Acquiring English Language Prepositions by Iranian EFL Learners: The Effect of Proficiency and Gender

Abstract

This study was an attempt to examine the relationship <br />between Iranian EFL students’ general knowledge of English and their <br />use of English prepositions. To discover whether there was any sig- <br />nificant relationship between EFL university and high school students’ <br />English proficiency level and their performance on a preposition test, <br />three groups of beginning, intermediate, and upper intermediate stu- <br />dents have been selected based on their scores in the TOEFL test. In <br />addition to investigating the relationship between the level of proficiency <br />of the learners and their use of prepositions, the present study was also <br />an attempt to examine the differences between the female and male <br />participants in using the prepositions. For this purpose, 32 male and 58 <br />female learners were selected to investigate the effect of gender. All of <br />the participants were requested to provide answers to the preposition <br />test developed by the researcher. The results of the correlation coeffi- <br />cient test showed that there was a moderate and significant relationship <br />between the learners’ proficiency level and their use of prepositions. The <br />analysis of the second research question indicated that there were no sig- <br />nificant differences between the gender of the participants and their use <br />of prepositions. <br /> <br />