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International Association of Research
in Foreign Language Education and Applied Linguistics
ELT Research Journal
2014, 3(2), 59-69
ISSN: 2146-9814

Identifying preposition errors of Turkish EFL students

Cem Özışık1
İstanbul Kültür University, Turkey

Abstract
The purpose of this study is to find out to what extent Turkish EFL students are successful in
the use of prepositions, and how much impact their mother tongue has on their errors. In order
to achieve this aim, 30 students in the upper-intermediate level of a university prep school
were given a 60-sentence gap-filling test. Each sentence in the test included a collocation of
preposition in which students are likely to misuse prepositions due to the effect of their native
language. They were asked to fill in the gaps with a suitable preposition or put a (-) if no
preposition is necessary. The result of the test showed that even at this level, students have
great difficulty in finding the correct preposition, with a significant number of errors resulting
from mother tongue interference. Separate categories as to different error forms and word
forms were also included along with the overall results. Such analysis may encourage EFL
instructors to prepare remedial teaching activities which will specifically focus on teaching
prepositions, considering students‟ L1 as well.

Keywords: Error, preposition, collocation, mother tongue interference

1
Asisstant Professor Doctor, ELT Department, İstanbul Kültür University, Turkey, e-mail: [email protected]

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Identifying preposition errors of Turkish EFL students 60

Introduction
In the process of learning English as a foreign language, it is inevitable for students
to make errors when they produce the target language. As for English education in Turkey, it
can easily be observed that language errors in student essays include a considerable number of
preposition errors. As Lynch (2010) suggests, some basic features of English language
grammar structure are illogical or dissimilar to speakers of other languages and do not readily
lend themselves to being well understood, even in context. He sees prepositions as one of
these features which offer exceptional challenge to EFL students because they may be
radically different from the manner of expression in the student's first language (L1).

The main reason why students find prepositions very hard to learn is that there are no
specific rules in their usage. According to Hermet and Desilets (2009), preposition choice
accounted for 17.2% of all errors. Prepositions can be seen as a special class of cognates, in
the sense that the same L1 preposition used in different L1 sentences could be translated to
several different second language (L2) prepositions. Since each language has its own rules,
the situation varies greatly from language to language. Particularly the preposition errors in
writing lead to misunderstanding of the message aimed to be conveyed, which in turn causes
communication gaps.

In the case of Turkish students, this leads to a process where students switch to
L1and try to use the Turkish equivalents of English prepositions. Not surprisingly, mother
tongue interference in preposition use is relatively higher than other language structures in
students‟ English essays. Considering that English textbooks are designed to be studied in
various countries, it would be hard to expect them to find a solution to this problem, which
undoubtedly appears in different forms in different countries due to the specific features of
every single mother tongue. Therefore, coming up with a solution is the responsibility of
English teachers, who have the same mother tongue as their students and are capable enough
to determine the prepositions which could create problems. James (1996) claims that typical
mother tongue transfer errors of the learners can easily be identified by the speakers of the
same mother tongue. In parallel with this, Stoitchkov (2006) states that teachers whose native
language is the same as their students‟ have a big advantage over teachers who are English
native speakers in that they went through the same stages in learning and faced the same
challenges during that period. According to Mendikoetxea, Murcia and Rollinson (2004),
teachers having a good understanding of learners‟ difficulties can help students analyze errors,
which will improve their language awareness, leading to promoting proficiency.

It is obvious that the teacher‟s role has a vital importance at this point. As
Paradowski (2008) suggests, a foreign language teacher should be proficient in both L2 and
L1 of the learners in order to be in a position to perceive the areas at risk from interference. In
order to achieve this aim, using a learners‟ own writing can be a good option because the
study of the speech and writing of learners is largely the study of the errors of learners
because they yield more information about the learners‟ developing systems than correct
production (Brown, 1994). Similarly, Erdoğan (2005) believes that the errors that learners
make are major elements in the feedback system of the teaching-learning process. For this

© International Association of Research in Foreign Language Education and Applied Linguistics - All rights reserved.
 Özışık, C. / ELT Research Journal 2014, 3(2), 59-69 61

reason, it is important that the teacher should be able to detect and describe the errors from a
linguistic point of view.

Types of errors
There are two types of errors that are relevant to the usage of prepositions. These are
intralingual and interlingual errors.

Intralingual errors are made by various learners regardless of their native language,
so this kind of errors can also be called „universal errors‟. For instance, many learners go
through a stage in their English acquisition process where they use „present tense‟ instead of
„past tense‟. Another example is omitting articles „a‟ and „the‟ or plural „–s‟ although they are
needed. Again, the use of „eated‟ in place of „ate‟ is a universal error, which is made by
learners of English, irrespective of their L1 (Ellis, 1997).

As cited in Ellis (1994), Richard explains intralingual errors through four categories.
He starts with the “overgeneralization errors”, which arise when the learner creates a deviant
structure on the basis of other structures in the target language. It generally involves the
creation of one deviant structure in place of two target language structures. For example,
writing „He can sings‟ instead of „He can sing‟. The second intralingual error category he
mentions is the “ignorance of rule restrictions”, which involves the application of rules to
contexts where they do not apply. An example is „He made me to rest‟ through extension of
the pattern found with the majority of verbs that take infinitival complements, such as „He
asked / wanted me to go‟. The third one, “incomplete application of rules” involves a failure
to fully develop a structure. Thus, learners of L2 English have been observed to use
declarative word order in questions. For instance, writing „You like to sing?‟ instead of
interrogative word order „Do you like to sing?‟. The final intralingual error category Richard
notes is “false concepts hypothesized”, which arises when the learner does not fully
comprehend a distinction in target language. For example, the use of „was‟ as a marker of past
tense in „One day it was happened‟.

It can be seen that all these errors happen due to a cause-effect relationship among
the various structures of one single language, L2, rather than an outside effect, such as L1. In
other words, it is not the learners‟ knowledge of L1 rules that brings about interlingual errors.

Interlingual errors are the effects of learner‟s L1 on L2. According to Tarone (1983),
L2 acquisition is a creative process and learners form hypothesis just like people learning
their L1. The only difference is that L2 learners are inevitably affected by the language they
already know, that is their L1. Such errors are also called „negative transfer errors‟. Lott
(1983) defines these negative transfer errors as errors which learners make in L2, but whose
reasons can be found in the structures of their L1. As Ellis claims (1997), this kind of errors
are common only to learners who share the same mother tongue or whose mother tongues
have the same linguistic features. For example, speakers of Bantu languages in southern
Africa frequently use the preposition „at‟ to refer to direction as well as location, producing
errors such as: „We went at Johannesburg last weekend.

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Identifying preposition errors of Turkish EFL students 62

This is because their native language has only one preposition to express both
location and direction while in English „at‟ is used for location and „to‟ for direction. As for
preposition errors, it can be understood that if a learner uses a wrong preposition depending
on the rules of his mother tongue, this is considered an interlingual error. Any other reason
will make it an intralingual error.

Cases
In order to better understand the contrastive process that Turkish students go through
while producing prepositions, it is important to consider Turkish cases and their English
equivalents.

Table 1
Turkish and English cases
Cases Turkish English

Genitive (n)ın, (n)in, (n)un, (n)ün duvar-ın

of the wall
Accusative (y)ı, (y)i, (y)u, (y)ü duvar-ı
the wall
(as an object)
Dative (y)e, (y)a duvar-a
to the wall
Locative de, da duvar-da
on the wall
in the room
at the station
Ablative den, dan duvar-dan
from the wall
Instrumental (y)le, (y)la, ile duvar-la / ile
with the wall

Forms of errors
Whether intralingual or interlingual, errors are classified into four different forms by
Brown (1994) as addition, omission, substitution, and ordering errors.

o Addition errors occur when an extra element is added.

 „Does can he sing?‟ („Does‟ or „can‟ is unnecessary)
o Omission errors take place when a necessary element is not used.
 „I went to movie.‟ (An article is missing before „movie‟)
o Substitution errors occur when a wrong word is used instead of the correct
word.
 „I lost my road.‟ („Road‟ is used while „way‟ is needed)
o Ordering errors take place when the elements are not in the correct order.
 „I to the store went.‟ (The verb „went‟ comes after the subject)

© International Association of Research in Foreign Language Education and Applied Linguistics - All rights reserved.
 Özışık, C. / ELT Research Journal 2014, 3(2), 59-69 63

Collocations of Prepositions
As for collocations of prepositions, Koosha and Jafarpour (2006) believe that
collocational competence can influence EFL learners' overall language ability. Collocations
have an effective role in the successful and native-like performance of EFL learners. Since the
use of collocations was highly correlated with EFL learners' language proficiency,
collocations should be considered as an important factor in determining their overall
proficiency.

To make a collocation, prepositions are usually used with an adjective, a noun, or a

verb. If students do not learn the collocation as a chunk but as separate words, it is likely that
they will try to use the L1 equivalent of the preposition.

Considering that the purpose of this study is to find out how successful Turkish EFL
students are in the use of prepositions, and how much impact Turkish has on their errors,
following research questions were formed.

1. How capable are the students of using the correct preposition?

2. What‟s the percentage of errors caused by mother tongue interference?

3. What‟s the percentage of errors caused by mother tongue interference in terms of error
forms?

4. What‟s the percentage of errors caused by mother tongue interference in terms of word
forms the prepositions are used with?

Methodology
Participants
A group of 30 students in a private university prep school participated in this study.
They were in the upper-intermediate level, which was the top level in the prep school. They
were placed in this level as a result of the proficiency test given at the beginning of the
academic year.

Test
The students were given a test consisting of 60 questions about the prepositions
likely to be misused due to mother tongue interference. The questions on the test were based
on the interlingual errors on collocations of prepositions in various student essays, which had
carefully been collected and sorted by the researcher over the years. This complies with the
idea of Calkins (1980) argues that the best way to improve students‟ grammar is to teach the
grammar subjects focusing on the students‟ own piece of writing. In addition, academics
working in English Language and Turkish Language departments were asked their opinions
on the content of the test. The questions in the test were not multiple choice but were designed
in a way that the students could write a suitable preposition in the gaps. The purpose here was
to make the students produce the answer on their own rather than seeing and remembering it
in a choice. Similarly, Grabe (2009) believes that gap-filling is a more beneficial question

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Identifying preposition errors of Turkish EFL students 64

type in measuring the knowledge of some target structures such as prepositions. Considering
that this research focused on student errors due to mother tongue interference in essay writing,
where students normally do not choose a preposition among given choices but write one from
their minds, the design of the questions can be said to be appropriate to the purpose of the
research.

Data Analysis
First, all the answers were divided into categories of “correct answer”, interlingual
error”, and “intralingual error”. Then, three different categories were displayed in terms of
error forms: addition, omission and substitution. Because of the gap-filling nature of the test,
it was only possible to analyze these three error forms, so ordering errors were excluded.
Finally, 3 categories were formed related to the word forms the prepositions were used with:
adjectives, nouns, and verbs.

Findings
This section starts with the presentation of overall findings. Then, findings are
presented in terms of error forms and the word forms prepositions are used with.

Overall findings
Table 2
All sentences in the test
Answers Number Percentage
Correct 948 52,67
Interlingual error 402 22,33
Intralingual error 450 25,00
Total 1800 100,00
The test had 60 sentences, which made 1800 answers in total. As it can be seen
above, nearly half of the answers are wrong. Errors due to mother tongue interference account
for almost half of the wrong answers.

Findings in terms of error forms

Table 3
Sentences where students are likely to make addition errors
Answers Number Percentage
Correct 137 41,52
Interlingual error 97 29,39
Intralingual error 96 29,09
Total 330 100,00
A sample question about a possible interlingual addition error:

„I thank _________ my family for their support.‟

© International Association of Research in Foreign Language Education and Applied Linguistics - All rights reserved.
 Özışık, C. / ELT Research Journal 2014, 3(2), 59-69 65

Here, the correct answer is (-), but writing “to” is considered an interlingual error as
in Turkish the dative form “-a” is used with the verb “thank”, which means that English dative
case “to” would be a direct translation from Turkish.

In terms of error forms, students were mostly unsuccessful in this part. There were
11 sentences, with a total of 330 answers. More than half of the answers are wrong. The
numbers of interlingual and intralingual errors are almost the same.

Table 4
Sentences where students are likely to make omission errors
Answers Number Percentage

Correct 166 61,48

Interlingual error 50 18,52
Intralingual error 54 20,00
Total 270 100,00

A sample question about a possible interlingual omission error:

„We waited_____________ our friends in front of the cinema.‟

Here, the correct answer is “for”, but writing (-), which means no preposition is
necessary, is considered an interlingual error as in Turkish the accusative form “-ı” is used
with the verb “wait”. That means writing (-) would be a direct translation from Turkish since
English accusative case is used without a preposition.

Students got the best results in this part. There were 9 sentences, with a total of 270
answers. While the numbers of errors in both error types are not so different from each other,
the percentage of the correct answers exceeds 60.

Table 5
Sentences where students are likely to make substitution errors
Answers Number Percentage

Correct 646 53,48

Interlingual error 253 21,08
Intralingual error 301 25,08
Total 1200 100,00

A sample question about a possible interlingual substitution error:

„The train had gone when we arrived _____________ the station.‟

Here, the correct answer is “at” but writing “to” is considered an interlingual error as
in Turkish the dative form “-a” is used with the verb “arrive”, which means that English
dative case “to” would be a direct translation from Turkish.

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Identifying preposition errors of Turkish EFL students 66

Considering error forms, this part has the highest number of questions, 40, which
makes a total of 1200 answers. Slightly more than half of the answers are correct. Nearly half
of the wrong answers are due to mother tongue interference.

Findings in terms of word forms prepositions were used with

Table 6
Sentences where prepositions were used with an adjective
Answers Number Percentage

Correct 220 73,33

Interlingual error 28 9,34
Intralingual error 52 17,33
Total 300 100,00

A sample question about a possible interlingual error where the preposition is used
with an adjective:

„Malatya is famous _____________ its apricot.‟

Here, the correct answer is “for” but writing “with” is considered an interlingual
error as in Turkish the instrumental form “ile” is used with the adjective “famous”, which
means that English instrumental case “with” would be a direct translation from Turkish.

In terms of word forms prepositions were used with, students got the best result in
this part. There are 10 sentences, with a total of 300 answers, and nearly 3/4 of them are
correct. This is the part where interlingual errors have the lowest percentage with 9,34.

Table 7
Sentences where prepositions were used with a noun

Answers Number Percentage

Correct 113 37,67

Interlingual error 87 29,00
Intralingual error 100 33,33
Total 300 100,00

A sample question about a possible interlingual error where the preposition is used
with a noun:

„Studying hard is the key _________ success.‟

Here, the correct answer is “to” but writing “of” is considered an interlingual error as
in Turkish the genitive form “-(n)ın” is used in such a phrase with the noun “key”, which
means that English genitive case “of” would be a direct translation from Turkish.

© International Association of Research in Foreign Language Education and Applied Linguistics - All rights reserved.
 Özışık, C. / ELT Research Journal 2014, 3(2), 59-69 67

With 10 sentences and a total of 300 answers, this is the part where students got the
worst result. Almost 1 out of 3 answers are wrong, and nearly half of the wrong answers are
interlingual.

Table 8
Sentences where prepositions were used with a verb

Answers Number Percentage

Correct 615 51,25

Interlingual error 284 23,67
Intralingual error 301 25,08
Total 1200 100,00

A sample question about a possible interlingual error where the preposition is used
with a verb:

„She couldn‟t marry _____________ the man she loved.‟

Here, the correct answer is (-) but writing “with” is considered an interlingual error
as in Turkish the instrumental form “ile” is used in such a phrase with the verb “marry”,
which means that English instrumental case “with” would be a direct translation from
Turkish.

With regard to the word forms prepositions were used with, this part has the highest
number of questions, 40, which makes a total of 1200 answers. Slightly more than half of the
answers are correct, with both error types having similar percentages.

Discussion and conclusions

This study firstly attempted to find out the capability of Turkish EFL students in the
use of prepositions when they produce the target language. The second aim of the study was
to identify the effect of mother tongue on students‟ errors in the production process of
prepositions.

The answer to the first question is that the participants in the study, who were
Turkish EFL students, were able to answer barely half of the questions correctly. This result
proves that the use of prepositions is one of the significant problems the learners have. The
second question was about the effect of mother tongue interference, and it can be concluded
from the results that the native language of the learners has considerable impact on their
production, with nearly half of the errors being interlingual. Some other studies on
prepositions carried out in various countries (Blom, 2006; Lakkis & Malak, 2000; Koosha &
Jafarpour, 2006) reached similar results in that students had difficulty using the correct
preposition, and interlingual errors constitute a significant part of the total number of errors. It
should also be remembered that the errors are considered interlingual only when the students
write a wrong preposition considering their L1 rules. In other words, there is usually one

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Identifying preposition errors of Turkish EFL students 68

specific answer for an error to be interlingual. Any answers other than that specific one will
lead to an intralingual error. Considering the results of this study with this difference in mind,
it can be claimed once again that mother tongue plays an important role in the learner‟s choice
of prepositions in the production process.

The third and the fourth questions were related to error forms and word forms
respectively. It was found that the most common preposition errors were in the form of
addition, whereas omission errors were the least frequent ones. As to the word forms
prepositions were used with, nouns seemed the most problematic, while adjectives created
little problem for the students. This might be because of the emphasis put by textbooks on
adjective + preposition chunks, such as „interested in‟, „famous for‟, „keen on‟, etc. Blom‟s
(2006) study with Swedish students also found that prepositions used with nouns were the
most challenging for the learners. However, prepositions used with adjectives also proved
problematic, while students were most successful in prepositions used with verbs.

It can be stated that the results of this study might have some implications for EFL
education, especially in terms of collocations with prepositions. It should be noted that unlike
many grammar structures, prepositional chunks in English do not have specific rules. This not
only constitutes a challenge for EFL learners, but also brings about the need for raising
awareness of such collocations by the teacher in the classroom. If the teacher speaks the same
native language as his students, he can easily predict the possible problematic collocations of
prepositions. Besides, since a considerable number of errors stem from mother tongue
interference, taking learners‟ L1 into account while teaching prepositions should be one of the
priorities of the teacher.

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