On Senior High School Students' Preposition Errors In English Writing

English writing reflects English learners' English writing abilities.Even though English learners have possessed certain vocabulary and grammar knowledge,their English compositions are still far from perfect,and the main reason lies in students' habitual thinking mode,that is to use Chinese to express ideas in the process of English writing.This can be proved through domestic and foreign scholars' studies on English compositions of language learners.According to the interlanguage theory put forward by Ellis(1985),the process for Chinese students to acquire English is the formation process of interlanguage,which is neither the first language nor the target language of English learner,but a kind of language between Chinese and English.Kaplan(1997)thinks that,for students from different cultural background,their different language writing modes are caused by the negative transfer from their first languages.Therefore,in the process of second language study,the existence of negative transfer of first language is an indisputable fact.English prepositions are of various semantics,complex usage and high frequency of use.It is difficult for Chinese English learners to acquire prepositions,errors in preposition use occur very frequently,such as preposition abuse,misuse,redundancy and vacancy in English writing.Previous studies on prepositional errors are mainly focused on prepositional errors committed by college students.Their research reveals that different types of preposition errors are evenly distributed,and miscollacation of prepositions are the most frequently occurring errors.(Li Hui,2007;Li Qin,2013)This research of grade eleven is intended to study the errors with the use of prepositions in English writing of high school students.Through analysis of different types of errors among good,medium and poor English writings students' compositions,this research mainly answers the following research questions:1)What is the distribution of different kinds of errors with the use of preposition?2)Is there any difference in the distribution of preposition errors among English compositions with good,medium and poor writing? What are the differences?Through analyzing compositions,this research makes the following findings.Firstly,preposition omission,preposition redundancy,preposition confusion and the error of preposition collocation with nouns,verbs and adjectives are main error types in students' English composition,and errors occur mainly in the type of preposition collocation.Secondly,Students' English compositions writings are inversely correlated with frequency of preposition errors.The higher English composition writings,the fewer errors in students' use of preposition;along with the improvement of students' English composition writings,errors in students' preposition usages decrease accordingly.Besides,for complex errors,such as preposition misuse and redundancy,students with higher English composition writings make fewer errors of them;the students with medium English composition writing have more difficulty in preposition abuse and redundancy;and preposition errors for students with poor English composition writing are mainly concentrated on simple errors,such as omission.Through analyzing results of statistics and questionnaire,this research finds that the main reasons are inter-lingual interference from negative transfer of first language.and intralingual interference.Besides,teachers do not pay attention to preposition teaching and Students do not pay attention to preposition learning.To improve students ability in the use of preposition,English teachers shall pay more attention to the English preposition teaching,and combine preposition and English reading to increase the input of English preposition,and provides students with large amount of real English language materials,and try to reduce the negative transfer of first language as much as possible,cultivate their sense of English,guide,analyze and correct students' preposition errors in English writing,and provide enough writing exercise for students.With the effort-making from both students and teachers,negative transfer of first language can be avoided effectively,and thus improve students' English levels.