本研究採質性分析，探討母語為英語之外籍學生華語時間表述方位詞之 習得順序與偏誤。研究對象為3 名來自初級、中初級及中高級之美加學生， 每個月進行實驗，共計6 次，為期半年。實驗題型含兩大類：「選擇題」及 「看圖說故事」兩類型，每月所蒐集到的語料並與12 名母語人士做比較。 研究發現，對母語為英語之外籍學生而言，「上下類」表時結構較「前後類」 表時結構容易習得，顯示「分岐」的概念(即後者)較「零對照」的表達(即前 者)來得具挑戰性。而分析四個方位詞時，亦發現「下＞後＞上＞前」之順序， 說明了對母語為英語之外籍學生而言，表「未來」概念之方位詞較為容易掌 握。其次，外籍學生易出現之偏誤類型可分為「錯序」、「誤代」、「誤加」、 「遺漏」四大類，其中以誤代最多而錯序最少。最後，從實驗結果可看出， 外籍學生在理解及應用層面之發展不一，其在理解層面掌握較快，應用層面 則是相對較晚。

The purpose of this paper is to conduct a qualitative study to investigate the L2 acquisition of spatial words in Chinese time expressions by English-speaking learners and to analyze their error patterns. Three subjects were selected from different proficiency levels: beginning, low-intermediate, and high-intermediate. Each subject was observed and assessed monthly for six months. A grammatical judgment task in multiple choice format and a story-telling task with given pictures were employed to examine the subjects’ comprehension and production of Chinese time expressions and their responses were further compared with the performance of 12 native controls. The overall results are as follows: First, for the English-speaking learners, the shang-xia ‘up-down’ type of time expressions was easier than the qian-hou ‘before-after’ type, indicating that the ‘split’ concept (the latter type) was more challenging than the ‘zero-contrast’ expression (the former type). Second, a hierarchical sequence of L2 time expressions obtained from the findings was xia ‘down’> hou ‘after’> shang ‘up’> qian ‘before,’ showing that future time expressions were less difficult than past time expressions. Third, it was found the subjects’ common errors included “wrong omissions,” “wrong additions,” “wrong substitutions,” and “wrong word orders,” where “wrong-substitutions” were more frequently found than “wrong word orders”. Finally, there was a significant difference between the subjects’ comprehension and production. It was found that the subjects performed better on the comprehension task than on the production task.