The Acquisition Of Meanings Of English Spatial Prepositions By Junior Middle School Students

English spatial prepositions are simple in form but difficult in usage,which are one of the parts of speech with high frequency in daily communication.The importance of learning them is obvious.The scholars engaged in the research on the acquisition of English spatial prepositions have been paying more attention to taking undergraduates as the main subjects,and the research in middle school,especially the one in junior middle school is still insufficient.However,learning these prepositions is mainly in the initial stage of English learning.Therefore,920 Grade three students are selected in a middle school and its branch school in Zhangzhou as the subjects in the research.With Principled Polysemy Theory and corpus,this research assorts the semantic networks of six English spatial prepositions(on,over,above,under,below,down)in the teaching materials(Ren Ai version)to explore the students' acquisition of these senses,to aim at answering the following questions: what are the senses of these prepositions in middle school stage and how's the acquisition? Is there any difference between the acquisition for students in high-score group and students in low-score one? If have,how's the difference? What are students' individual factors which have influence on the acquisition of these prepositions?Based on the results of the test and the questionnaire,this research finds out that not all senses of these six spatial prepositions at this stage appear in the teaching materials and the whole acquisition of the senses is not good,but the acquisition of proto sense is better than that of independent senses,that the sense acquisition between students in high-score group and in low-score group is distinct: as to the senses in high frequency,the acquisition from students in high-score group is better than that from students in low-score group;as to these senses in low frequency,the difference between two groups is not obvious,and that the difference of gender has no effect on the acquisition,and there are several factors leading to poor acquisition,including external factors,lack of English learning environment and the opportunities of contacting and using it,and internal factors,students' weak self-demand for English learning and low requirement on vocabulary learning and the effect of negativetransfer of native language.Besides,this research further confirms that the learners' semantic acquisition of spatial prepositions often begins with the basic sense(proto sense),with the deepening of learning,other senses(distinct senses)are acquired gradually.This research is meaningful for English teaching in middle schools.Based on the findings,this research suggests that teachers can use principled polysemy model and corpus approach to make semantic networks of these prepositions clear and help students clarify the links among senses.Moreover,teachers can focus on the different emphases of English spatial prepositions in different stages,which can optimize the teaching and improve the quality of teaching.And it's helpful for students to make the acquisition better.