Spatial and temporal prepositions: CLT for Arab English learners

Abstract

A preposition is a marker in a sentence or expression which belongs to the closed word class, a class that does not readily accept new members. It denotes the relation between persons, objects, and locations in a sentence. The linguistic function of the preposition is the time or location of the action, which in speeches or written speeches is important to produce well-formed sentences. This research adds up to the body of knowledge about the grammatical abilities of Arab EFL students by examining their use of spatial and temporal prepositions in Arabic. The study employs a mixed-methods strategy by holding pre- and post-tests to evaluate the efficacy of the intervention, and informally interviewing forty-six Arab EFL learners at a public university in Malaysia. The participants were all male students of two EFL courses with the median age of the group falling at 18.4 years. Pre-test evaluation showed that the participants made specific spatial and temporal prepositional errors. The post-test scores of the learners, on the other hand, showed significant improvement in the learners’ scores with far fewer spatio-temporal prepositional errors. Further, the participants seemed to respond better with the Communicative Language Teaching methods for learning English prepositions. The study concludes with some pertinent recommendations for the Arab EFL ecosystem in Malaysia or abroad.