The Use of Prepositions in Business Letter Writing in English: an Applied Linguistic Analytical Approach to Language Learning.

Abstract

Sri Lanka needs more applied linguistic research on the appropriate or acceptable use of language structures in English or in business English writing based on contrastive or error analytical approaches. This paper investigates the use of prepositions and the errors students make in business letter writing in English. It is a case study of the corpus of texts produced by the students of Business Management, Sinhala and Tamil of Vavuniya Campus of the University of Jaffna. The study classifies the word, phrase, and clause prepositions used, identifies the errors, and analyses their implications in the linguistic and discourse structures acquired in the first place. The written texts were collected from a systematic examination. The qualitative analysis dominates the quantitative data. The findings distinguish the errors typical of Sri Lankan students of other countries in English as a second language. The findings highlight the confusion between preposition and conjunction, the use of double prepositions, the malformation of prepositional phrase, the use of wrong preposition (replacement), the absence of preposition (deletion), and unnecessary prepositional use (insertion) are discussed in this paper. It contributes to the identification and explanation of the patterns and trends of the use of prepositions and of the errors Sri Lankan students generally make in their business letter writing in English.