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This study aims to investigate the multi-functions of gei Constructions in Chinese. To explore the syntactic and semantic properties of gei, we first gleaned examples from the Chinese Corpus by National Tsinghua University and the NCCU Corpus of Spoken Chinese by National Chengchi University. Different from previous research, this study focuses specifically on spoken data. Five subonstructions are identified, viz., Construction 1(gei’s literal meaning), Construction 2 (Verb+gei), Construction 3 (gei+Verb), Construction 4 (gei+pronoun), and Construction 5 (ba+gei and bei+gei). We then examined learners’ data extracted from the Chinese Learners Corpus (CLC) established by National Taiwan Normal University. 1474 tokens were collected, including data of English native speakers and Japanese native speakers. Based on our discussion mentioned above, we examined the arrangement of gei constructions in Practical Audio-visual Chinese (2nd edition) (Book I-V), the most popular Chinese teaching textbooks in Taiwan. 279 tokens were found. This study has the following conclusions: First, the frequency of occurrence of the gei subconstructions in Practical Audio-visual Chinese basically corresponds to that in the corpora. However, more real authentic spoken materials should be included as well. These uses can be added in student’s workbook or teacher’s manual. Second, it is more likely for students to make errors when more complicated syntactic structures are involved. In view of this, the teaching of Construction 2 and Construction 3 should be delayed until students have learned Construction 1. Third, the teaching of Construction 5 should be ordered later than any of the other constructions in that there is no counterpart of this construction in both English and Japanese. Fourth, learners of different native languages showed different error types, which indicates that it is more difficult for learners to master a given language if this language is more distinct from their own native languages. Adequate contrastive analysis of the target language and learner’s native language would facilitate student’s learning. Finally, based on our study, the relative order of these constructions, we suggest, is as follows: Construction 1 > Construction 2 > Construction 3-1 > Construction 3-2 > Construction 3-3 > Construction 5-2 > Construction 4-1> Construction 5-1. Construction 4-2 is only found in Taiwan and more information about this construction should be included in teacher’s manual. Depending on student’s need, teachers may decide whether or not this construction should be included in their teaching plans.
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