Collocational competence is important part of L2 English amplifier acquisition. This competence entails learners' ability to use the right combination of words with natural-sounding semantic prosody. It is known to be an integral part of mastering pragmatic function of L2 English vocabulary, which also is a challenge for the learners at the same time (Zhang, 2008). Despite the importance, previous studies on ESL/EFL learners' amplifier use lacked empirical evidence and insight about semantic prosody. The purpose of present learner corpora-based study was to fill the existing research gap by finding patterns of amplifiers. Two existing corpora were selected, coded, and analyzed to fulfill this purpose; they are Korean EFL learners and native speakers of English (NE). Results from analysis found Korean learners' overall underuse in amplifiers. Also, frequently occurring amplifier ranks for each corpus differed. Semantic prosody analysis revealed that amplifier associated with dominantly positive connotation were very, really, and highly. Amplifiers associated with dominantly negative connotation were extremely, absolutely, severely, and greatly. Contrast analysis showed that the only amplifier that Koreans and NEs used amplifier to signal same semantic prosody dominantly was severely (negative). Other than that, Koreans and NE showed salient discrepancies in semantic prosody use. The pedagogical implication of the present study is that vocabulary teaching need to include semantic prosody, and the first step will be to conduct ESL/EFL teacher education about it (Zhang, 2009). It's important to remind them of the value of semantic prosody in language communication (S Lee, 2011).

The purpose of the current study was bi-fold. First it was to examine how the semantic prosody of eight lexical items that had a specific semantic prosody were presented and explained in the six English-Korean bilingual dictionaries. In addition, it was to investigate how those lexical items were used in university students’ sentence writings in relation to semantic prosody. The result showed that the semantic prosodies of the lexical items were not adequately presented in the dictionaries in general and a number of inappropriate uses of lexical items in relation to semantic prosody were identified in the students’ sentence writings. It was suggested that EFL dictionary publishers should explicitly address the issue of semantic prosody by providing information about the semantic preference and collocational behavior of a lexical item and they should be more cautious when presenting Korean translations/equivalents in the dictionaries. Along the same lines, it was also suggested that EFL/ESL teachers should (a) recognize the value of semantic prosody in L2 communication; (b) avoid the vocabulary teaching practice of explaining the meaning of words by simply providing near synonyms; and (c) make the students more aware of the difference in semantic prosody between English lexical items and their Korean translations/equivalents.