3. To identify the possible causes of their difficulties in their attempt to master the preposition of place at, in and on.
F. BENEFITS OF THE RESEARCH
Hopefully, from this study, the readers, the English learners or those who are interested in learning English will be able to know more the nature of English
prepositions of place. Since there are not many English grammars textbooks that provide enough space for the discussion of prepositions of place at, in and on.
As for the teacher, this study can help them to improve their teaching ability. From this study, the teacher might find out difficulties that are faced by
their students in learning the preposition of place at, in and on. The teachers then will be able to help the students to improve their learning.
G. DEFINITION OF TERMS
It is important to give the sufficient information about some terms used in this study in order to avoid misunderstanding. These words below are some terms
used in this paper: 1. Mastery
In this study, the term mastery is understood as proposed by Charles Fries. Fries 1948:3 says that a person has learned a foreign language when he has thus,
within limited vocabulary, mastered the sound system that is when he can understand the stream of speech and achieve an understandable production of it
and has, secondly, made the structural devices that is the basic arrangement of
utterances matters of automatic habit. The term mastery in this study is match to the second requirement mastery mastery of ‘structural devices’ as it listed
above. It might to be said since the prepositions of place are part of structural devices and it has its own form, meaning and uses. In other words, those who are
considered to have mastered the structural devices should meet these requirements:
a. knows the forms and the rules underlying them
b. knows the meaning of those forms
c. knows how to use those constructions correctly and appropriately.
2. Preposition of place at, in and on
In this study a preposition of place means a word or a group of words often placed before a noun or pronoun to indicate place Curme, 1966. A
preposition of place at is used to show the exact points. Preposition at and in is used within a larger area and is consequently used with bigger towns’ valley and
countries Corder, 1979:107, and on is used to indicate position on a surface partially or entirely Close, 1962: 150.
3. Error In this study, error, as it is stated by Norrish 1993; 7, “is a systematic
deviation, when a learner has not learned something and consistently gets it wrong“. Corder 1997 who is cited in Dulay 1982: 139 states that “Error is
reversed for the systematic deviations due to the learner are still developing knowledge of the L 2 rule system”.
4. Inter-lingual Transfer
In this study, inter-lingual transfer as it is stated by Dulay et al., in the book Language Two, states the theories of interference and transfer. The first one
is essentially psychological and the other is essentially sociolinguistic. Interference has been used to refer to two very different linguistic phenomena.
Interference refers to language interaction, such as linguistic borrowing and language switching.
5. Intra-lingual transfer
In this study 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 Richards, 1977: p.174.
8
CHAPTER II LITERATURE REVIEW
