International Students From Chinese / Down Class Location Words Bias Study

The directional word is a special type of modern Chinese words. Both the grammar attribute and the semantic functions of the directional word are quite complicated. And for this reason, the international students may easily make errors when they study Chinese.This paper aims to make a further study on the use of Chinese directional words"上"and"下"by international students. The entire typical corpus in this paper are based on the corpus of Beijing Language and Culture University, and also based on some students'homework. The mistakes, made by international students can be classified from three aspects, and they are phonetics, semantics, and grammar. We can then fractionize grammar into four types, and they are skipping, redundancy, replacement and disordering. From the analysis above then we find the five reasons that why the international students make so many mistakes when they use the directional words"上"and"下".The reasons include the negative transfer of the target language, cultural factors, communication tactics, and the misguide of teaching. At last we make some suggestions on the teaching methodology and the teaching material about the directional words"上"and"下".We can use diagrammatic presentation, contrast method, and summary during our teaching. At the same time we need to make a proper adjustment about the directional words"上"and"下"in the teaching material. And explanation and practice about the metaphor of the directional words"上"and"下"are also needed. Because international students often make mistakes on the preposition framework with directional words, we should also pay much attention to this in our teaching and the teaching material.