Prepositions in Academic Discourse

Prepositions are a tremendous problem, as. . . to a lesser degree. . . are articles. I wonder where pronouns fit?

I think I need to do a richer statistical analysis of problems in student writing, and figure out which dilemmas really should be solved.

This research project would have two parts:

1) Research into the high-frequency *trouble spots*, i.e. the types of mistakes that intermediate and advanced level ESL students most often make in their writing;

2) Research into the high-frequency items of academic discourse, especially prepositions: in other words, which prepositions (and, more generally, language items and rules governing preposition use) are most common and important for academic writing?

Approaching this project successfully would require a great deal of reading in educational literature, as well as the compilation of a great deal of student writing. (I think I saw a corpus like this somewhere. . . need to find it?)

A good beginning for all of these issues might be getting the Intermediate Grammar in Use problems in the form of flash cards, and starting to hack them and mash them up.

Two possible proxies for these types of issues:

1) The SAT Writing people have clearly decided on a hierarchy of student errors to test: Verbs, Pronouns, Everything Else (Diction, Adjectives and Adverbs, Prepositions, etc.) This order corresponds roughly to my own experience of student writing problems. Is it possible to use this hierarchy as a way to structure a student writing curriculum?

This basic idea could be taught at the same time as the correct writing of a so-called loose sentence, and the basic rule of keeping one's nouns and verbs together.

2) Could we use the Michael West General Service List and the Academic Word List as a basis for research, and observe the patterns of preposition usage that occur most frequently with those nouns and verbs, on the basic assumption that prepositions are essentially dependent on other parts of speech and that teaching the correct and complete use of high-frequency nouns and verbs will allow us to teach the use of the highest-frequency prepositions? At least beyond the basic prepositions of time and space?

It strikes me that prepositions used to convey cause-and-effect, as well as prepositions used to convey circumstances-under-which, are routinely the most problematic. These prepositions are frequently used independent of other nouns and verbs. I need to read and study more about this isse: I have two good resources to help me, both The Ins and Outs of Prepositions as well as the Longman Grammar.

I wonder if I will be able to hack up the BNC Baby corpus in order to create another, more student-friendly corpus containing only sentences with appropriate readability scores. That would be absolutely fantastic.

Does the Longman consider prepositions to function, essentially, as dependent particles? Or does it treat them as lexical items?

In summary, possible indexes of preposition use:

1) Usage of lexical terms such as nouns and verbs, upon which prepositions routinely depend;
2) The Longman Grammar index;
3) The BNC Baby Academic corpus;
4) Understanding of basic functions of prepositions, such as time and space.
5) External linguistic and educational research??

It seems that it would be easy to compile a fairly comprehensive record of prepositions used commonly in English, simply by combining the lists found in the most comprehensive references. However, there is no way this list could be truly all-inclusive. Moreover, a list that suggests nothing about frequency does not really help the early learner.

One last question: which is a more critical issue for the beginning writer, prepositions or pronouns?

Must. . . return. . . later. . . . and think about this in light of others' findings, such as the Longman.