A Corpus-based Analysis Of English Preposition And Prepositional Errors Of Chinese Intermediate EFL Learners

English prepositions,which is considered as an important factor in English learning and teaching,has characteristics of the multi-function,high frequency and semantic polysemy.English as Foreign Language(EFL)learners have difficulties in using English prepositions because of the variation in function and use of English prepositions,even though they have been learning English for a long time.These mistakes of English prepositions may to some extent bring difficulties to EFL learners' language output.Therefore,an increasing number of researchers and teachers began to pay more attention to English preposition.They focused more on the features of English prepositions which was used by EFL learners.This dissertation was based on the previous studies and combined with corpus,which recently became a popular research method in linguistic study.It focused on the problems of Chinese EFL learners in English learning,especially English prepositions.This dissertation mainly focused on studying the using features of English prepositions and prepositional errors in the written discourses of first and second-year non-English major Chinese EFL learners at intermediate level.In order to analyse Chinese EFL learners' English preposition learning and using features,the main structure of this dissertation was divided into six parts including introduction,literature review,theoretical foundation,methodology,result and analysis.Through the comparison and analysis between British National Corpus(BNC)and Chinese Learner English Corpus(CLEC),prepositions showed a high frequency in the academic written text.This dissertation first analysed the most frequent used 15 prepositions of Britain native speakers,which contains “of,in,to,for,by,with,on,from,as,at,between,into,about,with,under”.Then,through comparing and analyzing,the similarities and differences in English preposition use of Chinese non-English major EFL learners were illustrated.Besides,this study aimed to investigate the overuse,underuse and misuse of English prepositions of Chinese EFL learners with the aid of LOG-LIKELIHOOD calculator.What is more,this dissertation also analysed and summarised the English prepositional errors of Chinese EFL learners with appropriate examples.The analysis of this dissertation showed that first and second-year non-English major Chinese EFL learners have most errors in the preposition “in,on,at”.Therefore,this dissertation kept on focusing on these prepositions which function as time.Finally,the causes of these English prepositional errors of Chinese EFL learners were analysed.Furthermore,this dissertation provided several teaching implications for corpus-based teaching and computer-aided error analysis method and also some recommendations for English preposition teaching and learning.This dissertation was from the perspective of English preposition with the help of corpora.Through collecting and comparing the data,the study concluded that Chinese English as foreign language(EFL)learners show some differences in English preposition using in written text from native speakers.They cannot use English in appropriate way,especially the substitution error,and they misuse some English prepositions because of the mother tongue.Therefore,this dissertation to some extent gives suggestions and recommendations to the language learning features of Chinese English learners,especially in English preposition learning and teaching.It provide the evidence and support to English preposition research.