A comparative study of the two preposition systems english anh vietnamese with graphic illustrations

HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES -ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE WITH GRAPHIC ILLUSTRATIONS STUDENT: PH~M NGUYEN NGOC PHUONG CLASS: SA0002 .1 .1... When learning English grammar,

HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES

-ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE

WITH GRAPHIC ILLUSTRATIONS

STUDENT: PH~M NGUYEN NGOC PHUONG CLASS: SA0002

.1

.1

HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES

-ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE

WITH GRAPHIC ILLUSTRATIONS

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This graduation paper has been carriedout with great contributions from a lot ofpeople

First of all, I would lil~eto thanl~ all themembers in my family, especially my parentsfor their spiritual and material assistance

I'm also extremely grateful to Mr TranKiet Hung, Head of the Foreign LanguagesDepartment and Ms Bui Thi Thanh True, ViceHead of the For~ign Languages Department,

as well as the school staff of Huflit Universitywho gave me the opportunity of doing thispaper

In addition, I' d lil~eto express my thanl~s

to Mr phan Huu Le, my supervisor It is truethat without his instructions I can't find outthe way to accomplish my paper Besides, hisencouragement during the research greatlylessened my worry about the paper

And last but not least, my thanl~s go toall of my closed friends of SAOOOl and

SAOOOZ, who are always by my side when I am

in need of their advice, their encouragementand their willingness of finding materials for

my worl~

In short, it can be said that this papercouldn't have been finished without theassistance of these people And once again, Iwould lil~e to thanl~ all of them for their helpand encouragement

When learning English grammar, Vietnamese students usually getconfused English prepositions with Vietnamese prepositions In order to collectdata, a questionnaire was administered to 120 students majoring English at theschool of Foreign Languages and Information Technology Although they arewell equipped with the basis English, they still make a lot of mistakes inprepositions due to their habit of translating word-for-word Therefore, acomparison between the two systems of prepositions was carried out so that wecan recognize the similarities as well as the differences between the twosystems And through the comparison we can point out some effective ways oflearning English prepositions to avoid mistakes as well as confusion betweenEnglish and Vietnamese

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I~lIlt()I>lJCllI()~ -1

CHAPTER II MElIH()I>()L()GY A~I> ItESlJL liS ()F lIHE SlIlJI>Y - 3

CHAPTER III VIElI~AMESE VS. E~GLISH PItEP()SnI()~S -9

CHAPTER IV VIElI~AMESE VS. E~GLISH ()F PItEP()SnI()~S ()F p()SnI()~ -11

4.1 TRE~ -11

4.1.1 AI3()VE -11

4.1.2 ()VER -12

4.1.3 ()~ -13

4.1.4 I~ -15

4.2 DVen -18

4.2.1 I3EL()W -18

4.2.2 lJ~DER - 19

4.2.3 13E~EA TH -20

4.2.4 lJ~DER~EATH -20

4.2.5 I~ -21

4.3 TR()~CJ -21

4.3.1 I~ -22

4.3 2 I~SIDE -22

4.3.3 lJ~DER -23

4.4 ~CJ()f\I -23

()lJTSIDE -23

4.5 TRVC1C -25

4.5 1 I~ FR()~T ()F -25

4.5.2 AHEAD ()F -26

4.5.3 13~f<()~~ -26

4.6 SJ\lJ -27

4.6.1 13~lfI~[) -27

4.6.2 J\F'f~~ -28

4.7.(}Jl~ -28

4.7 1.~~J\~ (T(»), CL()S~ T() - 28

4.7.2 ()~ -29

4.8 (13~~) C~~lf -29

13~Sm~, ~~XT T(), 13Y -29

4.9 (}IUJ\ - 31

4.9 1 13~TW~~~ -31

4.9.2 J\M ()~(} -~ - 31

ClfJ\PT~~ V VIET~J\MESE VS. E~GLISH OF PREPOSITIO~S OFDIRECTIO~ -34

5.1 (llJJ\ -34

5 1.1. J\C~()SS - 34

5.1.2 ()V~~ -34

5.1.3 Tlf~()lJ(}lf -36

5.1.4 PJ\ST - 38

5.1.5 13Y -38

5.2 L~~ -39

5.2.1 lJP -39

5.2.2 ()~T() -40

5.3 XlJCS~(} -40

5.3.1 [)()W~ -40

5.3.2 ()~T() -41

GRADUATION PAPER Studellt: PH~M NGUYEN NGQC PHUONG

English grammar is different from Vietnamese grammar in many ways.Among the difficulties that Vietnamese people encounter in learning English,the system of English prepositions is one of the most confusing problems As

a learner of English, I usually make a lot of mistakes concerning English

-prepositions This has encouraged me to make a paper on Englishprepositions by comparing the two systems of prepositions: English andVietnamese

LITERATURE REVIEW

There are some books of English authors like Michael Swan, Diane

Hall, which tells us the usage of some English prepositions through themistakes of foreigners Besides, a lot of books on the market by Vietnamese

authors like Le Ba Kong, Ha Van Buu, Tran Van Dien, and some others about

English grammar written in English and Vietnamese, which will make iteasier for the learners to follow the differences between the two languages

In my opinion, this bilingual method is very useful for Vietnamese people

However, it seems that those Vietnamese authors rarely compared the two

GRADUATION PAPER Student: PH~M NGUYEN NGOC PHUONG

languages and pointed out the reasons as well as some tips for the use ofEnglish prepositions in a particular way Therefore, the paper is carried out bycollecting materials both in English and Vietnamese, by both English andVietnamese authors about the prepositional system

OBJECTIVE

This research alms at showing the confusion between Vietnameseprepositions and their English equivalents Therefore, we can avoid mistakesand find out some effective ways of learning English prepositions for betterwriting

SCOPE

The number of English prepositions IS over one hundred, and thisresearch does not intend to cover all of them Therefore, the focus of the

paper is on "Some Common Prepositions of Position And Direction" that have

caused a lot of confusion for Vietnamese students Besides, some graphicillustrations will improve the effectiveness of the comparison, which is alsovery useful for teaching English at elementary level

ORGANIZATION

In this paper, Chapter 2 presents the methodology and results of thestudy Chapter 3 shows an overview of the two prepositional systems Andthen the comparison between the two systems of prepositions of position ismentioned in Chapter 4 In Chapter 5, there is a comparison between the twosystems of prepositions of direction And the final chapter is the conclusionwith some tips for using English prepositions

ANALYSIS OF THE RESULTS

From the results of the survey about the students of HUFLITUniversity, it can be generally concluded that they get confused with Englishprepositions mostly in writing (60%) and sometimes they get confusedbetween English and Vietnamese (62.5%) Besides, we can see that this is agood signal showing that they have a good method of learning Englishprepositions to overcome their problems 86.7% of 120 responses have chosen

GRADUATION PAPER Student: PHJJ.M NGUYEN NGQC PHU(JNG

the way of learning English prepositions by looking up in other sources(books, dictionaries ), and only 20% chosen the way of learning them throughtheir Vietnamese meanings

Although our students have made a lot of effort in learning English andimproved their ways of learning, their English is still affected by Vietnamese.Let's see the results of the questions from 4.1 to 4.7

on above over

ers

Table 1: Result of question 4.1

As for question 4.1, the three prepositions on, above and over mean

tren in Vietnamese, however either above or over is right From the chart,

we can see that the rate of the right answer is low, about 32.5% and 46.7% of

120 responses In addition, the rate of choosing on (25%) and all are correct

(5%) show us that our students get confused a lot when choosing the rightanswer to the question because they don't master the use of these Englishprepositions thoroughly

GRADUATION PAPER Student: PH~M NGUYEN NGOC PHUONG

%50.0

on in outside allanswers

Table 2: Result of question 4.2

In question 4.2, the correct answer is in but the rate of correct choice isjust 40% The rate of on being 45.8% and outside 17.5% tell us that thesestudents tend to translate word-far-word in writing They use outside forngoai and on for tren Besides, 4.2% choosing the answer all are correctshows that they are very confused when choosing the right answer to thequestion

on in over aboveanswers

Table 3: Result of question 4.3

In is the correct answer to this question With this question, the rate ofthe right answer is quite high 73.3%, however the rate of the remaining

GRADUATION PAPER Student: PH~M NGUYEN NGOC PHUONG

options still show the confusion between these prepositions on, in, over and

above.

wers

over above

on

80.0 %70.060.050.040.030.020.010.00.0

Table 4: Result of question 4.4

With this question, the correct answer is also quite high 69.2% And we

can see that in this question, the students seem to be confused on with in, not

above and over with in.

%70.060.050.040.0

30.020.0

10.00.0

inside in under

Table 5: Result of question 4.5 The rate of choosing inside, 58.3%, is the highest but that's not the

GRADUATION PAPER Student: PH~M NGUYEN NGOC PHUONG

1

100.0%80.060.040.020.00.0

over across through

ers

onto into

Table 6: Result of question 4.6

The correct answer to the question is only across The rate of it' ishigher than the right answers in the above results, it takes 76.7% of 120responses With this prepositions we can see that they master it better thanthey do with other prepositions However, some responses are also over,

they still get confused between Vietnamese andfour prepositions can be translated by qua in

through, past show that

English because all theVietnamese

120.0 %100.080.060.040.020.00.0

down

Table 7: Result of question 4.7 The correct answer to question 4.7 is onto However, as we can seefrom the chart the rate of the correct answer is 0% of 120 responses while the

GRADUATION PAPER Student: PHJJ.M NGUYEN NGOC PHUONG

rate of down takes 97.5% Therefore, with this preposition they seem not to

master it at all and the confusion xu6ng in Vietnamese with down in English

is remarkable Moreover, they have the tendency of seeing the preposition

down as an adverbial particle of the verb fall "fall down" so that nobody can

choose the right word

From the result of each sentence we can point out that there is noabsolutely right answer to each question Even students majoring in English,they are still confused between English and Vietnamese a lot Therefore, thecomparison between the two systems is very necessary to help themrecognize the mistakes and to avoid the confusion

GRADUATION PAPER Student: PHJJ.M NGUYEN NGOC PHUONG

CHAPTER III

•

VIETNAMESE VS ENGLISH PREPOSITIONS

3.1 Definition

• Vietnamese preposition: Gioi tu la tie'ng dung d6 chi sl! tu'dng quan y

nghla giG'a mot tie'ng va tuc ngG'cua no.(1)

• English preposition: A preposition IS a word that shows arelationship between its object and some other word in the sentence (2)

Example:

Anh ta di vao phong

He went into the room

Into is a preposition because it introduces its object the room Or we cansay into shows a relationship between room and went

• Object ora preposition can be:

He's over there

3.2 Function of the prepositional phrase

A prepositional phrase can function as an adjective, or an adverb

The spider crawled slowly along the banister

(1) Bui Due Tjnh Ngii' Phap tie'ng Vi~t - Giiin dj vii Thlfe dl,mg.

(2) Garner, D http://www.uottawa.ea/aeademic/arts/writeent/hypergrammar/eopyrght.html

GRADUATION PAPER Student: PH~M NGUYEN NGOC PHUONG

The preposition along introduces the noun phrase the banister and theprepositional phrase along the banister acts as an adverb, describing wherethe spider crawled

The book on the table is mine.

The preposition on introduces the noun phrase the table and theprepositional phrase on the table acts as an adjective, modifying the book

3.3 Position of prepositions

- In general, both Vietnamese and English prepositions are usually placed

in front of the words they control

She held the book over the table

- In English, sometimes they can be placed III front of interrogativepronoun or relative pronoun

In what did you put the key?

The country over which Queen Elizabeth reigns is England

3.4 Classification of prepositions

- Prepositions of position:

Vietnamese: tren, dudi, trong, ngoiii, trude, sau, gffn, qnh, gifi'a,

English: on, above, over, under, underneath, beneath, below, in, inside,before, in front of, ahead of, after, behind, near, close to, near to, beside, next

to, by, between, among,

- Prepositions of direction:

Vietnamese: len, xu6ng, vao, qua, tdi, cle'n,

English: up, onto, down, into, through, across, past, by, over, to, towards,

GRADUATION PAPER Student: PH~M NGUYEN NGQC PHUONG

4.1 Tren

The preposition tren in Vietnamese can be expressed in variousEnglish prepositions like above, over, on and in Among those prepositions,Vietnamese students usually get confused above with over, on with in

GRADUATION PAPER

Write your name above the line.

Student: PHiJ-M NGUYEN NGOC PHUONG

N

4.1.2 over

Over is used for a position higher than but not touching somebody/

something

The pictures are over the shelf.

We can also use over to mean 'resting on the surface of somebody/

something and partly or completely covering them! it'

The cloth is over the table.

GRADUATION PAPER

The blanket is over the baby

Student: PH.tJ.M NGUYEN NGOC PHUONG

• Vietnamese students usually get confused above with over in thefollowing points:

Above and over can both be used to mean 'higher than' so they canreplace each other in some cases like:

The umbrella is overt above the table

However, they can't replace each other in this case

Ex: She is living in an apartment above us (not over)

4.1.3 on

We use on for the following senses:

in a position touching part of a surface

The book is on the table

GRADUATION PAPER

The cushions are on the sofa

There are pictures on the wall

The boat is on the sea

Studellt: PH~M NGUYEN NGOC PHUONG

supported by somebody/ something

Hang your coat on that hook

GRADUATION PAPER Student: PH~M NGUYEN NGQC PHUONG

by means of something

Ex: She played a tune on her guitar.

using something

Ex: The information is available on the Internet.

The program is on Channel 4.

4.1.4 in

We use in for:

at a point within an area or a space

The man is looking at the stars in the

sky.

within the shape of something; surrounded by something

The boy is sleeping in the bed.

The boy is sitting in an armchair.

GRADUATION PAPER Student: PH~M NGUYEN NGOC PHUONG

The preposition in III the above sentences is usually misused byVietnamese students - they use on instead of in So now let's clarify thesetwo prepositions

At first we have an overview of these two prepositions, broughtforward by the Purdue University Online Writing Lab

•: On is used to indicate that the position of an object is defined withrespect to a surface on which it rests (two-dimensional)

on surface

There's a new roof on the house

The sentence treats the house as a surface upon which another object,the roof, is placed

•: In is used to indicate that an object lies within the boundaries of an area

or within the confines of a volume (three-dimensional)

GRADUATION PAPER

There are fiverooms in the house,which has a lovelyfireplace in theliving room

Student: PH~M NGUYEN NGQC PHUONG

The sentence treats the house as a three-dimensional structure that can

be divided into smaller volumes, namely, rooms, inside one of which is anobject, the fireplace

Now let's analyze the use of in or on in the sentence 'The childrenare playing in the street' Look at the following picture

But let's look at this picture

My house is on Third Street

GRADUATION PAPER Studellt: PHIj.M NGUYEN NGQC PHUONG

",

In the above sentence, on locates the house on either side of ThirdStreet: it doesn't mean that the street is a surface on which the house sits.Because the street is understood as a line next to which the house is situated,

on functions much like at in its normal use: it locates the house in relation tothe street but does not specify the exact address For that purpose, at is usedbecause the address is like a particular point on the line For example: 'My

house is at 323 Third Street'

These two words cause a lot of confusion to Vietnamese students due

to their habit of translating word-for-word In Vietnamese, in is understood astrong and on as tren Therefore, when they translate a Vietnamese sentencelike 'Nhung dti'a tre dang chdi dna tren dliO'ng ph6' into English, they tend

to produce something like 'The children are playing on the street' In someother cases, we have to distinguish between on and in so as to avoid mistakes

GRADUATION PAPER Student: PH~M NGUYEN NGOC PHUONG

4.2.2 under

We use under for these senses:

in or to a position that is below something

The table is under the window.

below the surface of something; covered by something

The girl is swimming under the water

• Students tend to misuse under with below in some cases like:

They can replace each other to mean 'lower than'

The book is under/ below the lampshade.

However, below is usually preferred to say that something is in a lower

position than another when they are both in the same building, on the samehill, on the same part of the body, etc

GRADUATION PAPER Student: PH~M NGUYEN NGOC PHUONG

Ex: They live in the apartment below us.

It hurts here - just below the knee.

Underneath is used to mean 'under or below something else, especially

when it is hidden or covered by the thing on top'

The book is underneath the desk.

I

• The three prepositions under, underneath, beneath are quite a big

problem for Vietnamese students to differentiate them However, they are

GRADUATION PAPER Student: PH~M NGUYEN NGQC PHUONG

The boy is under/ underneath! beneath

the desk.

Underneath is preferred when we want to emphasize that something is

being covered or hidden by another thing

The boy is underneath the bed.

Beneath is rarely used because it's very formal.

4.2.5 in

In is used to mean 'at a point within an area or a space'

The girl is swimming in the water.

4.3 Trong

This Vietnamese preposition can be expressed in English by in, inside and under.