The main purpose of this paper is to study the differences in use between the English adjectival synonyms distant and remote through COCA(The Corpus of Contemporary American English), and to assess Korean college students’ understanding of distant/remote+noun combinations. The major findings of the paper are summarized as follows. First, The adjective distant is mostly used with space/place nouns, while remote is mainly used with information/communication/ computer-related or abstract nouns. Second, according to nouns which they occur together with, the two adjectives sometimes have (almost) the same meaning (e.g. distant/remote island), and sometimes a considerably different meaning (e.g. distant/remote office). Third, the same noun is sometimes used in different meanings (e.g. distant/remote connection), depending on whether it is used with which one of the two adjectives. Fourth, the overall average score of the subjects was as low as 45.2%, and the average score by type was 62.6%(remote+noun), 56.6%(distant+noun), and 16.4% (distant-remote+noun).

The goal of this study is to investigate the use of the two English synonymous adjectives difficult and hard through BNC, and to examine Korean college students’knowledge of difficult/hard+noun expressions. The main findings of this paper are as follows. First, The adjective difficult is mainly (83.33%) used to mean ‘not easy to do or deal with’, while hard is mainly (60%) used as idiomatic expressions. Second, both adjectives have different meanings according to the nouns which they are combined with (hard rock/life, difficult decision/concept), and sometimes they have a radically different meaning even when they are combined with the same noun (difficult man, hard man). Third, The average score of the subjects was as low as 54.50%. Fourth, The average score by type is in the order of hard+noun (77.19%), difficult+noun (45.46%) and difficult-hard+noun(38.34%), which shows that the subjects’ overall knowledge of difficult/hard+noun combinations is considerably poor and unbalanced. This result implies that Korean learners of English need to study English, not just memorizing individual words, but with a focus on chunks.

The goal of this paper is to study Korean college students` collocation knowledge of English adjective synonyms. Three pairs of synonymous adjectives big/huge, blank/empty, complete/perfect were selected and tested. The subjects were a total of 50 college students. The results are as follows. First, the average score was as low as 50.67%. Second, there was a somewhat weak positive correlation(r=.475) between college students` general English knowledge and English adjective + noun collocation knowledge. Third, the subjects` scores were not in accordance with the actual use of native English speakers. For example, the score of huge cost was only 28% even though it is a very common expression. Fourth, the subjects` scores were much lower in the case where both adjectives are eligible (higher than 60%) than the case where only one adjective is eligible (lower than 40%). These results suggest that EFL students need to learn English with focus on collocations, not individual words.