An Investigation of the Prepositional Errors Made by Iranian EFL Learners While Speaking English

Using prepositions accurately while speaking has a significant role in having an effective communication. However, because of the large number of prepositions, EFL students are sometimes confused in choosing the correct one and commit errors. Therefore, studying the different types of prepositional errors and their frequency needs further attention. This can help EFL teachers to predict EFL learners’ errors and try to help them learn how to use prepositions more accurately. The aim of the present study was to analyze different types of prepositional errors made by Iranian EFL university students while speaking English in the class. For so doing, during the Fall Semester of 2112 academic year, the authentic presentations/conversations/dialogues of students in the class were recorded. The corpus was then transcribed and analyzed in order to identify different types and frequency of prepositional errors made by the learners. In general, the errors were divided into five major prepositional problems and each problem was divided into three categories of: omission, addition, and wrong use. It was revealed that most errors that students committed were the wrong use of prepositions after the verbs and it also indicated that students did not use any preposition plus preposition format in their speaking. The results were discussed and the pedagogical implications were made.

Keywords:

EFL learners , prepositional errors , speaking , language teaching