An Analysis Of Preposition Errors In Senior High School Students’ English Writing From A Conceptual Transfer Perspective

The preposition is one of the most frequently used function words in Chinese senior high school students’ EFL writing.However,compared with other commonly used prepositions,e.g.spatial and temporal prepositions,the preposition “with” has been paid less attention to in previous studies.It is no wonder that students encounter problems in the acquisition of the preposition “with”.As language transfer develops,conceptual transfer attempts to explain language transfer from a deeper perspective,which may shed new light on the analysis of prepositional errors.Therefore,this thesis attempts to analyze the errors of preposition“with” in Chinese high school students’ English writing from the perspective of the conceptual transfer theory by putting up the following two research questions:(1)What are the types and frequencies of errors that Chinese senior high school students made in their acquisition of preposition “with” ?(2)What are the possible causes for these errors from the perspective of conceptual transfer?To answer the above two questions,the author has collected 500 pieces of writing from senior high school students.The author adopts the mixed-method approach to investigate types and causes of errors.The quantitative analysis is used to describe the types of prepositional errors and their frequencies,and the qualitative analysis is used to analyze the causes of these errors.The findings show that in the process of learning English(1)there are two types of prepositional errors in senior high school English learners’ writing: assumed synonym and mix-up of parts of speech,of which the former type of error is of higher frequency;(2)these prepositional errors are mainly caused by students’ mechanical translation of Chinese prepositions and the lack of understanding of the differences between Chinese and English prepositional concepts at the lexical and grammatical level.