Learning to Use English Prepositions: Structural Implications for the Tamil Students

Abstract

The mastery of English prepositions poses a significant challenge for Tamil-speaking ESL students in Sri Lanka, attributable to profound morpho-syntactic structural differences between English and Tamil. English prepositions, functioning to establish syntactic and semantic relationships within sentences, contrast starkly with Tamil's case system where grammatical relationships are integrated into the noun through suffixes. This study, conducted with 84 Sri Lankan university students, investigates these implications through a corpus analysis of texts produced in formal assessments, focusing on the usage of prepositions in the discourse of business letters. The research methodology combined structural and functional analysis to identify prepositional errors revealing patterns that emphasize the influence of the Tamil linguistic structure on English language acquisition. Notably, the over-reliance on certain prepositions, especially in, for denoting place, time and manner, reflects a direct transfer from Tamil's case-ending equivalents. This tendency suggests a potential gap in understanding the complex requirements of English prepositional use leading to frequent misuse and overuse. Furthermore, the analysis highlighted difficulties with compound prepositions and phrasal verbs indicating a lack of familiarity with these constructs in English. The study extends beyond error analysis examining the cognitive, social and discourse dimensions. By applying theories such as Bandura's Social Cognitive Learning Theory and Piaget's Schema Theory, it explored how social interaction, environmental factors and cognitive structures influence the learning process. The findings revealed a significant pattern of errors related to incorrect replacement, omission and addition of prepositions, reflecting the complexities of the two different grammatical frameworks. This investigation’s implications are manifold. For ESL educators and curriculum developers, the results emphasize the necessity of targeted instruction that specifically addresses the functional use of prepositions in English contrasting them with Tamil's post-positional markers and case suffixes. Such pedagogical approaches should incorporate visual aids, contextual learning, corpus analysis tools and personalized feedback. Peer learning, role-playing and the use of digital language learning tools can further support the acquisition processes. Ultimately, this study contributes to second language acquisition by illuminating the specific challenges faced by Tamil speakers.