EFL Arab Learners’ Misselection of English Prepositions: Analysis of Interlingual Errors in Voice Messages at Chat Groups

Abstract

This study examines interlingual prepositional errors that EFL Arab learners wrongly substitute (misuse) during their verbal interactions (on social media). It aims to investigate the most frequent prepositions that EFL Arabic learners misuse in their conversations. The focus was on selected prepositions: 'in', ‘from’, ‘to’, 'for', and ‘by’. The data was gathered by analysing audio recordings of participants' responses within a WhatsApp chat group. It showed that EFL Arab learners make incorrect substitutions with any collection of prepositions (typically two or three) that correspond to one equivalent preposition in their mother tongue. The participants frequently substitute prepositions ‘in, on, and at' as equivalents for Arabic preposition ‘fi’, ‘for’ and ‘to’ as equivalents for Arabic preposition ‘ila’, and ‘from and of' as equivalents for Arabic preposition 'min’. Therefore, the participants incorrectly employ 'in' instead of 'on and at', 'for' instead of 'to' and vice versa, and 'from' instead of 'of and since'. The collections of English prepositions that have only one Arabic counterpart are a cause of confusion, as evidenced by the incorrect substitutions that EFL Arab learners made. Based on findings, the area of the prepositions of multi-uses and semantically complex requires contextualized teaching strategies that contrastively present prepositions in bundles or phrases.