A Corpus-based Study On Prepositional Errors In Spoken English By Chinese English Majors

Preposition is a kind of active word with high frequency in English. Although English prepositions have limited number, they are widely used and their usages are very complicated. Some researchers think that, prepositions have rich semantic meanings and the usage is changeable, and those features make the learning process more difficult for language learners. The numerous collocations of prepositions increase learners’memory burden. English prepositions are more complicated than Chinese prepositions. Therefore, it is very important for English learners to grasp preposition usage accurately and to be proficient in using prepositions.In consideration of the important role that preposition plays in English, this paper is based on PACCEL-S. The author adopts error analysis which was put forward by Corder in1970s as research foundation, uses the software AntConc3.2.1which was developed by Anthony in2006, applies Excel to count data and draw charts and figures. Some tendency and features of preposition errors are found to provide some reference for the further English preposition teaching and studying.The research subject of this paper is Chinese English majors who take the TEM8oral test from2003to2007. At first, the author adopts AntConc3.2.1to count data and get the frequency and collocation statistics of each preposition in PECCEL-S; and then compares those statistics with COCA, BNC, Oxford Advanced English-Chinese Dictionary and Longman English Dictionary Online, analyzes and summarizes the preposition usage condition of Chinese English majors. The statistics show that:(1) ten prepositions are used most in PACCEL-S:to,of,in,from, for, on, with, by, as, about;(2) three prepositions are overused seriously:to, of, in. two prepositions are underused seriously:for, on;(3) Chinese English majors make more errors in preposition clusters. Among those four kinds of errors, the percent of underuse errors is the highest. According to data analysis and error analysis, the author finds that the main reasons of preposition errors are inter-lingual transfer, intra-lingual transfer and other factors. At last, the author makes some suggestions for Chinese English preposition teaching and learning.