Accuracy of the use of English prepositions in the speech of Czech university learners of English
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| Year of publication | 2022 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | Using potential occasion analysis this paper explores the accuracy of the use of prepositions in the L2 English speech production of L1 speakers of Czech. Data is sourced from a spoken corpus of semi-structured interviews with forty-five Czech university learners of English totalling 62,093 words. The aim of the paper is to report on two main analyses: (1) it provides an overview of specific types of preposition errors in this learner population, and (2) it outlines the accuracy order of L2 English preposition production at the six L2 proficiency levels A1 – C2. With a total number of 339 preposition errors (out of the total number of 3,123 prepositions used in the analysed corpus), the results show that English prepositions pose a challenge to EFL learners. The results also show that Czech EFL learners frequently err in the use of independent prepositions (72.9% of all preposition errors). The most frequent errors in the use of prepositions are those where learners select an incorrect preposition (mainly at, on, and in). A closer analysis shows an increasing tendency toward preposition accuracy in speech across proficiency levels A1 to C2 with 82.6% of correct uses of English prepositions at A1 level and 97.36% of their correct uses at the L2 proficiency level C2. |
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