“Series of Teaching Foreigners Chinese Grammar” is the achievement of “Research and Development of Grammar Syllabus for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language and Teaching Reference Grammar Series (Multi-volume)”, a major project of National Social Science Fund of China sponsored by Professor Qi Huyang, which has been selected as the “2022 Funding Project of National Publication Foundation”. As an important reference book for international Chinese language education, it aims to build and improve the “Grammar System of Chinese Teaching” for foreign students to meet the development needs of the new era. It mainly serves the front-line Chinese teachers, researchers, graduate students and undergraduates majoring in Teaching Chinese to Speakers of Other Languages. This series consists of 39 volumes, including 4 outline series, 26 book series, 8 summary series, and 1 collection of essays.

This book is a sub-volume of the series.

Preposition in modern Chinese is a relatively closed class, limited in number but diverse in semantics and usage, and is the focus of teachers and the difficulty for students. From the perspective of teaching Chinese as a second language, this book distills 79 problems closely related to the teaching of prepositions, and systematically explains common problems in the teaching of prepositions through the compilation of ontological knowledge of prepositional linguistics, the identification of easy-to-confuse prepositions and polysemous prepositions, the analysis of learners’ typical errors, and the demonstration of teaching methodologies and teaching cases.

Li Tiefan, the Editor-in-Chief, is a Ph.D. in Linguistics and Applied Linguistics from Shanghai Normal University, a professor and president of Huangshan University, and a Master Teacher of Anhui Province. He is in charge of the national first-class undergraduate major of “Chinese International Education” and the national first-class undergraduate curriculum of “Modern Chinese”. His research mainly focuses on modern Chinese grammar and teaching Chinese as a foreign language. Professor Li has published more than 50 papers in journals such as Social Sciences in China Press, Curriculum, Teaching Material and Method and one monograph, and has presided over more than 10 projects such as the sub-projects of major projects of the National Social Science Fund and major projects of key research bases of the Ministry of Education for humanities and social sciences. He was awarded the first prize of social science by the People’s Government of Anhui Province and the first prize of teaching achievements in Anhui Province.

Li Xianzhuo, the author, is a Ph.D. in Linguistics and Applied Linguistics from Sun Yat-sen University and an Associate Professor at the International College for Chinese Studies, Nanjing Normal University. His research mainly focuses on Chinese language acquisition and processing. Professor Li has published more than 10 papers in journals including Applied Linguistics, TCSOL Studies, Foreign Languages, and Acta Psychologica Sinica.

Although the number of prepositions in modern Chinese is limited to more than 100, the prepositional phrases are used very frequently and have diverse semantics and usage, which make them the focus of Chinese language teaching and difficult for students to learn. Although relatively reliable research results have been achieved on the ontology, acquisition and teaching of prepositions, there are still blind spots in research. For example, on the ontology, there are still controversies about the family members, classification criteria, and the structure of prepositions; on the acquisition, the research on prepositions is very uneven, with more research results on “把、被” and less on spatial and object prepositions; on the teaching, the research results are mostly scattered in some comprehensive grammar books, failing to provide a systematic introduction of usage and a comprehensive analysis of differences, and there are also cases in which it is too difficult to explain. On the basis of fully absorbing the research results of error analysis, this book provides a comprehensive and systematic explanation of prepositions in plain language, compares the similarities and differences of prepositions that are easy to be confused by learners, and then gives some representative cases of teaching prepositions. This book aims to provide a comprehensive teaching reference for front-line Chinese teachers, especially novice teachers and overseas teachers.

This book is recommended to international Chinese language teachers engaged in international Chinese language teaching, whether they are specialized teachers with a background in linguistics or international Chinese language education, or non-specialized teachers with diverse academic backgrounds.