Investigation Into The Use Of The Constructions And Functions Of Prepositional Phrases In Argumentative Writings In TEM-4

Most recently, English writing has aroused much attention in the filed of discourse analysis. A close look at the previous studies reveals that the use of vocabulary in discourse has been substantially investigated. However, the way prepositional phrases are used in discourse has scarcely examined. Of the related researches, the majority of studies on prepositional phrases have explored semantic meanings of prepositions in the field of cognitive linguistics and error analysis in the field of second language acquisition. Contrastively, only a small body of research has focused on the application of prepositional phrases.The goal of this study is to explore the types of structures and syntactic functions of prepositional phrases in students’ argumentative writings, trying to discover the characteristics of prepositional phrases used in students’writings and giving some explanations and implications for English language teaching and learning.Based on the prepositional phrase theory, the current study carries out a quantitative research into a corpus of161pieces of TEM-4writings written by students in Taiyuan University of Technology. First, all types of structures and syntactic functions of prepositional phrases were coded and tagged. At the same time, all these writings were graded by three assistants to get the average scores. Next, the frequencies of structures and functions were counted by employing text analysis software Antconc. Third, the frequencies of these sub-types of prepositional phrases in structures and syntactic functions were calculated by using the Descriptive statistics function of the SPSS software between three different score groups. Finally, a contrast between high-score group and foreign teacher group was made, in order to find the differences in using prepositional phrases in discourse between Chinese students and native speakers.The statistical results indicate that prepositional phrases in students’ writings have the following three characteristics.(1) The total frequencies of the use of prepositional phrases are low. Judged from the perspective of structures, we find that the structure of traditional preposition+noun group is most frequently used for Chinese students. And other word classes are lesser used (such as adverbs or adjectives) as heads and complements of prepositional phrases. With regard to different syntactic functions, the order of their percentages from the high to the low is adverbials> complements> modifiers> objectives> subjects.(2) There is a significant difference between three groups on total frequencies of the use of prepositional phrases. There are no significant differences on the use of prepositional phrases as modifiers and complements while the significant difference focuses on prepositional phrases as adverbials.(3) Compared with those in students’ writings, prepositional phrases in foreign teachers’ essays are of more complex structures and served as more types of functions than Chinese students’. Meanwhile, those prepositional phrases are used to express abstract meanings. On the contrary, Chinese students prefer to using prepositional phrases to express place, time, and manner.In the end, on the basis of the statistical results, in-depth qualitative analyses were conducted on concrete examples, in order to get a deeper understanding of the prepositional phrases in Chinese students’ writings and giving suggestions for English teaching and learning.