LEARNING OF ENGLISH PREPOSITIONS

An Evaluation Of Contrastive Analysis As A Current Practice On The Learning Of English Prepositions In A Sample Of Level1 EFL Arab Speaking University Students

Abstract

An Action Research to evaluate Contrastive Analysis as a complimentary method to the current practice on learning of English prepositions to level 1 EFL Arab University students, The findings suggest that grammar— as the abstract system it is—is difficult to teach and challenging to learn for adolescent immigrant students with varying degrees of prior knowledge. The findings also suggest that immigrant youngsters appear to benefit in diverse ways from being taught through a grammar-based approach. The retrospective narrative provides a description of research process, the contexts of the study, the students, the teaching and learning that went on in my classroom, and the results of the grammar test. Although the results of the grammar test favored the students exposed to FFI, these findings cannot be generalized to other students in other FFI classrooms. Limitations of the study are provided along with suggestion for future research and implications for teachers

Table of Content

ABSTRACTII

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION1

Title1

Background1

Problem Statement1

Rationale2

Aims and Objectives3

Hypothesis3

Purpose4

Research Question5

Limitation of the Study6

Reliability8

Validity8

Definitions9

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW12

Overview12

Empirical Study15

Immediate Practical Application16

Error Prediction16

Form-Focused Instruction (FFI)19

The Problem of Previous Instruction in Studies of L2 Instructional Treatments23

The linguistic characteristics of Arab immersion students28

The Linguistic Characteristics of Generation ESLs31

Linguistic Features of Generation ESLs33

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY36

Research Design36

Data Collection Method37

Data Sample38

Individual Differences and Changes in the Immigrant Population39

CHAPTER 4: DISCUSSION44

Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT)44

Methodological Principles45

Semantic Prosody and ESL/EFL Vocabulary Pedagogy Error47

ESLs Mainstream48

Implications for ESL/EFL Vocabulary Pedagogy49

Oral Interview And Pretest Results For Ffi Students50

Oral Interviews51

Retrospective Narrative: Teaching Grammar To Adolescent ESLS52

Metalanguage54

Evolution of Research Protocol and Data Sources55

Suggestions For Future Research58

Implications For Teacher Preparation60

CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION63

CHAPTER 06: IMPLICATION AND RECOMMENDATIONS68

REFERENCES72

BIBLIOGRAPHY86

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

Title

An Action Research to evaluate Contrastive Analysis as a complimentary method to the current practice on learning of English prepositions to level 1 EFL Arab University students.

Background

As a teacher of English as a second language (henceforth ESL) and English as a foreign language (henceforth EFL) in various educational settings, it was noted that although students in the Egyptian universities have had instruction in English as a compulsory school subject in the main stream secondary schools for at least six years, most of them have either basic or no grasp of the language. Badri (2009), Halimah (2001), Hamadallah and Tushyeh (1993), and others reported similar observations in various countries in the Arab world, that Arab learners find it somewhat difficult to grasp some elements of the English language or encounter general difficulty in learning English. These conclusions are not surprising since both languages belong to two different language families. That is while Arabic is a Semitic language, English is a member of the Indo- European language family.

Problem Statement

Several studies such as those conducted by Dudley-Evans and Swales (1980), Beeston (1982); EL-Shimy (1982); El-Hassan (1984); and Doushaq and Sawaf (1988) maintain that the difficulties of Arab learners are mainly due to morphological and syntactic differences between English and Arabic in such areas as proper use of ...