The Problem of English Spatial, Non-spatial and Idiomatic Adpositions in Iranian EFL Environment: A Prototypical Approach

Journal of English Language Pedagogy and Practice

مقاله 5، دوره 3، شماره 7، بهمن 2010، صفحه 88-118   

نوع مقاله: Research Paper

نویسندگان

Nassim Golaghaei^* ؛ Firooz Sadighi

Islamic Azad University, Shiraz Branch, Shiraz, Iran

چکیده

Several studies of L2 learners’ interlanguage have addressed the complexity of the English adpositional system due to several reasons like L1 transfer, lack of knowledge in L2 and the strong collocational relations of prepositions with other elements of the English language. The major purpose of the present study is to evaluate the performance of Iranian students in dealing with three broad categories of spatial, non-spatial and idiomatic adpositions in English. To achieve the inclinations of the research project, 60 students majoring in TEFL at Roudehen University were selected. A paper-based TOEFL test of English Proficiency was administered to obtain some information about the participants’ general language proficiency. Three completion tasks with the division of spatial, non-spatial (nominal, adjectival and verbal) and idiomatic adpositions were administered. The obtained results represented the fact that the Iranian participants were considerably inclined to transfer their L1 adpositional patterns to their L2 production. The correlational analyses indicated that whereas the scores related to adposition task in general, non-spatial as well as the idiomatic subtests were strongly correlated with the scores obtained from the TOEFL test, there was a moderate correlation between the spatial subtest and the TOEFL one. The independent sample t-test results between the freshmen and sophomores dealing with spatial, nominal and adjectival subtests were considered to be significant.  However, in reference to the verbal subtest, the difference between the two groups was not significant. The results obtained from the independent sample t-test indicated no significant differences between the freshmen and sophomores in their performance on idiomatic adpositions. Finally, the result of the correlation coefficients showed high correlation coefficients between the whole adposition test and the three subtests of spatial, non-spatial and idiomatic ones. Moreover, high and moderate correlations were reported among the three subtests with the highest correlation between the spatial and non-spatial subtests and the lowest between the idiomatic and spatial ones. 

کلیدواژه‌ها

spatial؛ Non-spatial and Academic Adposition؛ Satellite-framed Language؛ transfer

مراجع

Al-Arishi, A. Y. (1994). Language attrition of Saudi ESL-and EFL-trained teachers: Articles and prepositions. Education, Science & Islamic Study, 6 (2), 1-19.

 

Bahns, J. (1993). Lexical collocations: A contrastive view. ELT Journal, 44, 56-63.

Brugman, C. M. (1983). Story of OVER. Indiana University Linguistics Club.

Doughty, J. C., & Long, H. L. (2003). The handbook of second language acquisition. Blackwell Publishing.

Ellis, R. (1998). The study of second language acquisition. Oxford University Press.

Robinson, P., & Ellis, C. N. (2008). Handbook of cognitive linguistics and second language acquisition. Taylor & FrancisPublication.

 

Gabyrs- Biskup, D. (1992). L1 influence on learners’ renderings of English collocation. A Polish/German empirical study.

Vocabulary and applied linguistics (pp. 85-93). LondonMacmillan.

Gass, M. S., & Selinker, L. (2008). Second language acquisition. Routledge Publication.

Geeraerts, D. (1989). Introduction: Prospects and problems of prototype theory. Linguistics, 27, (4), 587-612.

Hu, G. (2002). Psychological constraints on the utility of metalinguistic knowledge in second language production. SSLA, 24, 347-386.

 

Kellerman, E., & Smith, S. M. (1986). Cross linguistic influence in second language acquisition. Pergamon Press Ltd.

Koosha, M., Jafarpoor, A. A. (2006). Data-driven learning and teaching collocation of prepositions: The case of Iranian EFL adult learners. Asian EFL Journal, 8 (8).

 

Leung, M. W. (1987). Prototype theory and English prepositions. Retrieved from http://sunzi.lib.hku.hk/hkjo.

McLaughlin, B. (1987). Theories of second language learning. Edward Arnold Publication.

Morgenstern, A. & Sekali, M. (2009). What can child language tell us about prepositions? Studies in Language & Cognition. pp. 261-275.

 

Mukattash, L. (1976). A Pilot Project in Common Grammatical Errors in Jordanian English. Amman: The University of Jordan.

Saric, L. (2001). Prepositional categories and prototypes: Contrasting some Russian, Slovenian, Croatian, and Polish Examples. Glosses, the Slavic and East European language center, Issue 1.

Saville-Troike, M. (2006). Introducing second language acquisition. Cambridge University Press.

Talmy, L. (2000). Towards a cognitive semantics: Concept structuring systems. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.