Second-Year Master Students’ Mastery of the Properties of Adjectival and Verbal Dependent Prepositions

Abstract

There seems to be a fundamental agreement amongst all those who have dealt with the English language in the Arab world that understanding the right use of English prepositions by Arab learners of English as a foreign language is a hard task. English prepositions are difficult components of virtually every language since they cannot be readily translated or logically explained, and they work differently in every single language. The present thesis consists of three chapters which aim at investigating second-year master students’ degree of proficiency in using verbal and adjectival dependent prepositions in their unplanned written or oral performance, and to what extent they pay their attention to the using of those prepositions. Furthermore, this work will show what are the reasons that may influence the students’ use of prepositions and what are the sources behind their success or their failure in using adjectival and verbal dependent prepositions. Moreover, a number of questions have been raised: Do master-two students master the use of English verbal and adjectival dependent prepositions? Do they have the sufficient knowledge to use those grammatical tools correctly in their oral performances and writings? What are the factors that may influence the students’ acquisition of those prepositions? It is hypothesized that not all the students master the use of the English prepositions and this is due to the influence of their mother tongue, the lack of practices and the lack of prepositions lessons. For the purpose of examining our hypothesis, a test has been given to second-year master students in Mila university, in addition to a questionnaire to the same students and another one to some of their teachers. After examining the data collected, the hypothesis was confirmed , second year master students do not master the use of verbal and adjectival dependent prepositions.