Xinjiang: A Study Of Uygur Learners' Chinese Prepositions

Preposition which marks semantic components of sentences is an important kind of function word in Chinese. But it is difficult for the Uygur Learners of Chinese to learn the Chinese prepositions that do not exist in Uygur language and looked as a grammatical vacancy. The reasons why so many errors are made will be discussed in this dissertation on the basis of author's investigation. The dissertation falls into six chapters.Chapter One is the survey of Chinese preposition research and its learning with the author's views proposed, i.e. more research should be done on grammar for teaching and the learners' mother tongue should be considered while analyzing the learners' errors. In this way, the characteristics of Chinese prepositions will be attainable.Chapter Two makes a concrete analysis of errors caused by the Uygur learners. In this chapter, the author studies how Uygur learners use the familiar Chinese preposition by examining the sentences that appear in the learners' examination papers and homework, etc. Then the author finds that the learners' errors descend in the order of "Bei""Dao""Bi""Xiang""Ba""Gei""Zai""Dui"by the classification of the learners' errors collected.Chapter Three discusses the relation between learners' thoughts and errors in using prepositions and explains abstractly the causes of errors. In this dissertation, learning Chinese as-second language is regarded as constructive process. Learners can make kinds of hypothesis about new grammar rules according to what they have learned, put them into practice, and correct constantly those wrong hypothesizes when they get feedback. Errors reflect the process of hypothesis-testing, resulting from students' incorrect analogism and induction-deduction, subconscious transfer of mother tongue and other improper learning strategies. Besides, external causes such as teaching materials, teaching and learning environments also work through influencing students' thinking and cause errors. Therefore, the author suggests that Chinese be compared with Uygur language and that the differences should be revealed. In addition, teachers should display what context this kind of sentence is used in, attach importance to feedback of teaching, and know the phases of learning.Chapter Four probes into preposition learning from cognitive perspective. The author thinks that preposition learning is concerned with its cognitive mode and...