Seorang pria berdiri di pemberhentian bus. Eight students answered this item correctly. Eight students also used
preposition of place on instead of preposition of place at. The rest of them 9 students used preposition of place in as the answer. The proper translation to this
item is: A man stands at the bus stop. Preposition of place at was used in this sentence since the subjects a man occupy
more or less the same position as the indicated places without specifying dimensions.
b. The Students Difficulties in Mastering Preposition of Place in
There were 425 items in the test, and the students answered 161 incorrectly. From 135 incorrect items in the test part I, most of students replaced preposition of
place in by preposition of place at rather than by preposition of place on 74 compare to 61. In the test part II, preposition of place in was replaced by preposition of place
at 12 times. Fourteen of it was replaced by preposition of place on. The sentences
below are some of the erroneous made by the students. 1 Item number 4 part I:
Once, there was a kingdom named Babylon…the north of Iraq. There were twelve erroneous in this item. From those twelve erroneous, eight
students replaced preposition of place in by preposition of place at. The rest of them 4 students, used preposition of place on to answer this item. One of the uses of
preposition of place in is to indicate geographical location such as towns, valleys and countries. The correct answer in this item is:
Once, there was a kingdom named Babylon in the north of Iraq. 2 Item number 7 part I:
I read an article about health…the newspaper. Thirteen students answered this item incorrectly. Most of them 11 students
used preposition of place on to answer this item. Two students used preposition of place at in answering this item. Preposition of place in considered as the dimension-
type 2 or 3 area or volume. The newspaper in the sentence is considered as an area. The correct answer should be:
I read an article about health in the newspaper. 3 Item number 11 part I:
The police asked the crowd to stay…a row. There were only six students answered correctly in this item. Eleven students
used preposition of place at as the answer and eight of them used preposition of place on
instead of in. the correct answer should be: The police asked the crowd to stay in a row.
4 Item number 3 part II: Siapakah nama gadis yang ada di foto itu.
From 13 erroneous made by the students in this item, twelve of them answered by using preposition of place on. Only a student used preposition of place
at as the answer. The answer of this item should be:
Who is the name of the girl in the photograph?
Preposition of place in is used because there were some prepositional phrases that requires preposition of place in. In the other word, those prepositional phrases make
its own collocation with prepositional of place in.
c. The Students Difficulties in Mastering Preposition of Place on
