An Analysis On The Prepositional Errors In English Writing Of Senior High School Students

Prepositionsare one of the difficulties inEnglishlearning.In this survey,200 Han students from a senior high school in Yining City were selected as the research subjects,by themethod oferror analysis and interview,according to the steps of error analysis,the author made anerror analysis of prepositional errors in theirEnglish writing.Meanwhile,the causes are explained in-depth based on the related theories of the conceptual transfer hypothesis.The purpose and significance of this study is to provide some references for senior high school English prepositional teaching.Through the error analysis and discussion to help students master the usage of prepositions.The study attempts to address two questions:(1)How frequently do prepositional errors occurin English writingof senior high school students?(2)What causes these prepositional errors ?The results of error analysis in the research indicate that the frequencies of prepositional errors occurred in senior high school students' English writing from high to low respectively were:(1)prepositional absence,(2)prepositional redundancy,(3)prepositional collocation errors and(4)errors ofprepositional set phrases.The interviewresults suggest that the causes of prepositional errors in seniorhighschoolstudents' English writingwere:(1)interlingual interference,(2)intralingualinterference,(3)the degreeof emphasis,(4)learning strategies,(5)carelessness.Finally,the pedagogical implications of this survey: teachers teach English prepositions compared with their usage in Chinese to help students reconstruct existing conceptual representations or form new conceptual representations.Students should avoid translating Chinese into English word by word.Students should consolidate and understand what they have learnt and increase the degree of the emphasis on the use of prepositions,avoid mechanical memory and seek help from teachers when they meet the use of prepositions that are not understood.