Jung, Yeonchang. 2009. A Corpus-based Study on the Use of Adverb Synonyms 'Entirely, Totally, and Wholly'. Linguistic Research 26(2), 31-47. The purpose of this paper is to study the use of English adverb synonyms entirely, totally, wholly through BNC, and examine Korean high school students' familiarity with the 'adverb+adjective' collocation. In order to understand the value and importance of collocation, we need to first survey the Lexical Approach suggested by Lewis(1993, 1997, 2000). The Lexical Approach argues that language is not lexicalised grammar, but grammaticalised lexis. They view language as lexis rather than a combination of grammar and vocabulary. Native speakers' mental lexicon is stored as prefabricated multi-word chunks, from which their conversational fluency does come, not from the use of difficult words, nor from simply the most common words of the language. Learners will not learn to speak well by practising the individual words and need input rich in prefabricated chunks. On the ground of the Lexical Approach, I analysed the use of the three adverbs through BNC. The most common adjectives with which these adverbs combine were different and new, and then dependent. Considerable numbers of adjectives with which adverbs entirely and totally are used appear in common in various genres, while adverb wholly has a strong tendency to be used only with some adjectives specific to a particular genre. On the basis of the above corpus-based study of the use of these three adverbs, the paper examined Korean high school students' familiarity with the 'adverb+adjective' collocation. The subjects are a total of 60 high school students. The questions are that with a given adjective, which one of the three adverbs is most familiar to the subjects. The result was very different from the actual use of native English speakers. The rate of correct answer is less than 40%. The individual words given in the test are very common. According to the Lexical Approach, this suggests that EFL learners should learn frequently occurring fixed expressions as a whole, not by dividing them into separate words. In other words, they should acquire entirely possible as a whole, not entirely and possible separately. (Pusan National University)