The Relationship between the Teaching of Prepositions and Students’ Misuses in Correspondence with their Communicative Competence The Case of Second Year Students of English at Larbi Tébessi University -Tébessa

Abstract

In view of the dominating perspectives in the 1960 about the purposes of second and foreign language pedagogy, learners’ abilities to communicate appropriately and accurately are of an essential concern. Accordingly, the focus has shifted from the supremacy of grammatical structures toward the major effects of the sociolinguistic dimension on learners’ communicative competence. This perspective has been overwhelmingly adopted to direct the attention again to the importance of both linguistic and sociolinguistic competence in second and foreign language instruction. Correspondingly, this study aims at investigating the role of the teaching of prepositions as one of the most problematic grammatical features, and students’ deficiencies when using them to communicate in various situational settings, in relationship with the development of their communicative abilities. In this regard, the study utilized a correlational design applying a mixed method to investigate the relationship between the variables by means of two questionnaires, and a diagnostic test along with a qualitative conventional content analysis conducted on the lessons and exercise handouts. The necessary data was collected from 40 participants (33-second year students and 7 teachers) from the department of English, University of Larbi Tebessi. The results of the diagnostic test significantly evidenced that students fail to choose the correct prepositions even in context-based tasks, and the data gathered from both questionnaires implied that almost all students discard the context when learning or practicing prepositions. The teaching methods do not boost students’ abilities to communicate accurately either and teachers do face hardships in implementing the notion of contextualization. These results corroborate our hypotheses and indicate that the sharp absence of practice using context-based materials and the inefficiency of students’ learning and practicing habits are the prime reasons for their communicative deficiencies when using prepositions. Finally, the outcomes of this study and its methodological suggestions and guidance should be taken into consideration in the future.