The misuse of English prepositions of time and place by EFL learners in Algeria : the case of MA students at Abd el Hamid university of Mostaganem

Abstract EN

The paper at hand aims to pinpoint the types of errors that advanced Algerian EFL learners, viz master students of English at the University of Mostaganem, commit while using English prepositions of time and place.

Furthermore, this paper attempts to identify the causes of such errors.

To this effect, a grammaticality judgement test was administered to 80 master students from the Department of English at the University of Mostaganem.

The grammaticality judgment test includes three types of ungrammaticality, viz misuse of prepositions, addition of prepositions and omission of prepositions.

Error analysis was adopted to analyze the data set.

The findings of this study demonstrate that the errors that advanced Algerian EFL learners make fall into three categories, namely substitution, addition and omission.

As to the triggers of such errors, they comprise negative transfer and overgeneralization of the target language's rules of time and place prepositions.

Nevertheless, negative transfer appears to generate a larger number of errors.