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Dedication

This paper is dedicated...

To the soul of my lovely mother, who I have

never missed even my soul like her ,

and to my father who can never be replaced.

to my amazing wife, who had the confidence

to support my vision when it was not always

the path of least resistance;

to my wonderful children,

Batool , Abrar, and Yahiya ,

whom I love dearly and I am more proud of

than words can possibly express.

and to my brothers and sisters whom

believed me and always encouraged and

supported my endeavors, even in those times

when they thought I was wrong.

Thank you for always letting me be me.

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INTRODUCTION

All praise is due to Allah, and Allah's Peace and Blessings be upon

His Final Messenger, his pure family, his noble Companions, and all

those who follow them with righteousness until the Day of Judgment.

We have knew that there are very much varations of languages in the

wold . Those variations can be found in the real event of the

communication. ``language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used

for human communication`` Ronald Wardaugh in Introduction to

linguistic,1977:3.

For those definitions above we can conclud that language consist of the

sympols that have variations . Those variations is already exist in the

soceity or mixture of many varieties .Example the majority of Indonesisn

Moslem people know and use the arabic in reading the Holy Quraan ,

eventhough there are many varities of the languages in Inonesian society .

One of these varities between the languages is the use of prepositions.

prepositions are one of the most difficult aspects of English for Arab

students to learn. It also has been noticed that the extent of the difficulty

is not always the same, and that students face much more difficulties in

using some English prepositions than others. the student will often form

what is called an “interlanguage

grammar.” Lydia White noted that students make many mistakes while

learning a second language, but that these mistakes are not random.

Instead, they appear to be rule governed, though those rules may not

appear in the L1 or the L2 .

The theory is that while they are learning the new language, they are

accessing UG in order to “reset” the parameters of their first language.

Thus, even though they are making mistakes, they are governing their

mistakes according to UG (2003).

However, even though they are accessing UG while learning the new

language,they are also applying some rules from their first language (L1)

onto the target language (L2), a phenomenon known as learning transfer

(James, 2007). According to Jie, this transfer can be either helpful or

harmful.

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When it is harmful, it is also known as negative transfer or interference

(2008). When a student‟s native grammar clashes with the target

grammar, he or she can do one of four things, according to Jie :

( 1 ) over generalize the rules of L2 and apply them to related situations;

(2) ignore the rules of L2 and use the rules of L1;

(3) apply the rule incompletely; or

(4) create an imaginary rule based on what he or she thinks the rule is in

the L2(2008).

The mistakes that students make in relation to prepositions will vary

according to their language backgrounds. Moreover, the majority of

students usually commit the same errors such as.

The use of the preposition "from" in sentences as:

1. Part from the plan.

2. Some from my friends.

3. We have lived in Sanaa from 1975.

The use of the proposition "on" as in:

• I will thank him on his advice.

• They told him on everything.

The aim of the study :

For the students:

Students who will get the information in using the preposition ,

and the comparison of both langages .

For the readers:

The reader can understand easier in using the prepositions of both

languages.

Language Transfer

In Webster‟s Third New World International Dictionary (1986) transfer,

derived from the Latin word transferre, means to carry, to bear or to print,

impress or otherwise copy from one surface to another. It also means the

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carry-over or generalization of learned responses from one type of situati-

on to another. This meaning from the dictionary shows clearly the

transfer is a neutral word in origin and nature since it does not indicate

whether what is carried over is bad or good (liu, 2001).

Behaviourist views considered transfer in terms of habit formation. In

other words, the habits of the NL would be carried over into the FL. Lado

(1957:2) makes that clear when he says:

Individuals tend to transfer the forms and meanings and the

distribution of forms and meanings of their native language and

culture to the foreign language and culture both productively

when attempting to speak the language and to act in the culture,

and receptively when attempting to grasp and to understand the

language and the culture as practiced by natives.

Types of Transfer Different types of transfer are stated in the definition of transfer given by

Ellis (1994 :341).

Transfer is to be seen as a general cover term for a number of different

kinds of influence from languages other than the L2. The study of transfer

involves the study of facilitation(positive transfer) , errors (negative

transfer), avoidance of target language forms and their over-use.

Positive Transfer

It is the transfer of a skill X which facilitates the learning or has a

positive influence on the command of a skill Y because of similarities

between both skills. Allen and Corder (1975:26) maintain that “positive

transfer helps new learning, for instance, it is easy to learn to pronounce

aspirated voice less stops in a second language if the language also has

also aspirated voice less stops”. Hence, prior language knowledge can be

very helpful in learning a new language.

Negative Transfer

It is the transfer of a skill X which impedes the learning or has a negative

influence on the command of a skill Y because of differences between

both skills. In the field of SL/FL learning, it is understood as the

systematic influence of the NL on the TL.or some linguists such as

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Weinreich (1953), negative transfer is referred to as interference. He also

explains the occurrence of this phenomenon by contrasting it to positive

transfer. He states that:

When a process of second language learning takes place, those

linguistics phenomena which are similar in form, meaning and

distribution are regarded as facilitating the process, and the transfer

is seen as positive, if they are dissimilar, the transfer is considered

negative and acquisition is viewed as distorted because the two

structures differ. The phenomenon involved in these difficulties

was called interference (1953:1) Thus, this phenomenon is equated

with difficulty in learning a L2 as an outcome of differences of the

two languages structures.

Contrastive Analysis

Challenges to assumptions about the importance of transfer did not have

much impact on the history of language teaching until the late 1970s. The

challenges that arose in that period were largely in reaction to the claim

made by Fries (1952) and Lado (1957) that states that the existence of

cross-linguistic differences in second language learning could be

determined through contrastive analysis. This approach has been the

subject of intense debate Applied linguists and language teachers have

expressed divergent views on its feasibility and usefulness.

Contrastive Analysis and Language Transfer Theory

The psychological basis of Contrastive Analysis transfer theory

elaborated within the behaviorist theory of psychology.

In other words, C A is founded on the assumption that L2 learners will

tend to transfer to their L2 utterances the formal features of their L1 as

Lado (1957:02) puts it Individuals tend to transfer the forms and

meanings and the distribution of forms and meanings of their native

language and culture to the foreign language and culture.

Syntactic Properties

Arab-grammarians used to classify Arabic words into three classes:

Nouns, Verbs and particles. From the class of particles, they separated

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prepositions which they called „huruf al-jarr (particles of attraction)

(Hamdallah and Tushyeh, 1993).

Arabic prepositions are divided into two morphological classes:

The first class consists of prepositions that are inseparable i.e., which are

always united in writing with the following noun. They occur as prefixes

to the complement: bi (at, by, in, with); li (to); Ka (as, like); Ta (by ‟in

swearing‟); wa (by „in swearing‟). The second class is made of

prepositions which are independent and either bilateral or trilateral.

Prepositions in English

Prepositions are abstract words that have no concrete meaning.

They merely show the relationships between groups of words.

A preposition is one of the eight parts of speech. Specifically, a

preposition is a connector: its function is to connect a noun or pronoun

(called the object of the preposition) to another word in a sentence. It also

shows how that noun or pronoun (its object) is related to the other word.

Consequently, a preposition can never stand alone: it must always be con-

tained within a phrase (a group of words) called prepositional phrase.

Most often, prepositions show relationships of direction, location, and

time, but they can also express other relationships as well (for example,

the prepositions, but, except, without, etc. show a relationship of exclusi-

on). According to Show (1986, P: 220), there are sixty words that can be

used as prepositions in English.

Most of them show relationship of direction, location and time and some

can show a relationship of exclusion Chalker( 1992 ,P:217) says that at,

by ,for, from, in, on, to and with are the most frequently used prepositio-

ns in English .Because this paper is concerned with the effect of Arabic

prepositions on learning English prepositions, the focus will be only on

these which are equivalent to some Arabic prepositions which lead Arab

learners of English to commit errors.

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Arabic prepositions

Arabic prep. The meaning Examples Eng. equivalent

/bƏ/

The used tool كخبج ببلقلم With

Exchange دوالريناشتريته ب For

At a place قببلخو ببلمسجد At

Condition قببلخو بببخسبمت With

/m؟Ə/ Company of somebody

/something With سأذىب معك

/?IƏ/ Towards somebody/

something To سأذىب إلى حعص

/monðu/ Point of time in the past

up to now Since لم أزه منر شمن طٌٌل

About حدثنب عن قصخو n / On the subject of؟ /

The meaning of Arabic prepositions:

Arabic

prepositions

The meaning Examples English

equivalent

/mIn/

Starting point جئج من حعص From

Partition جصء من الخطت Of

Cause مبث من العطش Of

/Ia:m/

To be given to سأعطٍيب ألحمد To

In accordance with ًفقب ليرا السأي To

Purpose or benefit ىره لك For

/fi/ Indicating state فً حبلت ممخبشة In

Into a place العصفٌز فً القفص In

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Difficulties in learning English prepositions

Zughoul (1979) lists the following sources of difficult in learning English

prepositions. He points out that the vfirst three of these sources are gener-

al difficulties while the last two are special problems faced by arab EFL

learners:

1. One obvious source of difficulty is the number of meaning each

preposition carries .

2. Different prepositions used with the same work yield very different

meanings. For example, look at, look after, look up, etc.

3. According to Takahashi (1969), English speakers are unable to

offer a logical explanation for the occrrence of such prepositions

or a conceptual guide of their usages.

4. Traditional methods of teaching such as the grammar-translation

method, encorage students to translate in their minds.

5. Related to the problem of the translation interference from the

native language Arabic.

prepositional errors

According to Corder (1973) and Brown (2000) (as cited in Keshavarz,

2005), EFL learners` errors can be divided into three categories:

substitution, addition, and omission. In their studies on errors of EFL

students using the same classification of prepositional errors, Hamdallah

(1988), Scott and Tucker (1974), and Tahaineh (2009) further delineated

the three categories as follows:

(1) Substitution: An incorrect preposition is substituted for a correct one.

For example:

• The teacher was satisfied *from our compositions (instead of with).

• He was angry *from his bad marks (instead of at).

(2) Addition: A preposition is used in a sentence which does not require

a preposition.

For example:

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• He entered *into the room (an unnecessary into).

• They always discuss about politics (an unnecessary about).

(3) Omission: A preposition is deleted which is necessary. For example:

• She came Sunday (omission of on).

• The classes are held noon (omission of at).

After classifying the types of prepositional errors, the most frequently

occurring prepositional errors were identified. The prepositional error

types for each proficiency level were then identified from the corpus.

Next, the types and frequency of these errors were compared across the

three levels to find out whether the rate of each prepositional error type

significantly decreased across the three levels (developmental errors) or

remained the same (fossilized errors).

How can standard Arabic help students in using English

preposition?

When we compare the prepositional uses in Arabic and English,

we find that there are cases where Arabic and English use similar

prepositions to express the same meaning. e.g. “the use of “from” to

indicate starting point” as in I came from Taiz ,the use of “with” to

indicate company as in she lives with her mother.

Direct transfer from Arabic, in this case leads to positive transfer. On the

other hand, there are cases where direct transfer leads to negative transfer.

e.g.

Some from my friends.

I will thank him on his advice.

These errors could be attributed to the fact that the same form of

most Arabic prepositions has more than one meaning, e.g:

اخربوه عهى كم شيء

سأشكره عهى نصيحتو

دع انكتبة عهى انطبونة

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Students know only the common meaning of Arabic prepositions to

which they appear to know only one English equivalent. This is because

of the lack of the knowledge of standard Arabic. By identifying the areas

in which negative and positive transfer occur in using English prepositi-

ons, it seems that students who understand the different meanings of

Arabic prepositions know more equivalents, and therefore, can find a

wider areas for positive transfer than those who do not master the Arabic

prepositions. For example, by examining the cases in which students

misuse the English prepositions “on”, it appears that students who lack

the knowledge of different meanings of Arabic prepos-ition (? lә) appear

to perform as below:

On=على

Leave the book on the table. دع انكتبة عهى انطبونة

I will thank him on his advice. توسأشكره عهى نصيح

They told him on everything. اخربوه عن كم شيء

On the other hand, students who learned to use the Arabic preposition / ?

lә / appear to perform as follows:

On, for, about = عهى

Leave the book on the table. دع انكتبة عهى انطبونة

I will thank him for his advice. سأشكره عهى نصيحتو

They told him about everything. اخربوه عن كم شي

Another example is the preposition / mln / in جئت من تعز and أصدقبئيثعض من

by identifying the different meanings of the Arabic prepositions in the

above sentences, we find that the meaning of / mln / in “جئت من تعز” differs

from its meaning in “ثعض من اصدقبئي” in Arabic, the / mln / in " جئت من تعز " is

called / mln l bt dә/. It indicates the starting point from which something

starts, (Al-Ansari 1979, Almuradi 1973 Hassan, 1975, Said 1999, Alzagbi

1992, Khafji, 1961). In other words, it expresses a physical movement

which can traced clearly.

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It is the equivalent to the preposition “from, and both” / mln alebtedda /.

“From” is used to express the same meaning. Understanding its meaning

may facilitate the use of the preposition “from” when it is used:

• To indicate place or direction from which somebody / something starts.

e.g. I will go from Taiz to Aden.

• To indicate time at which somebody / something starts.

e.g. We study from 2 pm till 5 pm every day.

• To indicate who sent, gave something.

e.g. A letter from my brother.

• To indicate where somebody / something originates.

e.g. I‟m from Yemen .

Draw water from a well.

• To indicate the lower limit of a range, numbers, prices ..etc.

e.g. He writes from 10 to 15 letters daily.

Tickets cost from 3 to 11 dollars.

• To indicate distance between two places.

e.g. 10 miles from the coast.

The / mln / in ثعض من اصدقبئي / mln t b؟I:h / (partition). (Al-Ansari 1979,

Almuradi 1973 Hassan, 1975, Said 1999, Alzagbi 1992, Khafji, 1961).

The function of this / mln / is to express the relationship between the part

and the whole the member and the body to which that member belongs.

However, Kharma and Hajjai (1989:78) argue that Arabic speakers find

difficulty in using the English preposition “of”, because it does not have a

counterpart in Arabic language except the /?idafa/ (the genitive case).

But, it appears that the justification that they provide for their argument

does not govern the different meanings of /mln attab?l:h/ because if we

examine the function and the meaning of this / mln / and “of” we can

easily realize that both give the same meaning and are used in the same

way. This means that this / mln / is the equivalent to the English

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preposition “OF”. So, understanding the meaning of / mln / can facilitate

learning the use of the preposition “OF” when it is used:

• To indicate the material used to make something.

e.g. Shirts made of cotton.

• To indicate what is measured, counted or contained.

e.g. A pint of milk.

• To show the relationship between part and the whole of something.

e.g. Five of the team.

• In dates.

e.g. The first of May.

• After some, many, few, etc

e.g. Some of his friends.

Few of records.

The same can be said about the preposition /bl/ in sentences such as:

سأكتت ثقهم حرب .

قبثهتو ثبملسجد.

اشرتيت انكتبة ثعشرين دينبرا.

By examining these three sentences we find that, although the same

preposition /bI/ is used in three sentences, it does not give the same

meaning in each sentence/bI/ indicates the tool in سأكتت ثقهم حرب, in the

second sentences gives the meaning of the place of exchange قبثهتو ثبملسجد

in اشرتيت انكتبة ثعشرين دينبرا. In some cases we find that the same English

prepositions can be equivalent to more than one Arabic preposition

(depending on the meaning).

For example, the English preposition “for” is the equivalent to both /؟ l Ə/

in سأشكره عهى نصيحتو and / bI / in اشرتيت انكتبة ثعشرين دينبرا. So, drawing the students‟

attention to this point may help them to use “for” correctly in many cases.

However, according to most teachers of English, students usually say :

I will write with a pen. Some of them may say

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I will write by a pen. They usually say

I bought this book with twenty dollars.

But, students do not say:

I met him with / by the mosque.

( they usually use the preposition “in” in such case). Consequently, this

raises another question:

Why do Arabs students use the same English preposition in some

cases and use different English prepositions in others?

From the point of view of this study, the answer to this question might be

summarized as follows: Although, both English and Arabic prepositions

are polysemous words which have different meanings, it appears that

students know only common meaning which is more popular and known

than other meanings. Therefore, when the same errors reoccur they are

often related to a specific Arabic preposition usage. For example, in

sentences like:

I will thank him on his advice.

They told him on everything,

The errors are related to the Arabic preposition / ? la/. The same is true in

sentences as :

some from my friends.

we have lived in Sana'a from 1975 .

in which the errors are related to / mln /. The same can be said about the

use of “with” in

I bought this book with twenty.

In which the use of “with” is related to the Arabic preposition /bΙ/.It

seems that students resort more often to colloquial Arabic than standard

Arabic in choosing English prepositions. The example for this is the use

of “from” instead of /monðu/ or / moð/ which are not found in

colloquial Arabic.

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When students use English preposition, they fall back on the forms of

standard Arabic prepositions ( to which they know only one English

equivalent in most cases ). Because in some cases as in جئت من تعز I came

from Taiz, leave the book on the table. Both, Arabic and ةضع انكتبة عهى انطبول

English prepositions give the same mean-ing. It seems that students apply

this as a general rule.

In studying preposition errors made by Arab EFL students , zughoul

(1979)reached the following conclusions:

1. In some cases the English preposition corresponds exactly to its

Arabic equivalent.

2. Sometimes ,in expressing an idea in Arabic , we do not need to use

a preposition (or any other word ) to replace the English

preposition.

3. Usually students try to memories one main equivalent for each

English preposition. While such one –to –one translation may

give the proper English word in a number of cases , there are

many instances in which it does not work .

4. The English preposition is not always expressed in Arabic by a

preposition , its equivalent may be a different part of speech.

5. English preposition can be attached to verbs or nouns to form units

with different meaning .

6. Some usages of English preposition, specially those of at, in, on,

are ambiguous and difficult compared with the Arabic

preposition which really replaces those prepositions in meaning

English prepositions are generally considered difficult to teach to non

native speakers, for a variety of reasons: the large number of possible

meanings for many prepositions, which change according to the context

in which they are used; the lack of a written guide to usage; and, for

native Arabic speakers, the commonly-used grammar-translation method

of instruction and native language interference. Some potentially more

effective approaches to teaching prepositions include C. Kreidler's

association approach, A. Hornby's unit method, D. T. Langendoen's role-

subdivisions, R. Close's relationships approach, and G. Pittman's

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demonstrable uses. However, in most of these approaches there is a stress

on teaching isolated structures, even when situationalized, and little

emphasis on real communication. The result has been inaccuracy in

student usage. If communication is a primary goal of English teaching,

teachers should begin instruction with real situations that are relevant to

the students and concentrate on the prepositions and adverbs the student

would need in order to be understood. Linguistic distinctions that students

do not need to know should not be taught, errors should not be

automatically corrected, and similarities between English and the native

language should be pointed out. Prepositions used often in the classroom

could be categorized as case, lexical, or unit prepositions for instructional

purposes.

CONCLUSION

We find that most students face difficulty in using the English

preposition “since” in spite of the fact that “since” has two Arabic

equivalents / monðu /and /moð/). The students usually say * we have

lived in Taiz from1975.

The use of “from” instead of” since” can be due to the fact that both /

monðu / and / moð/ do not exist in the colloquial Arabic, in which

preposition / mln / is always used in such cases. For these it investigates

the probability of the existence of prepositions transfer from Standard

Arabic into English.

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English prepositions are difficult in the sense that they can have different

functions, and the greatest problem faced by Arab learners who learn

English as a FL is the correct usage of these prepositions in their writings

and speeches. An inappropriate usage of a preposition may change the

intended meaning of a sentence entirely. They face situations they do not

know how to transfer prepositions from Standard Arabic to the target

language .

Consequently, while positive transfer takes place when there are

similarities between English and one of these varieties, negative transfer

occurs whenever there are differences. It is found that Arab learners

transfer positively from Standard Arabic and the result is a correct usage

of English prepositions, and they transfer negatively from Standard

Arabic and, as a result, they commit errors in the usage of these

prepositions. Hence, Arab learners try to relate the usage of English

prepositions to these varieties as sources of their previous knowledge.

Yet, there are differences between each one of these varieties and English

prepositions usage.

Prepositional usage has a relation with each variety specificity.

Accordingly, not every English preposition has definite equivalent in

each one of these varieties. Thus, Arab learners do not adequately master

English prepositions and they rely on their knowledge from Standard

Arabic, to choose the correct prepositions. On this basis, English

prepositions usage often stands in the way of achieving grammatical

fluency and accuracy for Arab learners.

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Study of errors made by Arab students of English . university of

Lancaster, England .

Zughoul, M.R.1979 "Teaching English prepositions "English

Teaching Forum 17,24, 29

Ibn Hisham, A.Y.1969. Sharh qatr elnada, wabell essada .

Edited by M.M.AbdulHamid.Cairo.

Keshavarz, M. H. (2005). Contrastive analysis and error

analysis. Tehran: Rahnama Publication.

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Those Problematic english Prepositions!... by Bob Grubic C F I

– B A C I C o n f e r e n c e California .November 13, 2004

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Elizabeth Champion Speyer.

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