A Corpus-Based Study on the Most Frequently Used English Prepositions: A Conceptual Transfer Perspective

Abstract

This corpus-based study aims to examine the frequencies of English preposition usages from the perspective of conceptual transfer. The authors have built up a corpus from third-year English – majored students' Academic writing tasks (HSAC) as their Ending-course assignments from Ho Chi Minh City University of Food Industry for two consecutive semesters in the academic year 2019 – 2020. This corpus was used as the source of data in analyzing the frequencies of prepositions in their essays. Two hundred and fifty pieces of writing were examined. The concordance output was used to determine the frequency of English preposition usage and types of errors via Sketch Engine Software. The findings showed a negative relationship between prepositional senses and their collocations with certain Vietnamese linguistic features. The study also revealed that negative conceptual transfer was recurrent and systematic. Based upon the findings, a conceptual framework for teaching and learning functional words like prepositions was drawn for language teachers and learners in a foreign language context.