EFL Learners‟ Synonymous Errors: A Case Study of Glad and Happy

Corpus linguistics and its relationship with modern lexicography are paid more and more attention by linguists and lexicographers in recent years. This paper, based on corpus analysis, mainly studies EFL (English as Foreign Language) learners’ synonymous errors (SE), which refer to errors made by learners when using synonyms in writing. The unit observed is a pair of commonly used synonyms glad and happy, and the discussion includes both the phenomenon and reasons. Moreover, this paper considers that constructing a semantic network of synonyms in LDs (learner’s dictionaries) can simulate learner’s mental lexicon and help them to prevent from SE. Therefore, this paper takes LDs (both electronic and printed ones) as examples to discuss how existing LDs differentiate synonyms by means of semantic network and whether there are some inadequacies.