A Study On Overt And Covert Errors Of Prepositions Interfered By L1 In English Writing

As we all know,writing is an important manifestation of productivity in language learning,and prepositions are essential vocabulary for connecting articles.It can be said that English is a language of prepositions.Although small in number,syntactically,English prepositions play a cohesive role in constructing words,enriching the contextual meaning of prepositional phrases and syntactic structures.Prepositions are active and profound,reflecting the pragmatic meaning between words.In recent years,the study on preposition acquisition has received more and more attention.The related researches are mainly carried out from two aspects: overt preposition errors and covert preposition errors,including the study of overt and covert preposition errors from the perspectives of preposition acquisition and preposition teaching.Relevant research has basically reached a consensus that the L1 plays a mediating role in L2 writing and preposition acquisition.Therefore,language interference is one of the important reasons which can obstruct students in preposition acquisition and L2 writing.However,there are still some shortcomings in the current research.For all that,the place returned to have shortage: first,most of the researches were done on college students,and high school students rarely involved.Second,the research scope has a few limitations.Most studies were focused on the overt preposition errors,but covert preposition errors were ignored.Therefore,taking into account the two shortages,this paper aims to study the covert and overt preposition errors interfered by the L1 in L2 writing,and probe the relationship between the L1 interference and these two types of errors,aiming to promote preposition acquisition and provide reference for L2 writing.This paper is to explore the following questions:(1)What are the overt preposition errors in L2 composition interfered by L1,and what are the reasons?(2)What are the covert preposition errors in L2 composition interfered by L1,and what are the reasons?Based on the theories and study methods of L1 transfer,contrastive analysis,error analysis and,the experiment conducted in L2 writings of senior students in a middle school in Chongqing and analyze the situation and causes of covert and overt preposition errors in theL2 compositions which are interfered by L1.The research findings are summarized as follows:(1)About 68.89% of overt preposition errors and 31.11% of covert preposition errors caused by L1 interference.(2)Overt preposition errors caused by L1 interference include collocation errors,sequence errors,underuse and overuse errors,accounting for 37.63%,5.38%,36.56%,and 20.43% of the whole.(3)covert preposition errors caused by L1 interference include incorrect interpretation,ambiguous utterance and uninterpretable utterance,accounting for 47.62%,33.33%,19.05% of the all.(4)Here are two reasons for overt preposition errors caused by L1 interference: One is the similarity between English verbs and English prepositions,and the other is the nature of prepositions holding two or more classes.(5)Here are two reasons for covert preposition errors caused by L1 interference:One is the correspondence between Chinese verbs and English prepositions,the other is the ambiguity of English prepositions and their translation equivalents in L1.In view of the above research findings,the author puts forward some suggestions.Overt preposition errors: Classified analysis of prepositional phrases in sentences;memorize meanings of prepositions with the help of mind-map;analyze and explain typical errors.covert preposition errors: recite to enhance comprehensible language input;distinguish between English sentences and Chinese sentences;comparison of English and Chinese Structures and Writing Training.