Thesis
Using raising awareness techniques to teach English prepositions: an exploratory study
Washington State University
Master of Arts (MA), Washington State University
2014
Handle:
https://hdl.handle.net/2376/103059
Abstract
English prepositions are problematic for ELLs (English language learners) and usually taught in a non-explanatory method. This exploratory study examines the effectiveness of an alternative approach which is using RA tasks (raising awareness) to teaching prepositions. The hypothesis was whether this task would improve students' learning of prepositions. Two groups of advanced learners of English at an intensive English language center at a large university in the northwest US were taught prepositions in, on, at and verb/adjective prepositions collocations. The experimental group was taught using RA technique while the comparison group was exposed to materials used at the language center. The experimental group members were exposed to authentic material adapted from COCA (Corpus of Contemporary American English) and were asked to discover the rules of using prepositions in those texts. Both groups were given pre/posttests. Data were analyzed using independent samples t-test to compare the means of the two samples to see if there is a statistically significant difference between the two. Results showed that students in the experimental group performed better than students in the comparison group. . However, this difference was not statistically significant and that is likely because of factors such as sample size, time limitation and the use of fill-in-the blanks test to measure students' performance. Raising awareness tasks such as reformation, task repair, dictogloss and reconstruction are likely better alternatives to test the effectiveness of this technique. Results also showed that prepositions with and about seem to be the most difficult preposition for all students
Metrics
9 File views/ downloads
23 Record Views
Details
- Title
- Using raising awareness techniques to teach English prepositions
- Creators
- Ahmed Salem Jebril
- Contributors
- Thomas Salsbury (Degree Supervisor)
- Awarding Institution
- Washington State University
- Academic Unit
- Teaching and Learning, Department of
- Theses and Dissertations
- Master of Arts (MA), Washington State University
- Publisher
- Washington State University; [Pullman, Washington] :
- Identifiers
- 99900524883001842
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Thesis