English Language Teaching
December, 2009
Textbook Representation of Prepositions
Jayakaran Mukundan (corresponding author)
Department of Language and Humanities Education
Faculty of Educational Studies, Universiti Putra Malaysia
43400 UPM SERDANG, Selangor, Malaysia
Tel: 60-3-8946-6000
E-mail: jaya@educ.upm.edu.my; jayakaranmukundan@yahoo.com)
Norwati Roslim
English Language Department, Academy of Language Studies
Universiti Teknologi MARA, Negeri Sembilan
Kampus Kuala Pilah, Beting, 72000 Kuala Pilah, Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia
Tel: 60-6-484-2355; 012-941-7467
Fax: 06-484-2449
E-mail: norwatiroslim@yahoo.com
Abstract
This article presents a corpus-based investigation on English prepositions which are presented in three English language
textbooks used by lower secondary schools in Malaysia. The aims were to find out the distributions of prepositions, its
frequency order in comparison with the British National Corpus (BNC) and the differences in terms of their
co-occurrence with other parts of speech. The findings showed that there is a difference between the textbook corpus
and the BNC in terms of the frequency order of certain prepositions and there are similarities and differences in terms of
their co-occurrence with other parts of speech. This study indicates the textbook corpus is essential in the study of
prepositions and the results can guide teachers in deciding how best to supplement the text with activities that will give
learners exposure to target grammar item that is not sufficiently presented in the textbook.
Keywords: Preposition, Corpus, Textbooks
1. Introduction
As part of the grammatical system, prepositions seem to occur everywhere in speaking and writing (Morenberg, 1997).
However, it is difficult to learn to use prepositions correctly as most of them have several different functions and there
are not many rules to help in choosing which prepositions to use correctly (Swan, 1988). ESL learners still struggle with
prepositions long after they have achieved a high level of proficiency in English. Even proficient English speakers
exhibit variable performance with regard to which prepositions they use for a particular meaning (Celce-Murcia &
Larsen-Freeman, 1999).
The teaching of grammar has always been an important concern and there are several methods and approaches which
have been proposed in the teaching of grammar specifically and in the teaching of English as a Foreign and Second
language generally. In Malaysia, the English language is taught as a second language and in schools, the English
Language Syllabuses are skills based syllabuses advocating the communicative approach to English Language Teaching.
The emphasis is on the four language skills of listening, speaking, reading, writing and communicative ability
(Rajaretnam & Nalliah, 1999).
The syllabus of the Kurikulum Bersepadu Sekolah Menengah (KBSM) or the Integrated Secondary School Curriculum
for English language as outlined by the Curriculum Development Centre (CDC) of the Ministry Of Education Malaysia
(MoE) emphasizes that the teaching of grammar is to be incorporated into the four language skills and should be taught
in context and in a meaningful way. It should not be taught in isolation or as discrete items as far as possible. The
grammar items to be taught are listed in the syllabus.
Malaysian schools use prescribed textbooks provided by the Textbook Bureau of the Ministry of Education Malaysia in
their English language classes (Mukundan, 2004). English is generally taught using these government issued textbooks
which have been prepared according to the national English language syllabus guidelines set out by the Ministry of
Education (Murugesan, 2003).
Hence, as textbooks are used as core resources in classrooms, it is important to look at how the grammar items are
presented in these textbooks. This study specifies its focus on identifying prepositions, as listed in the syllabus, which
are presented in the textbooks used by schools in Malaysia.
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Objective of the Study
The objective of this study is to investigate English prepositions which are presented in the English Language textbooks
used by lower secondary schools in Malaysia, which are Form One, Form Two and Form Three.
1.1 Research Questions
In view of the objective mentioned above, this study attempts to answer the following research questions:
1) What are the distributions of prepositions in the English Language textbooks of Form One, Two and Three?
2) What is the order of prepositions in the English Language textbooks of Form One, Two and Three in comparison
with the BNC?
3) What are the differences in the use of prepositions identified in the English Language textbooks of Form One, Two
and Three?
2. Literature Review
2.1 Prepositions and the English language
Prepositions are grammatical words or function words that mainly contribute to the grammatical structure of the
sentence (Thornbury, 2002). Most of the common English prepositions, such as at, in, and for, are simple, that is,
consist of one word, whereas other prepositions, consisting of more than one word, such as along with, away from, out
of, are called complex prepositions (Quirk & Greenbaum, 1989). Klammer et al. (2004) has listed 60 simple
prepositions and 39 complex prepositions in Analyzing English Grammar.
In the English Language, prepositions are presented in three dimensions, namely, the form, meaning and use.
Celce-Murcia & Larsen-Freeman (1999) review the phrase structure rule for a prepositional phrase to make several
observations about the form of prepositions. It is stated, also, one of the greatest learning challenges presented by
prepositions is their meaning, for instance, the problem with giving an abstract definition to ESL/EFL students is that
the definition is often more difficult to comprehend and apply than the form itself. Additionally, there are issues of use
as well concerning prepositions. There appear to be instances where more than one preposition with the same meaning
is acceptable in a given context, for example, in a time period: It happened in/during 1998.
A preposition is a relationship word that expresses a connection to place, time, possession, accompaniment or
comparison. (Kosur, 2008). However, most prepositions have several different functions (Swan, 1988). Byrd and
Benson (2001) define prepositions are often used to create adverbial modifiers to give information about place or time.
Many of the words described as prepositions can also be used as other parts of speech. Whether or not a word is a
preposition depends on how it is used in a sentence. Biber et. al (1999) highlights the overlap issue between
prepositions and other word classes such as noun, adjective and adverb in The Longman Grammar of Spoken and
Written English (LGSWE).
On the other hand, English prepositions do not have a neat set of rules governing their use. These rules are often
complex, and may not be able to ensure accuracy (Wahlen, 2001). The nature and complexity of prepositions have
consequently led to problems with prepositions for ESL teachers and learners.
2.2 Prepositions and the Malay language
There are differences between the use of prepositions in the English language and in the first language of the ESL users.
For instance, in a Malaysian context, it is quite relevant to compare the prepositions in the English language and Malay
in an attempt to determine whether there would be difficulties in learning or acquiring English prepositions faced by
students whose mother tongue as well as medium of instruction is Malay. The following comparison between the two
languages has been outlined in Sudhakaran (2008) based on Othman (1993, 1985).
The preposition ‘in’ (dalam), where in the case of Malay, ‘in’ is used before nouns that relate to objects such as a
picture, story, mirror, while ‘into’ (di dalam) is used before a noun that indicates content or denote filling an area or
space like a room, river, or a container. In the English Language, ‘in’ has a wider application, since it is also used in
other situations too, for example, ‘in anger’, ‘in aid of’; whereas ‘into’, too, can be used in a wider context like ‘into
despair’, ‘into anger’.
The preposition ‘from’ (dari, daripada) in Malay has been split into two separate forms; one form to be used before
nouns indicating places or direction, for example, dari Melaka (from Melaka), dari angkasa lepas (from outer space),
dari utara (from the north); the other daripada is used before nouns related to resources, for example, daripada emas
(from gold), daripada kayu (from wood), daripada cermin (from glass), or before nouns related to people, for example,
daripada Ali (from Ali), daripada kakaknya (from his sister). However, here there is a distinct difference; while
daripada is also used for resources in Malay as in the examples above, in English, the preposition ‘of’ is used instead,
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December, 2009
for example, in ‘made of gold’, ‘of wood’ or ‘of glass’. However, there are instances of a similar usage too, for example,
‘made from the bark of the tree’.
In Malay, the preposition pada (‘at’) is used for names of objects or things that have a ‘surface’, for example, pada
mukanya (at his face), pada kulit buah (at the skin of the fruit), pada pintu (at the door), pada langsir pintu (at the door
curtain), as well as to denote time, for example, pada pukul lima (at five o’clock), pada pagi (at morning). Here too,
there are differences between the two languages. In some of the examples above, the appropriate preposition in English
would be ‘on’ – pada mukanya (on his face), pada kulit buah (on the skin of the fruit), pada pintu (on the door), pada
langsir pintu (on the door curtain), whereas ‘at the door’ in English would indicate a different meaning that somebody
is outside the door. The usage of ‘at’ for time (as indicated by the clock) is the same for both languages, but with
respect to the time of the day, in English, different prepositions can be used as follows; ‘at dawn’, ‘in the morning’, ‘at
noon’, ‘in the afternoon’, and ‘at night’.
Hence, it can be seen that there are some differences in the use of prepositions between English language and Malay.
While some of these differences are evident and distinct, others are subtler, and depend to a large extent on the nuances
of meaning implied in the context of use of the specific prepositions Sudhakaran (2008). Consequently, these add
problems to ESL teachers and learners due to prepositions not used as they are used in the first language of the ESL
users.
2.3 Studies on prepositions
Many studies on the forms of prepositions (O’Dowd, 1994, Frodeson and Eyring, 1997), meanings of prepositions
(Fillmore, 1968, Hudson, 1979, Lakoff, 1987, Burgman, 1981, Parker, 1993, Heitzman, 1993, Thompson, 1992, Taylor,
1993, Dirven, 1993) and use of prepositions (Kennedy, 1991, Lindstromberg, 1996, Todaka, 1996) have been used and
described in grammar books, particularly in Celce-Murcia & Larsen-Freeman (1999).
These studies may have made it more obvious why prepositions cause such difficulty for ESL/EFL students. While
learning the various meanings and meaning extensions of prepositions is perhaps the greatest challenge, a pedagogical
strategy that enables students to pay attention to their co-occurrence, collocational, and discourse behaviour in addition
will no doubt facilitate learners’ acquisition of these difficult lexico-grammatical forms (Celce-Murcia &
Larsen-Freeman, 1999).
One of the earlier studies made by Takahaski (1969) has stated one of the most difficult problems a student of English
as a Second Language faces is the understanding of the functions and the use of English prepositions. Most learning is
dependent on memorization and getting used to the usage. Takahaski further expressed his dissatisfaction with the idea
of the correct understanding and usage of certain prepositions involves intuitions. Instead, he believed that if the correct
understanding and usage of these prepositions involves intuition, then few who learn English as a Second Language can
gain mastery of them.
Other studies have looked into the acquisition patterns of different types of prepositions (Johnston and Slobin, 1979,
Conner and Chapman, 1985, Tomasello, 1987), studies on the frequent use of prepositions (Johnston and Slobin, 1979,
Johnston, 1984, Furrow, Murray and Furrow, 1985/1986) and also studies on the frequency of errors for the English
prepositions (Durkin, 1981, Leikin, 1998, Abkarian, 1983). All these studies on prepositions had used children at
different age levels as their subjects.
Abdulkarim (2008) has stated in his study, prepositions are so significant for communication and they play such an
important role, however, the systemic study of prepositions has been scarcely investigated both in linguistics and
methodology.
A corpus-related study compared the LOB corpus and the Nijmegan corpus (de Haan, 1992). The ten most frequent
prepositions in the LOB corpus are presented in a decreasing order, together with the ten most frequent prepositions in
the written part of the Nijmegan corpus. There are very few differences between the two corpora as far as the frequency
and distribution of prepositions are concerned.
2.4 Prepositions in the KBSM syllabus
As indicated in the KBSM syllabus, English prepositions that are listed to be taught in the lower secondary schools
include prepositions of place (in, on, near, under, in front of, by), prepositions of time (at, on, by, before, after) and
prepositions of direction (to, from) for the Form One KBSM syllabus. This list of prepositions is the same for Form
Two and Three with an addition of prepositions at and between for prepositions of place and an addition for the
preposition of quantity, of.
3. Methodology
This corpus-based study looks at a corpus of three lower secondary school English language textbooks used by schools
in Malaysia, the British National Corpus and utilizes a computer software WordSmith Tools version 4.0. According to
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Kennedy (1991), it is important to study the “linguistic ecology” of prepositions. One way to do so is to use computer
corpora.
3.1 Corpus-based analysis
In this study, two corpora, namely, the British National Corpus (BNC) and the English textbook corpus will be used and
compared to find out the frequency occurrence of prepositions. Three corpus-related studies by Kennedy (1987),
Holmes (1988) and Mindt (1992) have similar methodologies using sample textbooks and standard English corpora and
carried out a comparative study between the two. Kennedy has researched ways of expressing quantification and
frequency in ESL textbooks, Holmes examined ways of expressing doubt and certainty in ESL textbooks while Mindt
looked into the future time expressions in German textbooks. Most researches in this area found that there are
discrepancies or considerable differences between what textbooks are teaching and how native speakers actually use
language as evidenced in the corpora. The implication being in the area of materials development particularly that of
textbook writing (Tan, 2001).
3.1.1 British National Corpus
One of the corpora used in this study is the British National Corpus (BNC). The British National Corpus is a 100
million word collection of samples of written and spoken language from a wide range of sources designed to represent a
wide cross-section of current British English, both spoken and written (accessible from, http://www.natc orp.ox.ac.uk/).
In this study, the frequency for both spoken and written will be used in order to compare with the textbook corpus used
in this study to find out the similarities and the differences in the frequency order of prepositions. It does not have the
intention of comparing it with how native speakers actually use language as in Kennedy (1987), Holmes (1988) and
Mindt (1992).
3.1.2 English Textbook Corpus
In order to compare the frequency occurrence of prepositions, the textbook corpus is also needed. This lower secondary
textbook corpus consists of 153,889 running words. The corpus created for this investigation consisted of the lower
secondary Malaysian English textbooks used in Form One, Two and Three English classes. In the judgment of the
authors, the material included in the corpus comprised what would typically be thought of as the core instructional
material for teaching, that which most teachers could reasonably be expected to cover when using the textbook for one
year in each class.
3.2 WordSmith Tools 4.0
WordSmith Tools are integrated programmes that look at how words behave in a text. Oxford University Press uses the
tools for the lexicographic work in preparing dictionaries. These tools are also useful for language teachers, students
and researchers in investigating language patterns. There are three analysis tools, that of, WordList, Concord and
KeyWords. For the purpose of this study, the WordList tool was used to find out the frequency occurrence of the
prepositions as suggested by the KBSM syllabus within and across the three textbooks. The Concord tool was used for
detailed analysis on concordance entries for each preposition. This is to find out the differences in the use of
prepositions in terms of categories and in terms of their co-occurrence with other parts of speech.
4. Results and Discussion
The presentation of the results of the analysis and the discussion will follow the order of research questions stated
earlier.
4.1 What are the distributions of prepositions in the English Language textbooks of Form One, Two and Three? (RQ 1)
These are the prepositions that are required to be taught at the lower secondary level based on the KBSM syllabus. The
prepositions found in the English Language textbooks of Form One, Two and Three are presented in a decreasing order:
to, of, in, on, from, at, by, after, before, between, near, under, behind and in front of (Table 1). The preposition to has
appeared in Form One, 1,136 times and the frequency increased in the Form Two and Form Three English Language
textbooks. The increasing frequency occurrences have also appeared for the prepositions in, before, near and under.
However, with the other prepositions, of, at, between and behind, they began with a higher frequency for Form One and
lower frequency occurrences in Form Two and slightly higher in Form Three compared with either Form One or Form
Two. The other prepositions with decreasing frequency occurrences from Form One to Form Three textbooks were the
prepositions on and after. The prepositions from, by and in front of have dwindling frequency occurrences as they
appeared in the English Language textbooks of Form One, Two and Three.
4.2 What is the order of prepositions in the English Language textbooks of Form One, Two and Three in comparison
with the BNC? (RQ 2)
In order to answer this research question, a comparison between the British National Corpus (BNC) and the textbook
corpus was made.
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December, 2009
The order of prepositions as presented based on the BNC (accessible from Word Frequencies in Written and Spoken
English (WFWSE) in http://ucrel.lancs.ac.uk/bncfreq/flists.html) is quite different compared to the order of
prepositions in Form One, Two and Three textbooks (Table 2). In the textbook corpus, for instance, to comes first
before of and in. The preposition from appears before at and by. The preposition before appears after the preposition
after and before between and near. The prepositions in the textbook corpus which were in the same order as in the BNC
were on, at, after and in front of. The prepositions on and by have shown a difference in the frequency order between
the BNC and the textbook corpus. The preposition on is placed higher than by. This has made the prepositions at and
from to be in between on and by.
This study has revealed that for certain prepositions, the frequency order does not quite agree between the textbook
corpus and the BNC. The reason for that is unknown but it might have to do with the content of the corpora. This study
consists of texts from textbooks whereas the BNC consists of all kinds of written texts, for example, “extracts from
regional and national newspapers, specialist periodicals and journals of all ages and interests, academic books and
popular fiction, published and unpublished letters and memoranda, school and university essays” (accessible from,
http://www.natc orp.ox.ac.uk/).
4.3 What are the differences in the use of prepositions identified in the English Language textbooks of Form One, Two
and Three? (RQ 2)
4.3.1 Differences in terms of categories of prepositions
The first part of this research question looks at the differences for the same prepositions which are used differently in
different categories and the differences are observed in terms of frequency occurrence.
As stated in the KBSM syllabus, the prepositions on, at and by need to be taught as prepositions of place and time
(Table 3 and Table 4). In terms of its frequency of occurrence, on is mostly used for place, with 292 occurrences and
has appeared mostly in the Form Two textbook whereas in the time category, there appears to be 62 occurrences and
mostly in Form One. However, by is used with time more, with 17 occurrences, than with place, which counts for 9
occurrences.
The preposition at is also used with both prepositions of place and time. At is used more with place than with time, with
126 occurrences. The preposition at is used with time, with 72 occurrences for all three textbooks, Form One, Form
Two and Form Three.
4.3.2 Differences in terms of the co-occurrence with other parts of speech
The second part of this research question looks at the differences in the use of prepositions for each category in terms of
the co-occurrence with other parts of speech.
In order to answer this part, first, the prepositions which are presented far lesser than the others based on each category
are looked into. Second, in the case of prepositions of directions, both to and from are looked into for the purpose of
comparisons.
Prepositions of place
In the category of prepositions of place, in has the highest frequency of 1,234 as opposed to behind, with 7 occurrences,
in front of, with 10 occurrences, and by, with 8 occurrences and between with only 3 (Table 5).
The prepositions of place behind, in front of, by and between may express the relative position of two objects or groups
of objects (Quirk & Greenbaum, 1989).
Behind is used with article (the) + adjective (flood) + noun (wall) as in
It is also used with object pronoun (me) as in
Besides, it is also used with possessive adjective (my, our) + noun (back, house)
Both verbs (stay, see) and nouns (hands, hill) precede behind in these instances.
In front of is used with article (a, the) + noun (television, playground) as in
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In front of is also used with possessive adjective (their, her) + noun (computers, house) as in
It is also used with object pronoun (me, him) as in
The nouns (time, traffic jams, rooftops, breakfast) and the verbs (is, sit, was) precede in front of.
By is used with article (a, the) + noun (sea, seaside, waterfall) as in
Both nouns (village, picnic) and the verb (lives) precede by.
By is also used with article (a, the) + adjective (large) + noun (window) as in
In this case, the verb (stand) precedes by.
The prepositions of place, behind, in front of and by reveal the use of articles, nouns and verbs with these prepositions.
Besides, there are also instances in which possessive adjective, object pronoun and adjective being used.
Being the least presented one, as it appears in the concordance, between is used with article (the) + noun (tower and
cannibals) as in between the tower and between the cannibals and it is also used with article (the) and possessive noun
(whale’s teeth) as in between the whale’s teeth. Besides, article (the) + noun (spaces and road) precede between as in,
the spaces between and the road between. The reflexive pronoun (himself) also precedes between as in, places himself
between
Even if this preposition is not required to be taught in Form One, it is the least favorable as there is only one time
occurrence to show it as a preposition of place. In the concordance, it is used with possessive adjective (her) + noun
(parents) as in her parents. The verb (sit) precedes between as in, to sit between.
As such between should be taught along with articles, possessive adjective, possessive noun, nouns as well as reflexive
pronoun and verb.
Preposition of time
In the category of prepositions of time, the preposition of time after is the highest, 83, as opposed to by with 17 (Table
6).
When speaking of time, by usually means ‘before or at’ (Lindstromberg, 1998). By means ‘no later than’ for time
(Celce-Murcia & Larsen-Freeman, 1999). By also specifies commencement point (Swan, 1988).
The preposition of time by is clearer when the time point is given. In fact, the recurring combinations centre around
time of the day.
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However, there is a very minimal finding on the preposition of time by used with days, dates, months, years and also by
that specifies commencement point.
In the concordance, nouns precede by the most as in place by, work by, bed by, day by, project by, Secretary by and
cities by whereas verbs present the least as in use by, completed by and disappear by. The use of by as preposition of
time also marks the beginning of a sentence as in By 1.00 p.m. and By 6.30 p.m.
As such, the preposition of time by should be taught along with noun, verb and its presentation at the beginning of a
sentence.
Prepositions of direction
The preposition of direction to has a higher frequency occurrence, 177 as compared to from with 67 (Table 7). Literally,
to and from has its meanings of starting point and destination (Swan, 1988).
In simple directions from one place to another to and from are used with article (a, the) + noun (court, shops, shore,
factories, school, sinking ship, roof) as in
In a number of common expressions, article is dropped after a preposition (Swan, 1988).
There is also an instance in which to is used with article (the) + possessive noun (mechanic’s workshop) as in
In most instances, articles and nouns are used with to and from for simple directions with minimal instances on
possessive nouns and omission of articles in common expressions. Both nouns (home, sailors, way, train, school) and
verbs (run, swim, comes, flows, rushed) precede to and from.
There are cases where from and to are used in the same sentence.
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In these cases, verbs (walked, ran, go, encouraged) precede from and followed by an article (the) or a possessive
adjective (her) or an adjective (tuition) before nouns (bus-stop, front gate, bush, house, class, shop, community).
As such, the prepositions of direction to and from should be taught along with noun, verb, article, possessive adjective
and adjective.
5. Conclusion
The findings have shown several insights in this study. Firstly, the order of prepositions found in the English Language
textbooks of Form One, Two and Three has revealed how many times they are used in the textbooks and either directly
or indirectly students have been exposed with those prepositions in varying degrees. This is important as learning of
prepositions takes place because the frequency of occurrence of individual words or phrases is in itself significant
(Tognini-Bonelli, 2001). In ESL environment, students need to be exposed to the language as much as possible to gain
sufficient input and exposure. For instance, the use of prepositions behind and in front of with only less than 10 for each
in Form One and Form Two textbooks is not enough for exposure to students. Even in vocabulary studies, repetition of
words is very important to ensure acquisition of new vocabulary (Mukundan & Anealka, 2007). One kind of repetition
that is important is repetition of encounters with a word. It has been estimated that, when reading, words stand a good
chance of being remembered if they have been met at least seven times over spaced intervals (Thornbury, 2002).
Secondly, this study has revealed that for certain prepositions, the frequency order does not quite agree between the
textbook corpus and the BNC. There have been criticisms against the frequency order. Howarth (1998) and Widdowson
(1990) questioned the pedagogical usefulness of frequency lists generated by corpora as they feel frequency does not
indicate any significance especially in the area of problematic processing of language. Thornbury (2004) has noted that
in terms of frequency, it is not always the case that the most frequently occurring items are the most useful and in terms
of an item’s teachability, despite being among the most frequently used words in the language, their formal presentation
is usually delayed until a relatively advanced level. However, according to Mahlberg (2007), frequency is relative, and
an important factor in corpus work is comparison. Frequencies of individual words have to be seen in relation to words
in their contexts. Even though function words are very frequent and can co-occur in a variety of texts, we can still
identify collocational tendencies and see how frequent words have their own patterns.
Thirdly, this study has also revealed the importance of the differences for the same prepositions which are used
differently in different categories in terms of frequency occurrence. In this study, prepositions on, at and by are
presented in the categories of prepositions of place and time. This contributes to the difficulty to learn to use
prepositions correctly as most of them have several different functions (Swan, 1988).
Fourthly, this study has also shown the differences in the use of prepositions for each category in terms of the
co-occurrence with other parts of speech. The focus was on those prepositions which are presented less based on
categories as it is in the judgement of the author that these prepositions are less exposed to the students by the textbooks
and thus, they need to be highlighted in order to give more exposure to students in terms of ‘what is usual and typical’.
A major focus of corpus linguistics is therefore to describe what is usual and typical (Stubbs, 2007). In this study, other
parts of speech co-occur with these prepositions in English textbooks, namely, articles, nouns, verbs, possessive nouns,
reflexive pronouns, object pronouns, possessive adjective and adjectives. Having examined the KBSM syllabus, most of
them are items listed to be taught to Form One, Form Two and Form Three students in Malaysian lower secondary
schools, however, there are also grammar items that are not listed, namely, possessive nouns, object pronouns, reflexive
pronouns in Form One, Form Two and Form Three KBSM syllabus and possessive adjectives in Form Two and Form
Three KBSM syllabus.
6. Recommendations
The results of this corpus-based study could be used as guidelines to provide recommendations on the teaching of
English. As Biber, Conrad and Reppen (1994) have suggested, “corpus-based research sheds new light on some of our
most basic assumptions about English grammar, and as a result it offers the possibility of more effective and appropriate
pedagogical applications.”
While studies have shown why prepositions cause such difficulty for ESL/EFL students, a pedagogical strategy that
enables students to pay attention to their co-occurrence, will no doubt facilitate learners’ acquisition of these difficult
lexico-grammatical forms (Celce-Murcia & Larsen-Freeman, 1999).
Teaching suggestions can be adopted from Celce-Murcia & Larsen-Freeman (1999). For instance, in teaching the form
of prepositions, at the beginning and intermediate levels, it probably suffices to make sure that when new verbs or
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December, 2009
adjectives are introduced, any prepositions that occur with them are also taught. The meaning of prepositions can be
taught using a matrix, such as the one adopted from Quirk et al. (1985). To associate forms and meanings, there is a
children’s game that affords practice with prepositions however, they may not be appropriate for older learners. The use
of maps and pictures can also aid students with several groups of prepositions that are frequently confused by learners.
Kennedy (1991) encourages to help students learn about prepositions by learning about “the company they keep.”
Advanced learners could be assigned to explore the collocations of particular prepositions in a variety of texts.
However, ESL teachers should be able to plan strategies and select or adapt appropriate teaching materials to be used in
teaching prepositions. All the prepositions stipulated in the syllabus must be introduced and taught repetitively in a
structured way according to its functions to enhance students’ understanding. As it has been emphasized the teaching of
grammar is to be incorporated into the four language skills and should be taught in context and in a meaningful way.
Hence, it may be then that we shouldn’t teach certain prepositions in isolation but rather to teach them as in relation to
their occurrence with other words (Celce-Murcia & Larsen-Freeman, 1999).
Other than using grammar books, internet sources, dictionaries and the textbooks, teachers may consider using a
concordancer. A concordancer is a computer program which is used to find the occurrences of every single word or
phrase in a text (Sinclair, 1991). Teachers could also retrieve concordance entries from the accessible website and
prepare exercises for their students. The concordancer and concordancing is one example where “the technology can be
used to promote autonomous learning.” Such an approach may help in the “empowerment of students’ (Butler, 1990).
Students may be able to learn and recognize the typical uses of prepositions better if they are asked to detect the pattern
on their own. Their sensitivity to the language can be developed if they are encouraged to discover the patterns of use in
prepositions.
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22
English Language Teaching
December, 2009
Table 1. Distributions of prepositions in Form One, Two and Three textbooks
Prepositions
to
of
in
on
from
at
by
after
before
between
near
under
behind
in front of
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
Total
3,921
2,722
1,760
920
589
546
391
189
111
53
53
23
23
15
F1
1,136
1,895
693
265
183
194
116
86
24
21
10
15
6
4
F2
1,202
750
869
334
158
170
148
52
42
15
23
16
4
1
F3
1,583
752
998
321
248
182
127
51
45
17
20
21
13
10
Table 2. Comparisons of preposition order in the BNC and in the English Language textbooks of Form One, Two and
Three
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
Prepositions
in the BNC
of
in
to
on
by
at
from
after
between
under
before
behind
near
in front of
Prepositions
in the textbook
to
of
in
on
from
at
by
after
before
between
near
under
behind
in front of
Table 3. Frequency counts for on, by and at as prepositions of place
Prepositions
on
by
Total
292
8
at
126
F1
75
2
Not
listed
in the
KBSM
F2
115
4
F3
102
2
64
62
Table 4. Frequency counts for on, by and at as prepositions of time
Prepositions
at
on
by
Total
72
62
17
F1
41
29
5
F2
21
19
8
F3
10
14
4
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English Language Teaching
Vol. 2, No. 4
Table 5. Frequency Counts of Prepositions of Place
Prepositions
in
on
near
under
behind
by
in front of
Total
1,234
292
24
22
7
8
10
126
at
3
between
F1
358
75
8
5
2
2
3
Not listed
in the
KBSM
Not listed
in the
KBSM
F2
452
115
19
10
1
4
1
F3
414
102
7
7
4
2
6
64
62
1
2
F1
41
29
5
15
20
F2
21
19
8
23
34
F3
10
14
4
21
29
F1
51
24
F2
84
24
F3
42
19
Table 6. Frequency Counts of Prepositions of Time
Prepositions
at
on
by
before
after
Total
72
62
17
49
83
Table 7. Frequency Counts of Prepositions of Direction
Prepositions
to
from
24
Total
177
67