The Acquistion of English Prepositions by L1 Chinese Speakers

This study investigates the acquisition of English prepositions of location and direction by Malaysian Chinese ESL learners. It was conducted with the objective of finding out which of the two types of prepositions was more problematic to the L1 Chinese learners. The study also sought to investigate the effect of age and proficiency levels in English on the acquisition of the English prepositions of location and direction by these learners. Additionally, the study sets out to determine the extent to which the L1 Chinese learners have acquired the English prepositions of location and direction. This study involved three groups of Chinese ESL learners: elementary, intermediate and advanced. They were selected based on their age and their performance on a standardized proficiency test. The instrument used to collect data was a preposition test comprising 85 items. These items on prepositions of location and direction were randomly arranged in the tasks. The test required subjects to respond to multiple choice questions, match given sentences with appropriate prepositions, fill in blanks with the appropriate prepositions, judge given sentences to see if they are grammatical or ungrammatical and correct the ungrammatical sentence by providing the appropriate prepositions. The results indicate that age and proficiency levels of the learners made a difference in the acquisition of English prepositions of location and direction. The older learners with higher proficiency levels seem to fare better than the younger and less proficient learners. The results suggest that the prepositions of location arc slightly more problematic than prepositions of directions to the L1 Chinese learners. Our data also suggest that certain prepositions of each type are more problematic than others.