for contrastive analysis, . “a contrastive analysis of two languages and cultures could help find out difficulties when learners try to acquire another language” [3]2. It’s a pity that Lado’s suggestions failed to get enough attention. He himself ignored the initial goal which aimed to analyze cultural influence during his research. Recently, people have been aware of the importance of contrastive analysis on culture. But their researches are more or less constrained on theories. A research on the cultural background of language is really difficult to handle. Zhang Gongjing and Ding Shiqing have coaudited the book Cultural Linguistics. In this book, they highly praise an advanced sensibility of the Chinese. Due to some social and cultural reasons, a culture craze has been heated since 1980s. Zhang Gongjing and Ding Shiqing have coaudited the book Cultural Linguistics. A new thought called cultural linguistic has since been created[4]13. Claire Kramsch also think that language has an inseparable and plex relation with culture[5]3. Various linguistic phenomenon appear in English major students’ positions. Researchers have done analyses on them. Lin Xinge has conducted a research on Chinese students’ English writing skill adopting corpora linguistics. Zhang Zhongyue, Hong Yiming and Liujuling have done researches on impact of first language transfer on writing from aspects of pensation hypothesis, interlanguage, contrastive analysis and markedness theory. Huang Juan has introduced lexical approach into writing teaching and then conducted an applied research. Significance of the StudyWriting is one of the four basic skills in learning English. For low proficiency students, writing can be a most difficult part to finish during the exam. However, for high proficiency students, the case is totally different. The reason for this difference lies in the fact, according to a study made by Ji Xiaoli in 2006, that high proficiency students have more second language input. In other words, they are less influenced by their first language[6] 10.Studies on nonEnglish majors’ writing often focus on wordlevel. While studies on English majors’ writing often focus on sentence, paragraph and structure. However, according to a statistic review of TEM4 and TEM8, testers have bigger problems in language accuracy. So in this study, English majors’ writing accuracy will be examined. Specifically, the study will focus on first language transfer on verbal collocations. Method of the StudyEnglish freshmen students will be asked to write a position in no more than hours. The top