An Analysis On The Preposition Errors In Senior High School Students' English Writing

Listening, speaking, reading and writing are the four basic skills senior students must develop, and writing is the most difficult skill for students to grasp. Senior students cannot avoid the influence of Chinese while writing English compositions. Of course, errors are also inevitable. Among all the errors committed in students'compositions, those related to prepositions should arouse our attention, because prepositions always appear with other words of different parts of speech and whether students can use prepositions properly can to some degree reflect how well they grasp English. The analysis on the errors related to prepositions in students'composition can help teachers know about how well students grasp English and thus provide teachers with some tips on English teaching.This thesis analyzes the compositions written by Senior 1 students, based on transfer theory and theory of error analysis. This research focuses on the errors related to the collocation between prepositions and verbs, nouns and adjectives and the misuse of prepositions. By doing a survey and an interview, the author tries to know whether students attach importance to preposition learning and how they understand the effect of their mother language on the learning of prepositions. Likewise, the author tries to understand whether teachers attach importance to the teaching of prepositions and how they understand the effects of Chinese on preposition learning. After analyzing the errors in the compositions, the author makes an analysis on the factors which lead to the errors: (1) interlingual interference; (2) intralingual interference; (3) students'fully grasping English knowledge; (4) students'learning motives; (5) teachers'not attaching enough importance to the teaching of prepositions.