WOULD + love | prefer

There is a slight clash of levels in the English Grammar Profile for the following grammar.

A2 point 39 in MODALITY is defined as:

‘would’ with a wide range of verbs to talk about wishes and preferences.

*’the wide range’ can be understood by the example sentences in the EGP which only contain ‘love’ and ‘prefer.’

B1 point 34 in VERBS/patterns is defined as:

‘would prefer’ + ‘to’ infinitive, often for politeness.

*The main difference is that ‘prefer is connected to politeness.  But the way the EGP has it worded, makes it sound as though it is not essential to give this a B1 marker type of status.

On iWeb corpus we did a search for collocates.

WOULD LOVE

1 SEE 38487

  Sioux City Journal

Going to the theater or streaming, you can’t beat a good movie

Personally I would love to see movies on the big screen again, but at the same time I have to be adult and be responsible with my money.

2 HEAR 29108
3 WIN 3245
4 THOUGHTS 2993
5 FEEDBACK 2614
6 JOIN 2172
7 PERSONALLY 1157
8 SUGGESTIONS 933
9 CHAT 640
10 OPINIONS 496

WOULD PREFER

1 RECEIVE 820

2 STAY 819

  Bulinews.com

Patrik Schick underlines desire to stay at RB Leipzig

“I would prefer to stay here. We played a great season. I believe in the team, in the coach’s philosophy. I like his football. I think we have the …

3 PERSONALLY 807
4 AVOID 604
5 REMAIN 432
6 IDEALLY 136
7 FULL-TIME 124
8 RESPONDENTS 94
9 PART-TIME 88
10 ENQUIRY 66