Vietnamese students learning the semantics of English prepositions
Prepositions are significant in sentences because they are used as markers to join words and phrases into a sentence. Teachers usually teach prepositions by providing students with explanations about the usage of prepositions and then gives examples as illustrations. These examples are often acco...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia
2017
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| Online Access: | http://journalarticle.ukm.my/11774/ http://journalarticle.ukm.my/11774/ http://journalarticle.ukm.my/11774/1/19395-63588-2-PB.pdf |
| Summary: | Prepositions are significant in sentences because they are used as markers to join words and
phrases into a sentence. Teachers usually teach prepositions by providing students with
explanations about the usage of prepositions and then gives examples as illustrations. These
examples are often accompanied by vivid pictures. This method, however, does not provide
students information on how to analyze the different senses of prepositions. This current
study, thus, aims to explore the effectiveness and students’ opinions of new pedagogical
instructions on ten English prepositions, namely above, among, at, behind, beside, between,
in, in front of, on and under. The research design involved a quasi-experimental design
adopting pretest-posttest between-group research. Out of 95 students who volunteered to
participate in the study, 38 participants were selected. They were divided into two groups for
the new cognitive linguistic approach and traditional instructions. Pretest and posttest were
used to discover the participants’ improvements. The participants’ opinions of the cognitive
treatment were also investigated. The findings illustrate that the group that was treated with
CL-based instructions outperformed the traditional group in the posttest although they gained
a comparable mean score in the pretest. Most participants also provided positive responses to
the new treatment. The findings suggests that cognitive treatment could be employed to assist
students in improving their understanding and retaining the metaphorical meanings of the
prepositions. |
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