中国学生作文中的介词回避现象

A VOIDANCE OF PREPOSITIONS IN COMPOSITIONS WRITTEN BY CHINESE STUDENTS中国学生作文中的介词回避现象Chen ZhaoxiaMarch, 2005AcknowledgementsI am deeply indebted to my supervisor, professor Wang Junju, for her kind assistance and insightful suggestion. This thesis would not have been possible without Prof. Wang's scrutiny.Besides, I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to professor Wang Shouyuan; professor Miao Xingwei, professor Liu Zhenqian, professor Li Yuchen, professor Chen Cuifeng and professor Li Xuezhen etc. their thought-stimulating lectures have benefited me much.I am also grateful to my classmates for their warm help in the course o f my thesis-writing.Finally, I owe a lot to my husband, Wang Xin, who has contributed to the formation of my MA thesis by giving me financial aid and spiritual support.AbstractEnglish is a language of prepositions. English prepositions are characterized by polysemy, mufti-function and high frequency. These characteristics make prepositions a most difficult target language (TL) item for Chinese students to learn.Cognitive linguists, structuralists and functionalists have studied English prepositions from different perspectives. Their researches are theoretically significant and help Chinese students understand English prepositions more profoundly. Unlike the above researches, this current study focuses on preposition use rather than preposition understanding so that prepositions can be investigated from a new angle. While prepositions such as over, up, on, and across are considered in the previous studies, the preposition of is researched on in this paper.The more difficult a TL item is, the more likely Chinese students are to commit errors when using it. To avoid language errors, Chinese students tend to avoid using prepositions. Avoidance of this kind means prepositions are underused. In other words, though prepositions occur in Chinese students' compositions, they appear less frequently when compared with prepositions used by English-speaking people in their written English. Fear of making errors is not the only source of avoidance of prepositions. Chinese-English (C-E) difference, Chinese learners' English competence, etc, all contribute to avoidance of prepositions.Since English prepositions are mufti-functional, an avoided preposition can displays itself in many ways. The major concern of this thesis is to find, among various functions of an avoided preposition, which functions are more avoided or less avoided.Based on Chinese Learner English Corpus (CLEC), this study found all concordance lines containing of by using a concordance method called Key Words in Context (KWIC), sampled some of them and then made generalizations about how of was used in CLEC. 30 compositions were selected from CLEC of used in every composition was counted and classified according to the above generalizations. A quantitative analysis of data was conducted in this study. The multiple regression analysis is most important.The study discovered that as far as of is concerned, the structural function of English prepositions is less avoided. Besides, it was found that of used to form N is least avoided while ofemployed in PV is most avoided. Such findings can be explained by the nature of preposition of the spoken tendency of Chinese students' compositions and Chinese students' ignorance of register restrictions, etc. These factors accounting for avoidance of English prepositions have not been mentioned in literature reviewed by this paper.Some teaching suggestions were provided in this paper: the structural function of preposition of should be emphasized by teachers in order that students could grasp the main usage of preposition of,' It is desirable that teachers acquaint their students with English register knowledge and C-E differences. Limitations of the study and suggestions for further researches were presented in the ending part of this thesis.Key Words: prepositions, preposition, avoidance, phrasal verb, adverbial clauses introduced by noun摘要英语是介词的语言。

英语介词语义繁琐，用法复杂，使用频率高。

介词是中国学生最难掌握的英语词类之一。

认知语言学家，结构语言学家及功能语言学家从不同角度研究了英语介词。

他们的研究有重要的理论意义，同时也有助于中国学生更深刻地理解英语介词。

本研究与上述研究不同，主要探讨介词的使用，从而提供了一个新的研究英语介词的角度。

以往研究考查的介词是over, up, on, across等，而本研究关注的介词是of.某个目标语项目越难，使用它就越容易出错。

为了避免语言错误，中国学生在其作文中倾向于回避介词。

这种回避指介词的少用，即尽管介词在中国学习者的作文里也出现，但是如果与英语为母语的人的书面英语相比，介词使用的频率偏低。

害怕犯错不是回避介词的唯一可能原因。

汉英两种语言的差异，中国学生的英语水平等都有可能导致中国学生回避介词。