Prepositions : learning difficulties of a semantically-oriented part of speech

الملخص EN

The learners of English mostly face difficulties in selecting the right preposition for a sentence in speech and in writing.

The wrong choice of preposition could occasionally be ascribed to interference and overlap caused between the mother tongue and the target language.

One more difficulty may emerge when a single preposition may possibly have more than one semantic use.

It is hypothesized that the linguistic differences between English and Arabic could be the reason behind impeding the learners of doing well in the target language.

The learners, therefore, may unconsciously covey the Arabic linguistic habits to English although the syntactic and semantic characteristics between the two languages are totally different.

The researchers try to pose the most important information about prepositions available in the English literature of grammar.

This information is put under analysis, paraphrase and ample comments so as to reach reasonable conclusions that are useful for all readers' levels.

Conclusions, some are newly-posed and not dealt with before, are listed at the end of the research.

The current study is confined to prepositions whether they are simple or complex and sometimes with a mention of these words in combination with ordinary verbs forming phrasal verbs which have meanings quite different from these verbs when they are used alone.

This research can be of a great value and benefit to improve the performance of learners of English language in general, teachers specialized in English and researchers in The learners of English mostly face difficulties in selecting the right preposition for a sentence in speech and in writing.

The wrong choice of preposition could occasionally be ascribed to interference and overlap caused between the mother tongue and the target language.

One more difficulty may emerge when a single preposition may possibly have more than one semantic use.

It is hypothesized that the linguistic differences between English and Arabic could be the reason behind impeding the learners of doing well in the target language.

The learners, therefore, may unconsciously covey the Arabic linguistic habits to English although the syntactic and semantic characteristics between the two languages are totally different.

The researchers try to pose the most important information about prepositions available in the English literature of grammar.

This information is put under analysis, paraphrase and ample comments so as to reach reasonable conclusions that are useful for all readers' levels.

Conclusions, some are newly-posed and not dealt with before, are listed at the end of the research.

The current study is confined to prepositions whether they are simple or complex and sometimes with a mention of these words in combination with ordinary verbs forming phrasal verbs which have meanings quite different from these verbs when they are used alone.

This research can be of a great value and benefit to improve the performance of learners of English language in general, teachers specialized in English and researchers in particular.