A Comparison Between Chinese And Thai Languages: Examining The Teaching Of Chinese Prepositions To Thai Students And Students Levels Of Acquisition

This dissertation was mainly aimed at the problems Thai students experienced to acquire Chinese prepositions and the problems experienced while teaching these words. The research focused on the use of object prepositions:"对"(dui),"向"(xiang),"跟"(gen),"给"(gei).A questionnaire was used as a method to survey the acquisition status of these students. The survey results showed that these four object prepositions were very difficult for the students, and the Thai student's percentage of errors was very high. The aspects of cognition, comparison, grammar, pragmatics, nuclear subcategories, distinctive usages, and mutually overlapping usages were used to categorize these four Chinese prepositions as well as their corresponding Thai prepositions: (kap),(to),(kae),( dae ),(hai),( chak ),( thueng ) . These aspects were also used to examine either the similarities or the differences of preposition semantics, grammar, and pragmatism. The research indicated the corresponding status between Chinese and Thai object prepositions. The measures were"quite corresponding","not quite corresponding, and"not corresponding at all". The study also analyzed and researched every kind of error that appeared in the questionnaire on the whole, searching for the sources of confusion when using these prepositions.It was discovered that these errors were mainly caused by intralingual interference as well as interference from language communication. Focusing on these results, the dissertation gives suggestions for teaching these four Chinese prepositions.