English Language Training Unit
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Item Acquisition of English prepositions by ESL learners in Sri Lanka: A comparison between Grade 4 and Grade 6 of Government schools(Annual Research Symposium conducted by the National Centre for Advanced Studies in Humanities & Social Sciences Sri Lanka, 2015) Jayasinghe, R.R.Research and simple observation indicate that English prepositions are a problem for learners at every level of proficiency (Cowan, 2008). Littlefield (2006) has investigated the existence of four fine-grained categories of prepositions in the domain of prepositions by analyzing first language acquisition of five children (aged 1;2-2;3) using naturalistic speech data as follows: (1) Adverbial prepositions [+ Lexical, -Functional], (2) Semi-lexical prepositions [+Lexical, +Functional], (3) Particles [-Lexical, - Functional], (4) Functional Prepositions [- Lexical, + Functional] Littlefield considered as [+Lexical] those that contribute semantic content, and as [+Functional] those that are able to check the Case of their complements.The overall objective of the study was to validate the existence of these fine-grained categories of the domain of English prepositions by using ESL learners in Grade 4 (aged 9- 9;11) and Grade 6 ( 11- 11;11) of two government schools in Sri Lanka and to compare the order of acquisition of English prepositions in Grade 4 with Grade 6. A dictation task was administered to 65 students from each Grade in two schools. Ten sentences each with each category of preposition were recorded, played to the students and requested them to write them down. The findings were quantified and analyzed using SPSS. . The findings of the study validated Littlefield’s 2006 study that there are four categories of prepositions in the domain of English prepositions. The results showed that in both grades there is a significant difference in the acquisition of adverbial prepositions with particles and functional prepositions. There is no significant difference between the other categories of prepositions in both grades. The findings also showed that the order of the acquisition of English prepositions in Grade 4 and Grade 6 were similar and the sentences with [+Lexical] prepositions are imitated better than the sentences with [-Lexical] categories. The observations conclude that the existence of four fine-grained categories of preposition is validated by ESL learners of both Grade 4 and Grade 6. Both Grades showed the same order of acquisition of English prepositions and it differs from the native speakers’ order. The order of acquisition of English prepositions, found in this study is recommended to the teachers of English to use at the ESL classroom to facilitate teaching English prepositions in schools effectively.Item A comparative study on the acquisition of the four categories of prepositions in writing by the ESL learners in Sri Lanka: Grade 8 and Grade 10(Asia TEFL International Conference, 2017) Jayasinghe, R.The present study attempts to validate or disprove the fine-grained categorization of English prepositions found by Littlefield (2006), on the basis of ESL (English as a Second Language) learners’ acquisition patterns in a writing task. In English, prepositions are words while in Sinhala, they are represented as spatial postpositions or as suffixes (Thilakaratne 1992). This particular cross-linguistic variation as well as the polysemy and the idiosyncrasy of some English prepositions make a negative impact on the acquisition of English prepositions to the ESL learners whose first language is Sinhala. Littlefield (2006) found the existence of four categories of English prepositions as follows: Adverbial prepositions [+Lexical, -Functional], Particles [-Lexical, -Functional], Semi-lexical prepositions [+Lexical, +Functional], and Functional prepositions [ -Lexical, +Functional]. Using naturalistic speech data of five native speakers, Littlefield (2006) has found that the prepositions with [-Functional] categories show an advantage over the prepositions with [+Functional] categories in the acquisition of English prepositions. Here, [+Lexical] featured prepositions are those that contribute semantic content and prepositions with [+Functional] assign Case to their complements. This study examines the frequency as well as the accuracy of production of the four categories of prepositions in writing. It aims to compare the acquisition patterns of prepositions of ESL learners in writing. A picture story writing task in which prepositions needed to be abundantly used was utilized to collect production data from 40 randomly selected students each from Grade 8 and Grade 10 in two schools. Interaction effects and category wise analysis were computed and a two way ANNOVA was run by using SPSS. If the prepositions with [-Functional] rank higher than the prepositions with [+ Functional] features the relevant order can be used to facilitate the teaching of English prepositions and also to prepare the study guides and text books for the relevant Grades in schools.