An investigation into English prepositions in textbooks of English 10 11 12 at high schools in Vietnam
English is one of the subjects Vietnamese students learn at school. They are guided through the use of correct elements of speaking and writing in order to communicate effectively. We all know that prepositions are one of the most difficult aspects of English grammar and vocabulary. The use of prepositions becomes crucial for achieving communicative competence because prepositions control most of the circumstantial relations in given utterances. Moreover using English prepositions correctly is among the important things for those who learn it as a foreign language. Most students in Vietnam face so many difficulties in using prepositions because the meanings of prepositions also depend on the position of the speaker to things to which are spoken or referred. For example, in Vietnamese we say “Mẹ ở ngoài vườn” if the speaker is indoors and the mother is outdoors, and we say “Mẹ ở trong vườn” if both the speaker and the mother are in the garden. However, with the both situations we have only one sentence in English “The mother is in the garden”. Now study another example: someone asks you “Where’s your mother?” and you will answer in Vietnamese “Mẹ ở dưới bếp” if you are in the living room and your mother is in the kitchen and of course both these rooms are in the house. But if the kitchen is out and you are in the living room, you will say “Mẹ ở ngoài bếp”. In this case, we say in English “The mother is in the kitchen”.
As a teacher of English, I would like to conduct this research to give an overview not only to the teachers but also to Vietnamese students of English at high school about how to use prepositions correctly. Hence, it is essential to carry out “An investigation into English prepositions in textbooks of English 10, 11, 12 at high schools in Vietnam”, which focuses on the use of prepositions viewed with a cognitive linguistics approach to find out whether the semantic functions of such items determined their acquisition and use.
This research is aimed at studying English prepositions used in textbooks at high schools in Vietnam, the difficulties in using prepositions of Vietnamese students, to find out the causes of preposition problems and to help learners overcome these difficulties.
This study is intended to:
– investigate the learning of prepositions used in English textbooks at high schools in Viet Nam.
– find out some common mistakes in using prepositions made by students in Kon Tum City.
– suggest some solutions to correct students’ mistakes of prepositions as well as some rules to use English prepositions correctly.
– What are the common prepositions used in textbooks at high schools in Vietnam?
– What are the common mistakes about prepositions made by students at high schools in Kon Tum City?
– What causes students to make those mistakes?
This study investigates the most common prepositions used in textbooks of English 10, 11, 12. And in this study, the teachers of English and the students at high schools in Kon Tum City would be chosen as the representative informants.
1.5. SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY
With the aim to make a study on the meanings of prepositions in textbooks at high schools in Viet Nam viewed with a Cognitive Linguistic Approach, the research is expected to be able to provide useful knowledge for students to enable to have better use of prepositions when communicating in English.
1.6. ORGANIZATION OF THE STUDY
The research is organized into 5 main chapters as follows.
Chapter 1, Introduction, presents the introduction of the study including the rationale, the aims and objectives, the research questions, the significance, the scope and the organization of the study.
Chapter 2, Literature Review and Theoretical Background, makes a review of the previous researches related to English prepositions. Also, this includes theoretical preliminaries concerning the subject under consideration which serve as the foundation of data analysis and discussion of findings in the following chapters including Cognitive linguistics and Cognitive semantics, Meanings of prepositions, Prepositions and collocation
Chapter 3, Methodology and Procedures, includes the research design, the research methodology, the description of samples, data collection, data analysis, research procedures and the reliability and validity of the thesis.
Chapter 4, Findings and Discussion, focuses on the analysis of meanings and semantic features of prepositions used in textbooks of English 10, 11, 12 in Viet Nam; from this, finds out the common mistakes about prepositions made by students at Nguyen Tat Thanh Gifted High School in Kon Tum City. What are the reasons for which students often make those mistakes? And what teachers of English can do to help learners of English avoid or overcome such errors is also mentioned in this chapter.
Chapter 5, Conclusions and Implications, summarizes the results of the tasks done in Chapter 4 and draws conclusions on prepositions used in textbooks of English 10, 11, 12 in Viet Nam. Besides, the chapter also provides implications for teachers, learners of English. And the limitations of the study and suggestions for further research are also in this chapter.
2.1. PREVIOUS STUDIES RELATED TO THE RESEARCH
Prepositions are profound, extensive and have been mentioned a lot in grammar books and dictionaries. So far, there have been a large number of researchers and linguists investigating into prepositions.
Seth [9] has discussed over 90 prepositions in current use throughout the English-speaking world.
John [7] provides clear and detailed explanations of prepositions, supported by numerous English examples, on specific areas of English.
Andrea and Evans [2, p.9] mentioned spatial scenes, embodied meaning and cognition. They indicate that “If a theorist believes that meaning is largely determined by language, then it follows that the theorist will attempt to explain meaning construction as deriving from the composition of lexical entries.”
Margaret, Mutiti, Shitandi [8] studied the relationship between semantic functions and the acquisition of English prepositions.
A lot of monographs about prepositions in English and in Vietnamese have been announced, for example, An Investigation into Locative Prepositions: A Pragmatics Perspective (the evidence in English and Vietnamese) by Tran Quang Hai [19]
Trinh Thu Huong [20] has also done a research on the most common Prepositions in English Idioms compared with Vietnamese for her doctoral dissertation in which she has surveyed the meaning and grammatical features of the four prepositions IN, ON, AT, OUT.
Evans [10, p.5] states that “Cognitive linguists, like other linguists, study language for its own sake; they attempt to describe and account for its systematicity, its structure, the functions it serves and how these functions are realized by the language system. However, an important reason behind why cognitive linguists study language stems from the assumption that language reflects patterns of thought.
The cognitive approach also offers exciting glimpses into hitherto hidden aspects of the human mind, human experience and, consequently, what it is to be human. [10, p.6]
Our cognitive abilities integrate raw perceptual information into a coherent and well defined mental image. The meanings encoded by linguistic symbols then, refer to our projected reality: a mental representation of reality, as construed by the human mind, mediated by our unique perceptual and conceptual systems. [10, p.7]
Ly Toan Thang [21] indicates that cognitive linguistics aims to study man’s ability to understand language through his concept and category about the world around him.
Concepts, in turn, derive from percepts. For instance, consider a piece of fruit like a pear. Different parts of the brain perceive its shape, color, texture, taste, smell and so on. [10, p.7]
Cognitive semantics is that subfield of cognitive linguistics
a. whose object of investigation is the ‘meaning’ of linguistic expression as part of cognition;
b. whose methods are those of empirical linguistics;
c. whose central aim, among others, is to reformulate, to answer or to eliminate classic philosophical questions concerning the nature of the mind and knowledge by dealing with them empirically and interdisciplinarily, and
d. which includes both modular and holistic approaches. [1, p.22-23]
Cognitive semantics identifies meanings of expressions with mental entities. [6, p.19]
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