ERRORS COMMITTED BY STUDENTS OF HAI DUONG UNIVERSITY IN USING PREPOSITIONS OF PLACE: FROM COGNITIVE PERSPECTIVE = (Lỗi dùng giới từ địa điểm của sinh viên Trường Đại học Hải Dương: từ góc độ tri nhận)

In order to help language learners overcome these difficulties, this study aims at exploring the frequencies and causes of the errors in using prepositions of place “in, on, at” from cog

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Linguistics Code: 60220201

Hanoi, 2017

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Linguistics Code: 60220201

Supervisor: Assoc Prof Dr Nguyễn Văn Độ

DECLARATION

I, Kieu Thi Hong, certify that this thesis is the result of my own research and the substance of the research has not been submitted for degree to any other university or institution

Hanoi, April 2017

Signature

Kieu Thi Hong

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The completion of this study would not have been possible without the assistance of special and wonderful people

First of all, I would like to acknowledge my indebtedness and gratitude to

Assoc Prof Dr Nguyen Van Đo, for his unfailing encouragement, constant

support and supervision during all stages of the study His enthusiastic assistance, guidance, support, and his wisdom greatly contributed to the fulfillment of my thesis I would also like to thank my supervisor for his patience in reading and editing my draft It must be an excruciating experience

My heartfelt gratitude is also to Dr Huynh Anh Tuan, The Head of Faculty

of Post-Graduate Studies and all his staff members who have been of great help

Last but not least, I would like to give my deepest gratitude to my parents, and my friends for their moral support and encouragement throughout my course

The study still has limitations, therefore all the suggestions and recommendations would be warmly welcomed

ABSTRACT

Prepositions are known as a small but notoriously difficult lexical unit in English because it is the differences in the linguistic cognition among cultures that prevent language users from mastering and using prepositions properly In order to help language learners overcome these difficulties, this study aims at exploring the frequencies and causes of the errors in using prepositions of place “in, on, at” from cognitive perspective The theory of cognitive linguistics and error analysis are used

to carry out this study 120 students at Hai Duong University took part in two types

of tests including multiple choice tests and written test to analyze based on qualitative and quantitative methods in order to find out the types of errors and their causes The results show that the students at Hai Duong University often misuse between prepositions “in” and “on” there exist many differences in applying locative strategies TR and LM to encode languages due to the distinguishing features in perception regarding space, the living habits, topography and sky orientation Moreover, they also have difficulty using prepositions of place “in” because of the difference of cognition It is hoped that the findings can be a small contribution to the stock of prepositional research

LIST OF FIRGURES AND TABLES

Figure1 CONTAINMENT schema for in (Herskovits, 1986)

Figure 2 Schematic representation of in indicating the final inclusive status of a process (Lindner, 1982)

Figure 3 General image schema of on (Ming, 2011)

Figure 4 PATH schema for on (Ming, 2011)

Figure 5 CONTAINMENT schema for at (Yang, 2008)

Figure 6 ADJACENCY schema for at (Yang, 2008)

Figure 7 LINEAR-RELATION schema for at (Yang, 2008)

Figure 8 DYNAMIC-RELATION schema for at (Yang, 2008)

Table 1 Image schemas of prepositions in, on and at with their application of the present study

Table 2 Results of section 1- test 1

Table 3 The incorrect answer section 1- test 1

Table 4 Results of the section 2-test 1

Table 5: The incorrect answer section 2- test 1

Table 6 Results of the section 3-test 1

Table 7: The incorrect answer section 2- test 1

Table 8 Results of the test 1

Table 9 Results of the test 2

Table 10 The general understanding of in, on and at

Table 11 The examples of in and how the CONTAINMENT schema is applied Table 12 The examples of on and how the CONTACT schema is applied

Table 13 The examples of at and how ADJACENCY schema is applied

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

ABSTRACT iii

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS iv

LIST OF FIRGURES AND TABLES v

TABLE OF CONTENTS vi

PART A: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale of the study 1

2 Aims and objectives of the study 2

3 Research questions 2

4 Scope of the study 3

5 Methodology 3

6 Significance of the study 4

7 Organization of the study 4

PART B: DEVELOPMENT 5

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 5

1.1 Introduction of cognitive linguistics 5

1.2 Error in language learning process 11

1.2.1 Notions of error 11

1.2.2 Errors and Mistakes 12

1.2.3 Error Analysis 13

1.2.4 The Source of Error 14

1.3 Preposition 14

1.3.1 Prepositions in English 14

1.3.2 Vietnamese Prepositions 16

1.3.3 Some comments about prepositions of place “in, on, at” from cognitive perspective 17

1.4 Review of previous studies 18

CHAPTER 2 METHODOLOGY 21

2 1 Restatement of research questions 21

2 2 The fitness of the research approach 21

2.3 Context of the study 21

2.3.2 Participants 23

2.4 Research instruments 23

2.5 Data collection and analysis procedure 25

2.6 Summary 26

CHAPTER 3 DATA ANALYSIS 28

3.1 Errors in section 1- Test 1 28

3.2 Errors in section 2-Test 1 31

3.3 Errors in section 3-Test 1 32

3.4 General tendencies 34

3.5 Written Test 35

CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND IMPLICATIONS 38

4.1 Findings 38

4.2 Implications 40

PART C: CONCLUSION 46

1 Summary of the study 46

2 Limitations of the research and suggestions for further studies 47

REFERENCES 49 APPENDIX 1 I APPENDIX 2 II

PART A: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale of the study

Firstly, after reading numerous previous researches and journals, the researcher has realized that it is prepositional error is one of the major grammar errors According to Corder (cited in James, 1998), he defines errors as the result of some failure of performance This is not surprising as prepositions comprise a significant portion of the words contained in completing English language sentence Collins (1991) said that it was observed that most of the English language sentences produced contained at least one preposition and that three out of ten most frequent words of the English language are prepositions The researcher has had the experience of witnessing the difficulties among her students in attempting to use the correct prepositions It is the intention of the researcher to discover the causes behind the difficulties experienced by these students in employing acceptable prepositions of place

Secondly, the majority of studies which discuss the teaching of prepositions from a cognitive perspective focus on the extended uses of prepositions However,

in fact, the students at Hai Duong University cannot distinguish the core meaning of the prepositions of place IN, ON, AT Moreover, there is not any study to focus on studying the errors in using prepositions of place at Hai Duong University In relation to this, the researcher chooses the prepositions of place as the main subject matters as these are among one of the main problems faced by the students at Hai Duong University

Thirdly, language teachers and researchers have long recognized that the acquisition of English prepositions poses major challenges for second language learners Celce-Murcia and LarsenFreeman (1998) note several reasons for this difficulty They observe that “in their spatial meanings, prepositions do not match up well from language to language”, even in relatively closely related languages For instance, the English sentence: There is a bird in the sky, would be "translated" in

Vietnamese by: Trên trời có một con chim (There is a bird in the sky) Since English

is far different from Vietnamese, it is not easy for learners to have fully understanding about parts of speech in English at the beginning Prepositions, as well

as other parts of speech such as nouns, adjectives, and verbs are introduced to students in the early classes at the secondary schools Students need prepositions in order to build up simple sentences The little words 'AT, ON, are troublesome and confusing for the learners of English Errors in the learning process are inevitable

To conclude, the study proceeds from three main reasons, the first lies in the

decisive role of finding the difficulties in using prepositions of place Then the cause

of error in using prepositions of place is found Secondly, the researcher would like

to find the differences between Vietnamese and English in cognition of prepositions Lastly, the researcher has found that there has never been any research on error analysis of using preposition from cognitive perspective at Hai Duong University

An analysis of errors in using prepositions of place AT, ON, IN is carried out to help answer these questions In addition, it also a practical and applicable study, which provide some suggestions for the improvement of teaching and learning English prepositions of place AT, ON, IN

2 Aims and objectives of the study

The main purpose of the study is to focus on error analysis of using prepositions of place made by students within the framework of cognitive theory

With the above aims, the objectives of this study were as follows:

- Identify the errors in using preposition of place “at, on, in” by students at Hai Duong University

- Assessing the ability of students‟ use of prepositions

- Determining the sources and causes of their errors

- Suggesting pedagogic solutions for teaching and learning prepositions of place “at,

on, in” at Hai Duong University

3 Research questions

The following research questions are raised:

With the given aims and objectives, the study implies three research questions:

1 What kinds of errors do students at Hai Duong University often have in using prepositions of place AT, ON, IN?

2 What might be the sources of the errors?

3 What suggestion can be made in order to help students acquire the use of English prepositions of location AT, ON, IN?

4 Scope of the study

The study was conducted at Hai Duong University, Hai Duong province Because of limited time, it only focused on investigating the students in using prepositions of place including “in, on, at” from cognitive perspective Actually, the cognitive perspective has two trends including cognitive semantics and cognitive approach to grammar Consequently, research in cognitive semantics tends to be interested in modeling the human mind as much as it is concerned with investigating linguistic semantics A cognitive approach to grammar is concerned with modeling the language system (the mental „grammar‟), rather than the nature

of mind per se However, it does so by taking as its starting point the conclusions of work in cognitive semantics In this study, the cognitive semantics is employed to find out the causes of errors in using prepositions of place

The participants were students from three classes U2KT9, U2KT2 and U2KT1, who were non – English major students

5 Methodology

Both the quantitative and qualitative approach have been chosen to identify the errors of using prepositions of place “in, on, at” Besides, using descriptive method is employed to collect the qualitative information and find out the causes of errors made by the students of Hai Duong Univeristy in the field of spatial cognition The study was carried out by some steps as follows:

First, the test for students was employed to find out the frequency and types

of errors in using prepositions of place There are two types of test including multiple choices and written test

Second, the data were collected, sorted and analyzed quantitatively and

qualitatively to obtain realistic results The procedure for error analysis is described basing on the six-step method set by Corder (1974)

6 Significance of the study

The thesis shows strong evidences that the students at Hai Duong Unviversity have problems in using prepositions of place IN, ON, AT Through the analysis, there are differences between Vietnamese and English prepositional system In other words, how prepositions are perceived depends on the way in which people are different cultures realize their physical world based on their experiences

Secondly, it is expected that this thesis will contribute to the stock of research on prepositions from cognitive perspectives, giving readers theoretical background of one of the most complicated aspect in English

Finally, the study provides readers with some suggestions to avoid the errors

in using prepositions and enrich the pedagogical methods in studying English prepositions and translating prepositions to the students at Hai Duong University

7 Organization of the study

The study consists of three main parts:

Part A, Introduction presents the rationale of the study, the aims, the research

questions, the significance, the scope, the method and the design of the study

Part B is Development including three chapters:

Chapter 1 Literature review gives the concepts of cognitive linguistics and cognitive semantics, prepositions in English and Vietnamese, error analysis and differences in perceiving prepositions of place Furthermore, the review of previous studies is also presented

Chapter 2 Methodology, describes the participants, the setting of the study involving the school Moreover, this chapter shows how the researcher applied the data collection instruments and the procedure of conducting the study

Chapter 3 is Data analysis, in which the researcher used both qualitatively and quantitatively method to study and analyze the figure and information collected

Chapter 4 is Findings and implications In this chapter, the findings is shown, then the implications are given based on the findings

Part C: Conclusion is the last part which offers a summary, some

limitations and suggestions for further study

PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 Introduction of cognitive linguistics

Cognitive linguistics is a modern school of linguistic thought and practice It is concerned with investigating the relationship between human language, the mind and socio-physical experience The stage was set for cognitive linguistics in the nineteen seventies and early eighties with Len Talmy's work on figure and ground, Ronald Langacker's cognitive grammar framework, George Lakoff's research on metaphor, gestalts, categories and prototypes, Fillmore's frame semantics, and Fauconnier's mental spaces It has been a powerful approach to the study of language, conceptual systems, human cognition, and general meaning construction Today, there are hundreds of scholars who work in this paradigm, and there is a huge amount of published research on the theories and applications.The following information related to cognitive linguistics plays an important role in the study

1.1.1 Cognitive Linguistic Framework

In 1987, Lakoff he contended that “we structure our knowledge about the world

in terms of idealized cognitive models in his book “Women, Fire and Dangerous Things” He further distinguished four types of structuring principle for this kind of

construct: propositional, image-schematic, metaphoric and metonymic In other word, meanings essentially involve an “imaginative” projection by using mechanisms of schematization, categorization, metaphor and metonymy In the interaction between human beings and their environment, human experience is imposed on a structure in terms of natural dimensions of the kind The recurrent experience leads to the formation of categories, which are experiential gestalts with those natural dimensions Such gestalts define coherence in human experience According to, Johnson (1980) there is two ways for people to understand this experience The first way is that people understand one thing directly when they see

it These kinds of things are “structured coherently in terms of gestalts that have emerged directly from interaction with and in the environment” By this

understanding, the prepositions extend the spatial senses The second way of understanding (mainly referring to imagination, reason and so on) is required, when perceiving one kind of thing in terms of another kind is involved

For the target prepositions (in, on and at), their basic senses indicated location in space, the spatial usages of prepositions can be experienced directly, for instance, in

the car, on the table, and at the door By the first way to understand this experience,

the spatial usages can be acquired straightforward

Cognitive linguistics practice can be divided into two main areas of research: cognitive semantics and cognitive (approaches to) grammar The cognitive semantics is concerned with investigating the relationship between experience, the conceptual system, and the semantic structure encoded by language In other terms, scholars working in cognitive semantics investigate knowledge representation (conceptual structure), and meaning construction (conceptualization) Cognitive semanticists have employed language as the lens through which these cognitive phenomena can be investigated Consequently, research in cognitive semantics tends to be interested in modeling the human mind as much as it is concerned with investigating linguistic semantics A cognitive approach to grammar is concerned with modeling the language system (the mental „grammar‟), rather than the nature

of mind per se In this study, the cognitive semantics is employed to find out the causes of errors in using prepositions of place The following part, the researcher presents theory of cognitive semantics more clearly

1.1.2 Cognitive semantics: major theories and approaches

Actually, as the writer mentioned above, cognitive semantics investigate knowledge representation and meaning construction Consequently, research in cognitive semantics tends to be interested in modeling the human mind as much as

it is concerned with investigating linguistic semantics Moreover, the purpose of this essay focuses on the human mind That is the reason why the author just discusses deeply about cognitive semantics theory In following section the author briefly introduce some of the most significant theories in cognitive semantics

1.1.2.1 Image schema theory

The theoretical construct of the image schema was developed by Mark Johnson

in his 1987 book” The Body in the Mind”, Johnson proposed that image schemas one way in which embodied experience manifests itself at the cognitive level These are rudimentary concepts like contact, container and balance, which are meaningful because they derive from and are linked to human preconception experience This is experience of the world directly mediated and structured by the human body

The developmental psychologist Jean Mandler (e.g 1992, 1996, and 2004) has made a number of proposals concerning how image schemas might arise from embodied experience Mandler suggests that by attending closely to such spatial experiences, children are able to abstract across similar kinds of experiences, and find meaningful patterns in the process For instance, the container image schema is more than simply a spatio-geometric representation It is a „theory‟ about a particular kind of configuration in which one entity is supported by another entity that contains it In other words, the container schema is meaningful because containers are meaningful in our everyday experience.In this study the author just carried out studying the basic prepositions of place “in, on, at” so the expressions of

the image schemas of in, on and at are illustrated and discussed in the following

section with the analysis of the corpus-based examples (BNC, 2011)

The image schema of in

The basic spatial meaning of in is the location of interiority, which is defined

as inclusion or containment of a located object (the TR) in the reference object (the LM) In principle, this interiority may: (1) be partial or total; (2) be a specific range across objects of any dimension; (3) be either real or virtual (Frawley, 1992)

Herskovits (1986) also defines the ideal meaning of in: inclusion of geometric

construct in a one-, two-, or three-dimensional geometric construct Figure 1 illustrates these definitions with the examples

Figure1 CONTAINMENT schema for in (Herskovits, 1986)

Secondly, the preposition in is used to express the final static status after an object

(the TR) moving towards a destination consisting of an enclosing boundary and an interior (Lindner, 1982) The path stops at the interior of the LM (see Figure 2)

Figure 2 Schematic representation of in indicating the final inclusive status of a process (Lindner, 1982)

To sum up, the spatial meanings of in can be distinguished into two categories

according to the TR-LM relation and all the two kinds of image schemas are related

to CONTAINMENTschema that our body experiences are as inclusion Therefore,

the basic spatial meanings of in is used and designed as CONTAINMENT schema

in the study Throughout the study, the image schema of in is considered as

CONTAINMENT with events occurring within this container

The image schema of on

According to Zhang (1991), the spatial senses of on usually indicate a surface

with two dimensions and are generally classified into five image schemas: CONTACT, SUPPORT, PRESSURE, CONSTRAINT and PATH (Ming, 2011)

Figure 3 General image schema of on (Ming, 2011)

Figure 4 PATH schema for on (Ming, 2011)

In the present study, the general image schema of on as CONTACT in the static

process is considered

The image schema of at

In the study of Yang (2008), based on the BNC (from 1980 to 1993), there are

the five image schemas of at including CONTAINMENT, ADJACENCY,

LINEAR-RELATION, DYNAMICRELATION

Figure 5 CONTAINMENT schema for at (Yang, 2008)

Figure 6 ADJACENCY schema for at (Yang, 2008)

Figure 7 LINEAR-RELATION schema for at (Yang, 2008)

The DYNAMIC-RELATION of at indicates that one object is moving from one

space to another as

Figure 8 DYNAMIC-RELATION schema for at (Yang, 2008)

To sum up, the image schema of at is used in the following terms of ADJACENCY

that one object infinitely adjoins to another but never coming to a convergence

Summary

In general, the image schema of in is used in terms of CONTAINMENT,

indicating the interiority and the final inclusive status of a process The spatial relationship can be described as the TR is within a container (the LM) leading to use

the preposition in The image schema of on is specified as CONTACT, referring to

the support, pressure, and constraint and path relation Regarding to the image

schema of at, even if there are different classifications, the image schema as

ADJACENCY for the basic spatial relation is concluded For the CONTAINMENT

relation for at, the present study considers it as abstract relation rather than spatial

relation

Based on embodied experience, the image schemas of in, on and at for the students are structured in a concise way These considering the image schema of in as

CONTAINMENT, the image schema of on as CONTACT and the image schema of

at as ADJACENCY are taken into account in this study

Table 1: Image schemas of prepositions in, on and at with their application of the present study

TR= the man LM= the door

1.1.2.2 Prototype approach

Prototype approach started from Bernnett (1975) is pervasive among the studies in the acquisition of English prepositions In localistic theory, three types of meaning are considered as meanings of prepositions; namely, spatial, temporal and abstract He claimed that the centre of the meaning was spatial and the other two meanings were derived from the spatial meaning Since then, many researchers theoretically have considered temporal and abstract relations as extensional usages of spatial relations In other words, the spatial usage, which is the easiest meaning to show the relationship between the TR and LM, is the prototypical meaning of our target prepositions

1.2 Error in language learning process

which a fluent or native speaker of language regards as showing faulty or incomplete learning In other words, error is the results of incomplete knowledge Based on Corder (1973:257), errors are breaking the role, due to lack of competence such as knowledge of the language, which may or may not be conscious Furthermore, they tend to be not correctable

According to Lennon (1991) an error is "a linguistic form or combination of forms which in the same context and under similar conditions of production would not be produced by the speakers' native speakers‟ counterparts" In the second language teaching or learning process, the error has always been regarded as something negative which must be avoided On one hand, it was considered to be a sign of inadequacy of the teaching techniques and on the other hand it was seen as a natural result of the fact that since by nature we cannot avoid making errors we should accept the reality and try to deal with them

In general, these notions of error show that error causes the lack of competence of the language The third definition is more suitable for the study because it mentioned that error was seen as a natural result and was affected by teaching techniques Moreover, in Vietnam, where English is taught and learnt as a foreign language, the selected norm here must be the prescriptive English standard usage so this viewpoint will also lay a foundation for this thesis

1.2.2 Errors and Mistakes

For the purpose of this study, it is necessary to distinguish errors from mistakes Errors are systematic which means that it is repeated occurrences and are typically produced by language learners An error takes place as a result of lack of knowledge It represents a lack of competence i.e The learner‟s underlying deficient knowledge of the target language linguistic system Ellis (1997) refers to errors as gaps in the learner‟s knowledge

Conversely, mistakes are unsystematic, occasional and occur typically at random A mistake occurs when learners fail to perform their competence (Corder, 1967) A mistake is a result of processing problems that prevent learners from accessing their

knowledge of a target language rule and causes them to fall back on alternative, non-standard rule which they find easier to access Mistakes are thus performance phenomena and are regular features of native-speaker speech They reflect processing failures that arise as a result of factors such as memory lapses, emotional strains, carelessness and lack of automaticity

Mistakes hold no pedagogical relevance in error analysis Error analysis should be restricted to the study of errors, exclusive of mistakes (Corder, 1967) Errors produced by second language or foreign language learners have long attracted attention of applied linguists, researchers, teachers and course designers Studies have been carried out investigate the sources and problems faced by non-native language learners Error Analysis Hypothesis (EAH), Error Analysis from

cognitive perspective are approaches employed to find out the learner‟s difficulties

1.2.3 Error Analysis

It is important for the English teacher to realize that errors made by learned need to be analyzed correctly in order to arranging learning strategy effectively Moreover, it is important to discuss error analysis because it is the key for foreign language acquisition

According to Sanal (2007:597), error analysis is a study to identify, to describe and systematically to explain the learners‟ error by using any of the principles and techniques provided by lingungistics It can be said that error analysis as a process based on analysis of the students‟ errors Corder, in his serminal1967 paper, said that errors are evidence of what the learners have taken in rather than what teachers think they have put in Errors are significant in three respects including telling what needs to be taught, how learning proceeds, how to test the learner‟s hypotheses about the language they are learning The procedure for Error Analysis (E.A) is described basing on the six-step method set by Corder (1974) including: (1) A corpus of language is selected (2) Identification of Errors (3) Description of Errors (4) Explanation of Errors (5) Evaluation of Errors (6) Prevention of Errors

In general, Error Analysis is carried out to serve three different purposes: Firstly, to identify strategies used by learners in language learning; secondly, to identify causes of learner's errors; finally, to obtain information on common difficulties in language learning in order to find out the solutions for the problems

1.2.4 The Source of Errors

In order to be able to decide whether it is error or not it is needed to understand fully the source of errors Errors are stated by Brown (1992:166), arise from several possible general causes or sources It could be interlingual error of the interference from the native language, intralingua errors within the target language or and the sociolinguistic context of communication, psycholinguistics or cognitive strategies and no doubt countless affective variables

Firstly, it is interlingua errors that can be called errors by negative transfer Richard (1974:173) states Interlingual error is type of error that the learners of a foreign language make mistake in the target language by effect of his mother tongue Chainstain (1976:61) states that Interlingua errors are due to the interference from the mother tongue

Secondly, it is intralingual error which the interference from the student‟s own language is not the only reason for committing errors but also not knowing the target language very well; they have difficulties in using it Richard (1974:6) writes,

“Intralingual interference refers to items produced by learner, which reflect not the structure of mother tongue, but generalization based on partial exposure of the target language” Thus, intralingual errors are the direct result of the learner‟s attempt to create language system he is learning

1.3 Preposition

1.3.1 Prepositions in English

According to Oxford Advanced Learner‟s dictionary, a preposition “is a word or group of words used before a noun or pronoun to show place, position, time or method” Another definition is that a preposition “may be defined as connecting word showing the relation of a noun or a noun substitute to some other words in the

sentence (“Prepositions: definition and usage”, n.d) From these definitions, we can come to a conclusion about the function of a preposition which is it is used to connect nouns and noun structures with other structures in a sentence Prepositions are often in one-word form; however, there are also other prepositions with more than one word They are made up with two or three words Prepositions are used with a lot of functions including time, location, manner, means, quantity, purpose, and state or condition

In this part, the researcher would like to mention the ideal meaning of

prepositions of place “in, on, at” According to Herskovits (1986: 128-140), the

ideal meaning of a preposition is a geometrical idea; from which all uses that preposition derive by means of various adaptations and shifts An ideal meaning is generally a relation between two or three ideal geometric objects ( eg., points, lines,

surfaces, volumes, and vector) He divided informal definitions of the core

meanings for two categories of prepositions, designated as "topological" (at on in)

in: partial inclusion of a geometrical construct in a volume, an area, or a line

Firstly, the ideal meaning of “at”: „AT‟– for a point to coincide with another (coincidence of a point with a point in space.)The following suggested use types: Spatial entity at location (Julie at the post office; party at office); Spatial entity at sea (containers at sea); Spatial entity at generic place (vacations at the seaside); Person at institution (Prof Jones at Berkeley; son at University); Person using artifact (Maggie at desk; girl at typewriter) ; Spatial entity at landmark in highlighted medium (bubbles at surface of water) ; Physical object on line and indexically defined crosspath (campsite at river) ; Physical object at a distance from point, line, or plane (airplane at 10,000 feet)

Secondly, the ideal meaning of “On”, Herskovits (1986, 140) gives “on” the deal meanings: for a geometrical construct X to be contiguous with a line or surface Y; if Y is the surface of an object Oy, and X is the space occupied by another object

Ox, for Oy to support Ox.( on: contiguity, adjacency of a geometrical construct with

a surface, or a line.) And identities these use types: Spatial entity supported by physical object; Accident/objects as part of physical object; Physical object attached

to another; Physical object transported by a large vehicle ; object over another; Spatial entity located on geographical location; Physical or geometrical object contiguous with a line; Physical object contiguous with edge of a geographical area Thirdly, the ideal meaning of preposition “in” is inclusion of a geometric construct

of x in a one-, two-, or three-dimensional geometric construct of y (in: partial inclusion of a geometrical construct in a volume, an area, or a line): Spatial entity in

a container (the milk in the glass, the chair in the corner); Gap or object

“embedded” in physical object (the fish in the water, sugar and milk in the coffee);

A physical object in the air (the bird in the air); Physical object in outline of another

or a group of objects (the bird in the tree, straw in his hair); Spatial entity in part of space or averment (there is a chair in the middle of the room They sat in the shadow of a tree); Accident or object part of physical or geometric object (the crease in his pants, a page in a book, a man in crowd); Person in clothing (a man in red hat); Person or participant in institution (My son is in college); Object in the road (there is a truck in the road)

1.3.2 Vietnamese Prepositions

Like English, Vietnamese also has a category of word which is similar to prepositions We may call this category Vietnamese equivalent of English preposition To make it simple, some people prefer to use the name preposition Nevertheless, the notion preposition in Vietnamese is a quite complicated issue because some linguists have claimed that prepositions do not exist in Vietnamese According to Tran (2007) there are two main types of preposition in Vietnamese: prepositions of time and location In addition, there are some other prepositions

called miscellaneous ones Prepositions of time are vào (in, on, at), trong or suốt (during), trước (before), sau (after), kể từ khi (since) and cho tới khi (until) In terms

of prepositions of location, there are trên (on, above, over), trong (in, inside), chung quanh (around), bên phải (on the right of), cạnh (next to) and so on Finally, miscellaneous prepositions conclude cho (for), với (with), về (about), nhờ (thanks to), bởi (by) and so forth

1.3.3 Some comments about prepositions of place “in, on, at” from cognitive perspective

In English, space prepositions state the location of an object without paying attention to the position of the speakers For example, English people often say: “the

plane is “in” the sky, the child is playing “in” the kitchen, cars run “in” the street”

( McCarty, Pérez, Torres-Guzman, To, & Watahomigie, 2004, p 150) On the contrary, in Vietnamese, people tend to consider the position of the speakers They say: máy bay ở trên trời (the plane is on the sky)

In addition, Tran (2010) mentioned several differences between English and Vietnamese prepositions in terms of semantics and pragmatics First, when describing the higher position, they take the contact meaning between trajectory and

landmark into consideration Vietnamese people almost do not pay attention to this aspect They just use the only word trên Second, when talking about the relation between above (trên) and under (dưới), English people are always aware of whether

or not trajector is in the vertical reference of the landmark‟s area In contrast, Vietnamese people only divide the space into two parts “above/under” (trên/dưới)

In general, spatial prepositions imply a relation between two entities in space in which the located object is the subject of sentence and the reference object is the receiver of the action in the predicates Studies spatial language in linguistics indicates that spatial preposition are closely related to topographic experiences Herskovists (1986) designed a framework to relate preposition pairs to spatial concepts The first part of the three-part framework of semantic analysis consists of the ideal meaning of a term as a geometrical ideal, based on the concept of discrete objects in space Ideal meanings are inferred from real examples of normal used and can be formalized with such systems as first-order logic or cognitive spatial frameworks, such as an imagined geometry of points, lines or areas Deviances from these ideals occur when they fail to explain some uses such as when reference must

be made to the cognitively-viewed description of some aspect of the object, not the object itself These deviances lead to the second and third part of the framework; sense shifts, a conceptually close relation to the ideal meaning based on the

speaker‟s pragmatic intentions and context, and tolerance shifts, a gradual rang in deviations from ideal meanings

In other words, spatial prepositions are used to describe the spatial relation in natural language They are used to indicate relation between two arguments, x and y and how they relate to each other in space (In cognitive studies, TRs and LMs are used as two terms for the arguments of x and y) By using the arguments y as reference, spatial prepositions describe the place of x

1.4 Review of previous studies

Prepositions and prepositional errors have attracted the attention of many language researchers over the past few decades In spite of being the “little word”, prepositions are notoriously difficult for language users Consequently, a number of studies are concerned with the most common errors that the second language learners often encounter during the acquisitions and the possible solutions for this problem The following studies are the latest studies:

Firstly, Chong Kim Foo (2007) in “An analysis of the prepositional errors of time, place and direction among Chinese secondary school students” examined the extent of errors and the error tendencies of Chinese Secondary school students in their written assignments with regard to the prepositions of time, place and direction and also attempted to explain the causes of errors made According to this study, subjects made most errors in using the preposition of time (39.5%) compared to preposition of direction (34.6%) and preposition of place (25.9%) Among the three error tendencies, wrong selection of prepositions was the most prominent (64.7%) This indicated the uncertainty and ambiguity of Chinese students in selecting the correct prepositions in their translation The major cause of errors in these three classes of prepositions tended towards developmental aspects of overgeneralization, false concept hypothesis, omission and ignorance of rules restriction Only 28% of the errors were a result of first language transfer The lack of knowledge, exposure and limited experience of using these prepositions contributed to the frequency of errors

Secondly, Nunung Khurriyati (2013) with topic “Error analysis of the use if prepositions of place of the eighth year students in SMP N3 AMPEl in the academic

year of 2012/2013 The study describes the varieties of SMP N 3 Ampel Students‟ mastery on the use of preposition of place of the second year This study was also intended to give some contributions concerning the factors that influence the grammatical errors on the use of preposition of place and how to overcome the errors According to the result of the study, factors that influenced the errors were over generalization and incomplete of the rule in using preposition of place The solution from the writer were the students should understand deeply and study about the function of preposition of place more and more and for the teacher, they have to give the students explanation and exercise more than before

Moreover, the topic “A Study and Analysis of Errors in the Written Production

of Swedish Adolescent Learners of English “ was carried out by Karine Demailly Tulldahl at Linköping University in 2004 He decided he should study the production of learners in the first as well as in the third (and last) grades of Swedish secondary school (Årskurs 7 and Årskurs 9) The corpus consists of 36 essays divided into two parts: 18 papers written by the first-grade learners and 18 written

by the third-grade learners By using many theories, his analysis gave some indication about the kinds of errors produced One of his theories is cognitive theory

In term of domestic studies, some researchers studied this aspect Firstly, many studies have been done on prepositions from contrastive analysis perspective Hoang Thi Huyen Dieu (2011) and Nguyen Thi Yen Nhung (2010) shared the same thought when they conducted a secondary research to compare and contrast the prepositions

in English and Vietnamese Accordingly, the differences in TRs and LMs caused most misunderstanding of English learners when they used prepositions

Vo Thi Cam Thuy (2011) showed her concern with the prepositions

“up/down” and “lên/xuống” The data were collected from English and Vietnamese short stories, novels and newspapers were used in literal meaning and in metaphorical contexts She analyzed the data in terms of syntactic and semantic features to find out the differences and similarities between them She found out that “up/down” were also considered as particles in the phrasal verbs in English and

“lên/xuống” could play the roles of the main verbs in phrasal verbs The study helped readers get in-depth information about two English prepositions

In term of error analysis, in Vietnam, there are some studies such as Nguyen Thi Huong Tra (2005) with topic “English prepositions of place at, on, in:

an analysis of errors made by secondary school students” In her study, an analysis

of errors in using prepositions of place AT, ON, IN is carried out to give the answer that the errors in using these prepositions is not in their structure, position or function in sentences but it is due to their idiomatic usage and the culture differences of two nations She got data by using test to find out and discuss the types and causes of the errors Besides, Hoang Thi Dieu Huyen (2011) found that in process of teaching and learning English, using preposition is one of the most difficulties for teachers and learners Her research aims at analyzing the differences between English and Vietnamese prepositions The study has pedagogical implications for teaching prepositions in English and to help teachers and motivate them to describe and analyze the learners‟ errors and also to prepare remedial exercises to eliminate the errors their students make the use of prepositions

In short, many researchers have shown their concern to prepositions for the last few decades However, each of them is interested in different perspectives of prepositions: some focus on finding out how many equivalents a certain English preposition has in Vietnamese; a few of them try to distinguish the similar prepositions whereas the others explore the common errors that second language users often make Otherwise, no researchers have made an in-depth study related to errors of using prepositions of place “in, on, at: from cognitive perspective Therefore, this study will be carried out in order to fill the gap of the research field

CHAPTER 2:METHODOLOGY

2 1 Restatement of research questions

1 What kinds of errors do students at Hai Duong University often have in using prepositions of place AT, ON, IN?

2 What might be the sources of the errors?

3 What suggestion can be made in order to help students acquire the use of English prepositions of place AT, ON, IN?

2 2 The fitness of the research approach

A test research is a study of a large group through direct study of a subset of that group Tests are widely used to gather data For these reasons, I believed that a survey research design would fit my purpose

2.3 Context of the study

2.3.1 Setting of the study

The University of Hai Duong (Hai Duong University of Economics and Technology) is a public school that belongs to Hai Duong People‟s Committee It was established on the basis of upgrading Hai Duong College of Economics and Technology dated on July, 26th, 2011 by the Prime Minister and renamed as The University of Hai Duong in accordance with the Decision No.378/ QĐ-TTg dated

on March, 1st, 2013 by the Prime Minister

With more than 52 year-old tradition of establishment and growth ( on the basis of consolidation and merger the institutions from the following sections: Finance, Planning, Labor and Food, the University has its prestige and strength in professional and vocational training in according to the levels of primary, secondary, junior and undergraduate education and the branches of Economics-Technology-Society

With the motto “Qualified training associates with saving cost for learners”

and many positive and feasible solutions, training quality of the University is improving more and more, meeting the practical requirements of society At the

lot of difficulties and challenges such as constructing the facilities and modernizing equipment; doing student affairs work well; implementing the mechanism to attract, train, foster and enhance the quality of the staffs and lecturers; innovating the content, program and training methods in a progressive and modern way; keeping doing research, opening and training new college and undergraduate majors attached to essentially social requirements; cooperating and exchanging the experiences of training and management experiences with prestigious universities within Vietnam and in foreign countries so as to build and train appropriately with market mechanism and international integration;

The University, accompanied by its groups and individuals, has been recognized and awarded many honors by the political and social groups

At Hai Duong University, non-English major students have to learn English

as a compulsory subject They are required to complete four general English terms

in the first year and second year and an ESP term in the third year Each English class has from 20 two 35 students At the end of each term, students are always examined on four skills including listening, speaking, reading and writing Most first year students‟ level of English proficiency ranges from beginning to pre- intermediate level When they were at high school, they got used to translation grammar teaching method in which the teachers focused on the rules of grammar structures and students practiced the drills to remember those structures Therefore,

at university, most students have difficulties in listening and speaking skills

Among 20 teachers of English currently teaching non-majors got the MA degrees They are all female ranking from 24 to 45 and have at least two years teaching non-majors at UHD

The textbooks used in general English courses are Life series (Vietnam edition) by John Hughes Two first terms deal with the Elementary book and the two later terms learn the pre-intermediate book Because of the final examination format, students are always required to practice and complete all language skills during the course including listening, speaking, writing, reading comprehension and language forms

2.3.2 Participants

The study was first conducted with the participation of 120 students randomly chosen from different classes representing 3000 students of UHD Among them, there are 40 students from U2.KT2, 40 students from U2.KT 9 and 40 students fromU2.KT1 The majority of students are aged from 18 to 22 They come from different backgrounds and environments, varied from the cities to mountainous areas Most of them have been learning English for at least 7 years

These groups of students are chosen for the study for the two following reasons: Firstly, the students are required to learn General English at UHD A study on the students who have just completed the first and second term of English is ideal to understand their reasons for learning English and plan strategies for improving their motivation in later terms

Secondly, a study on students sharing the same type of drives and condition of learning but differing in learning classes can help define kinds of motivation more sufficiently The number of students from the faculty of accounting are bigger than those of any other faculty at UHD and assumed to learn English better than others and seem to be more interested in English Most of them have higher level of language proficiency than those from other departments because English is one of their main subjects at the university entrance exams They also want to develop their abilities in using English as their future career requirements By contrast, the other part of students from other departments tend to regard English as less important than the other subjects, so most of them just learn English in order to pass the exams

2.4 Research instruments

In order to carry out the study, the combination between the quantitative and qualitative method was employed Actually, quantitative research only gathers statistical data, representative for a wider part of the population, to confirm or to contradict a theory Besides, qualitative method is defined as the one which generate words than numbers, as data for analysis (Bricki and Green, 2007) Dapper (2004, p.645) also states that qualitative research focuses more with “developing

concepts, understanding phenomena and theoretical propositions that are relevant to other settings and other groups of individuals” In the present study, the quantitative method was used to calculate and classify the number of errors of prepositions of place “in, on, at” After the data were collected, the qualitative method would be used to discover how and why there exist some errors of these prepositions and the causes of these errors by referring to the differences and similarities between the two peoples in terms of cognition

In order to obtain data and information for the study, two sets of tests for majored students are used Using test is one of the most popular instruments to investigate opinions and one of the best choices to collect data from a large group of subjects at the same time

Test for the students was delivered to students for the purpose of finding types

and frequencies of their errors There are two parts of tests The first part provides some general information about students in terms of name, gender, age, learning major, and province.The second part of the survey aims at investigating students‟ types and frequencies of their errors The first test includes 3 sections The students fill one preposition IN, On or AT in the gaps in the sentences The second test asks students to write the sentences to describe the pictures using the clues This test is confirmed the reasons of their errors

In order to design a test which is valid, the author based on the study by Le Van

Thanh (2002) with the topic “Khảo sát thực nghiệm sử dụng các giới từ không gian

at, in,on ở học viên người Việt” published in 2002 This study presented all errors

that Vietnamese learners encountered when using prepositions of place

To distinguish between an error and mistake, Ellis as mentioned by Erdogan (2005:263) also suggest two ways The first one is to check the consistency of learner‟s writing, if he sometimes uses the correct form and sometimes the wrong one, it is a mistake However, if he always uses it incorrectly, it is an error The second way is to ask learner to try to correct his own deviant utterence When he is unable too, the deviations are errors, while he is successful, they are mistake In this

topic, the researcher would like to use the second way to confirm that these errors are real errors In teaching procedure, the researcher took note them

2.5 Data collection and analysis procedure

The technique of collecting data is one important aspects of research There are some technique of collecting data They are test, questionnaire, interview, observation and etc There is no the best method of collecting data Every method has its own strengths and weaknesses In this research, the writer takes a test about Preposition of Place to collect the data She needs instruments to find the students errors in using Preposition of Place An instrument plays an important role to collect data Suharsimi Aikunto (1996:135) states that an instrument is a mean, which plays an important role to collect data in a research.There are two kinds of test namely; subjective test which the students organize, interprete or associate their knowledge Whereas objective test is a test which the students will not organize, interpret or associate, but they only give short and complete answer There are five of objective test, they are: true false, multiple choice, matching, completion, and short answer

In this research, the writer conducts the test to collect the data to find a descriptive study about the student‟s error of using Prepositions First, the writer conducts test to the students at Hai Duong University It has 200 students, the result of the test are use as data of this research.The test will be data collection When the data are collected, they are classified based on its errors sources From those data the writer will do the analysis, and there will be data analysis to come to conclusion

The research is mainly test-based study Two tests were designed in order to collect data for the study They were designed on the basis of the knowledge introduced in the English textbooks Therefore, we can guarantee that the tasks given in the tests do not go beyond what has been taught in class

The first test is a grammar test which consists of 3 sections

Section 1: Fill one preposition IN, On or AT in the gaps in the following sentences