Beyond the interference there are still many factors which influence the probability of occurrence of interference phenomena Els et al., 1884: 59-60:
1 Amount and nature of input: interference is especially likely occurs when
the L2 input is limited in quantity and scope. This situation occurs mainly where L2 is learned in an L1 environment e.g. schools; most studies showing
a limited role of interference focus on learning L2 in an L2 environment, where L2 input is abundant and varied;
2 Level of linguistic analysis: more L2 learning research has been done at the
level of morphology and syntax than at the phonological and lexical levels;
3 Linguistic distance between L1 and L2: interference phenomena manifest
themselves especially strongly between related linguistic system: the degree of interference is partly determined by the degree of ‘translability’ of L1 feature
into L2 feature;
4 L2 learning stage: there is some evidence that, for adult learner at least,
interference phenomena are most frequent in the first stage of L2 learning process;
5 Task focus: if the focus of L2 use is on correct grammatical form rather than
on communicative effectiveness, interference is likely to occur: written translation task under time pressure constitute extremely favourable conditions
for the occurrence of interference phenomena.
b. Intra-lingual Transfer
Brown 1987: 178 says that once learners have begun to acquire parts of the system, more intra-lingual transfer-generalization within the target language is
manifested. As learners progress in the second language, previous experience begins to influence structure within the target language itself. Negative intra-
lingual transfer, or overgeneralization, then often causes errors in the actual L2. Richards 1974: 174-8 suggest types and causes of intra-lingual and
developmental errors. Intra-lingual errors are those which reflect the general characteristic of rule learning, and developmental errors illustrate the learner
attempting to build op hypothesis about the English language from his limited experience of it in the classroom textbook. Intra-lingual errors occur 1 when the
learner creates a deviant structure on the basis of his experience of other structure in the target language overgeneralization, 2 when the learner fails to observe
the restriction of structure in the target language ignorance of rule restriction, and 3 in learners’ structure whose deviation represent the degree of development
of the rules required to produce acceptable utterances incomplete application of rules, 4 while developmental errors derive from faulty comprehension of
distinction in the target language false concept hypothesized Richards, 1977: 174-8.
The occurrence of overgeneralization, ignorance of rule restriction, incomplete application of rules and false concept hypothesized may cause errors
in the actual L2. Thus, those factors may become possible reasons causing difficulties in language learning process.
c. Context of Learning
Context of learning refers to the classroom with its teacher, material and social situation in the second language learning. Students often make errors
because of a misleading explanation from the teacher, faulty presentation of a structure or word in a textbook, or even because of a pattern that was rotely
memorized in a drill but not properly contextualized Brown, 1987: 179-80. Broughton purposes similar reasons that context of language learning and
teaching can be possible sources of students errors 1978: 133-4. They are the poor teaching and learning process. The poor teaching: The teacher’s lacks of
mastery of the material which respectively make the students know nothing or at least less comprehend the subject.
The teaching -learning process: Even though there are optimal efforts to
make the students avoid errors, errors are still produced. It means that there is still a place for errors in teaching-learning process. In this matter, the learners and the
teachers could be the factors for making errors.
B. Theoretical Framework
It is obvious that the second language learners find it difficult to learn English grammar. The preposition of place at, in and on is part of English
grammar and also has its own rules underlying them. According to Fries 1948, a person is said to have mastered a foreign language if he or she can understand
utterances in that foreign language and also produce understandable production of them. Secondly, he or she has to be able to make the structure or syntax of the
target language matters of automatic habit. It means that he or she has internalised the rules underlying the utterances that he or she produces so that his or her
utterances are acceptable.
