Chinese Preposition Learner Difficulty Level Analysis Of The Native Speakers Of English And Teaching Countermeasures

The researches on Chinese prepositions have been very popular, but quite few people apply the methods of Hierarchy of Difficulty to analyze the hierarchy of difficulty in Chinese prepositions acquisition. Applying the methods of Contrastive Analysis and Hierarchy of Difficulty, the thesis analyses the hierarchy of difficulty in Chinese prepositions acquisition for the students whose native language is English so as to provide help to teaching Chinese as a second language.This thesis consists of four chapters. Chapter One introduces the reason of this topic, theoretical basis and the research methods. The usage of Chinese prepositions is quite complicated and different from the usage of English prepositions. The Chinese prepositions are difficult for the students whose native language is English.Chapter Two discusses the hierarchy of difficulty in Chinese prepositions. It chooses the prepositions listed by Wang Huan (1995) as objects of analysis and applies the Model of hierarchy of difficulty to discuss the hierarchy of difficulty in Chinese prepositions and sort the Chinese prepositions in easy-difficult order, then predicts the hierarchy of difficulty in Chinese prepositions acquisition for the students whose native language is English. The0grade includes Chinese prepositions like“当”、“由于”；the1st grade includes“除了”、“除”; the3rd grade includes’‘比”、“沿着”、“沿”、“顺着”、“顺”;the4th grade includes“把”、“将”;the rest belong to the5th grade, among them“作为”、“至于”、“随着”belong to the5th grade only,“离”、“和”、“跟”、“同”、“与”、“关于”、“替”、“论”belong to the5th and3rdgrade at the same time,“自从”belong to the5th and4th grade at the same time,“被”、“为”、“为了”、“给”、“向”、“朝”、“往”、“在”、“从”、“打”、“自”、“对”、“叫”、“让”、“趁”、“对于”、“按”、“按照”、“照”、“以”、“由”、“于”、“根据”、“据”、“依”、“依照”、“凭”、“连”belong to the5th3rd and4th grade at the same time.Chapter Three proposes the teaching methods. It suggests that the arrangement of the textbooks should follow the easy-difficult principle; arrange reasonably the teaching points; emphasize the English-Chinese contrast; focus on the differences between the English grammar and Chinese grammar, the differences between the similar prepositions and the fixed usage of the prepositions.Chapter Four is a summary of the whole thesis. After discussing the Chinese prepositions using the hierarchy of difficulty proposed by Clifford Prator, the researcher considers the hierarchy of difficulty not precise enough and can not thoroughly predict the hierarchy of difficulty in Chinese prepositions.