SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS’ USE OF PREPOSITION – INDUCED COLLOCATIONAL PATTERNS IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE A CASE STUDY OF NSUKKA LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA

ABSTRACT

This research work is a study of secondary school students’ use of preposition- induced collocational patterns in the English language in Nsukka local government area. The study specifically investigates the students’ pattern of communication in using preposition – induced collocational patterns in writing essays. The general objective is to find out how communication in English language is hindered by students’ poor performance in using preposition- induced collocational patterns in writing essays. The specific objectives are to find out the types of errors students commit in using preposition- induced collocational patterns in writing essays; also whether misformations in teachers’ lesson notes, location, class differences, and intralingual influences caused students to commit errors or not. The sample population comprised of two thousand  students  of  the  secondary  schools  in  Nsukka  Local  Government  Area  and  thirty teachers from the selected schools. Six schools were selected through the cluster and opportunity sampling techniques. Three of the schools were located in the rural area of the local government and three were located in the Urban Area of the Local Government. Four null hypotheses were formulated and tested for statistical significance using the t-test statistics. The research instruments  used  for data collection  were the  written essay scripts  of the students  and  the teachers’ lesson notes. The essay topics used were taken from the descriptive and narrative essay types.  The  study  used  quantitative  data  analysis  following  Dorney’s  (2007)  method  of quantitative data analysis in Applied Linguistics.  The basic design of the study was survey. The findings show that the students committed errors: omissions, misformations, misorderings, additions, misapprehensions and wrong spellings. These errors were caused by misformations found in teachers’ lesson notes, intralingual influences and interference from the L1. Students in schools located in urban areas committed more errors than students in schools located in rural areas. Also, SS1 students committed more errors than SS11 students. The errors found were three thousand nine hundred and thirty. The errors influenced students’ performance in using preposition-induced collocational patterns. Communication was hindered by  ungrammatical and ambiguous structures.  The researcher suggests the adoption of preposition-induced collocation learning (“PIC” learning) in schools as a-0-p grammar topic to enhance the effective teaching and use of prepositions and their collocational b patterns.

1.1       Background to the study

Chapter One

Introduction

The study of human language has been a major concern of many linguists over the years. This God given tool for human communication has been defined in various ways by various linguists.  Agbedo (2012:1) defines language “as a tool used for the communication of meaning”. His view of language agrees with the functional grammarians’ view that language is used “to achieve  great  function  and  express  ideas”.    Thompson  (2003:30)  agrees  with  this  view  of language when he asserts that, “we use language to talk about our experience of the world, including the worlds in our minds, to describe events and states and the entities involved in them”.  The language that man speaks is his identity.  It is in line with this idea that Nwaozuzu (2008:2) asserts that “language is the science of human life and power”.

However, Richards and Rodgers (1986:17) define language as “a system of structurally related elements for the coding of meaning.”  This definition agrees with the structural linguists’ view that the target of language learning is the mastery of the elements of the system.  Language is very important to man. It is learnt through “a system…” (Anagbogu, Mbah and Eme 2001:1). This system is defined in terms of the phonological, grammatical, and lexical units.  Nwaozuzu (2001:102) opines that “language is not instinctive; it is learnt when exposed to the appropriate environment and condition.”  The condition is “the correct system.”  In the mid-1950s, Naom Chomsky introduced the concept of generative grammar.  He regards all the other definitions of language as the “common sense idea of language”.  He defines language as “a set of objects (that we call sentences)”; the grammar is seen as a “criterion for membership in that set, or “a definition of that set”, and is, therefore “generative”.  Grammar is seen as a device that generates (all the members of the set) language itself (Riemsdejk and Williams, 1986:3).

As a result of the emphasis on grammar, most linguists of that period focused their research on grammatical competence in language teaching and learning.   The reason is that a learner’s knowledge of a language is determined by his or her grammatical competence in that language which will enable him or her determine which grammar is right or wrong. Every L2 learner  is  faced  with  the  problem  of  overcoming  the  influence  of  L1   structures  on  the  L2 structures.  In  the  1940s,  and  1950s,  contrastive  analysis  (CA)  was  developed  as  a  tool  in language teaching following the structuralists’ view of language as a system of forms. The focus

of language teaching then was grammar. Brown (1980:48) emphasizes that “…the principal barrier to second language learning was the interference of the first language system on the second language system”. The aim of CA was to make the L2 learner see “… how his or her first language enhances or inhibits his or her learning of the L2. ( Lado, 1957; in Enete, 2013:127). The native speaker of any language has the grammar of that language in his mind.  Hence the grammar of a language is seen as “the knowledge that we say a person has who knows the language” (McAuthur 1998:1). Johansson (2008:9) defines CA as “… the systematic comparism of two or more languages, with the aim of describing their similarities and differences”. In 1957, Lado came up with the contrastive analysis hypothesis (CAH). He claimes that in CA “… those elements which are similar to the (the learner’s) native language will be simple for the learner to learn, and those that are different will be difficult for the learner during the learning process”, because he often transfers structures acquired in speaking the L1 into the L2. In CA the difficult part of the L2 is predicted and the results are used to improve the teaching materials.

Over time, CA was replaced by error analysis (EA) as a tool in language teaching. Language  usage  is  that  aspect  of  performance  that  makes  evident  the  extent  to  which  the language user demonstrates his knowledge of linguistic rules (Widdowson, 1978:3).  Errors are the result of the learners’ attempt of language usage. Errors show  the extent to which the language user demonstrates his knowledge of linguistic rules (Widdowson, 1987:3).   The inabilities of CA to “… predict degrees of difficulty in the L1  with accuracy and many other short comings of CA made some linguists ( Chomsky 1957, Corder 1974, and many others ) to, rather, focus attention on the errors L2 learners commit and overcome the problems of errors in L2 learning. Chomsky (1965:60) distinguishes between “competence and performance”. Mitchel and Myles (2004:56) note that competence is the “abstract mental representation of the language and the computational mechanisms associated with it, which all human beings possess”.  It is the mental representation of linguistic rules that constitute the speaker-hearer’s internal grammar. Performance  is  seen  as  the  use  of  this  grammar  in  the  comprehension  and  production  of language.  It is “about how language is used in my life”. Chomsky’s transformational grammar gave rise to the theory of error. The study of error is carried out by means of error analysis (Ellis

1997:47). Corder (1967) and (1971) a published a number of articles to present the concept of errors analysis and emphasizes that examining errors is a way of investigating learning process. Error analysis is defined as a linguistic analysis that concentrates on investigating the learner

language. The language teacher focuses on the causes of the errors and how to tackle them. EA

served as a tool for providing empirical evidence for the behaviourists / mentalists debate of the

1970s, showing that many of the errors that learners commit cannot be put down to interference.

However,  EA  was  challenged  on  the  grounds  that  learners  act  systematically  in accordance with the mental grammars they have constructed and that their utterances are well- formed in terms of these grammars. The focus on grammatical knowledge is good but research in language acquisition and verbal communication has established that grammar when taught in isolation from its contextualized communicative use tends to be acquired by learners as merely linguistic property. This has been evidenced in many studies which show that grammatical knowledge does not automatically transfer to actual communicative acts such as writing and reading.   Recently, most linguists have focused  attention on communicative competence in language pedagogy. Also, language researchers overtime have come to view language as an instrument for communication between human beings. Chomsky (198:10) had claimed that “… human language is a system for free expression of thought, essentially independent of stimulus control,  need  –satisfaction  or  instrumental  purpose”.  In  essence,  language  learning  should address the communicative needs of the language learner. There was then a shift from form to function. Thompson (2003:53) notes that “… the main goal of functionalism is to clarify the dynamic relationship between form and function”. It maintains the view that “… linguistic structures can only be understood and explained with reference to the semantic and communicative functions of language, whose primary function is to be a vehicle for social interaction among human beings” (Allens, 2007:253). From functionalism, there was the emergence of communicative grammar which gave rise to communicative language teaching (CLT).  Attention  on  CLT  teaching  began  to  rise  with  Hymes’s  (1971)  reaction  against Chomsky’s notion of competence and performance. He notes that performance is more important than competence and that language learning should make language learners develop communicative competence.

CLT as it is practised, is based on the following tenets: classroom goals reflect the aim of language teaching (communicative competence); teaching should focus on the   authentic   and pragmatic use of language; both fluency and accuracy should be developed; learners should be prepared to use language productively and receptively; language teaching should make learners to be aware of learning styles and strategies, so that they can become autonomous learners, and

teachers take on the role of facilitators (Brown, 2001:480).   Canale and Swam (1980:35-36) explain that communicative competence includes the knowledge the speaker-hearer has of what constitutes effective language behaviour (which includes, grammatical competence, sociolinguistic competence, discourse competence, strategic competence, and so on) in relation to particular communicative goals. However, recent interests on English for Specific Purposes (ESP) have made teachers of language to focus language teaching on “… the needs of their students during learning” (Songhori, 2007:3). With the publication of Munby’s “Communicative language design” in 1978, situations and functions were set within the framework of Needs analysis (Munby 1978:32).  Chamber (1980) came up with the “Target Analysis”. Several others have also been introduced. They include: Present Situation Analysis; Pedagogic Needs Analysis; Deficiency Analysis; Strategy Analysis or Learning Needs Analysis; Means Analysis; Register Analysis; Discourse Analysis and Genre Analysis. All these approaches are geared towards meeting the needs of the learners in the process of learning a second language by establishing “… what the learners need to know in order to function effectively in the target situation” (Songhori, 2007: 20).  The aim of Needs analysis regarding foreign language learning or second language learning is to determine why a particular group of learners want to use the target language, through a number of procedures which provide analysts with the required data about the learners. Though communicative language teaching is currently in use, it did not overshadow the emphasis on investigating learners’ errors.

It is through writing that the learner’s proficiency in the target language is tested.  More recent  approaches  to  language  teaching  and  assessment  recognize  the  need  to  integrate  all aspects of writing. It is as a result of this, that writing has become compulsory in the language classrooms.  Currently in Applied linguistics, using the students’ (L2 learners’) written texts and assignments as research tools has become the subject of many research and other educational endeavour.   Writing is an act that portrays the knowledge of the subject matter to be written about. Language learners make errors in comprehension, writing and production of language. The complex nature of the English language is such that L2  learners often commit errors.  The more the learner matures, the more he or she learns.   Long (1990:2) concludes that there are maturational  constraints  on  language  learning,  and  that,  rate  and  level  of  attainment  are contingent upon the age at which learning begins.   This is why the senior secondary school students in Nigeria education system are more mature in speaking and writing the English

language(since English language is a compulsory subject in national examinations such as SSCE, NECO and UTME) than the students in the junior secondary schools.  Snow and Hoefnageal- Hohle (1978:1) emphasize that older students are better second language learners because they have  achieved  a  higher  level  of  cognitive  maturity,  knowledge  and  experience  in  the  first language before they begin the learning of the second language. The present study is focused on finding out errors students commit in using preposition-induced collocational patterns in writing essays.

1.2   Statement of the problem

The  teaching  of  English  language  has  been  given  much  emphasis  at  all  levels  of education  in  Nigeria  but  the  desired  result  is  yet  to  be  achieved  (Oluwale,  2008  cited  in Nzeagwu, 2017:154). In line with this Bamgbose (2006) asserts that “at virtually all levels of education, performance in the English language is inadequate and continues to affect acquisition of knowledge in all other subjects” (cited in Nzeagwu, 2017:154). Every L2 learner faces the problem of acquiring the grammar of the target language for effective communication. The use of preposition – induced collocational patterns is inevitable when writing essays, compositions, letters, and so on. There is a great emphasis on the compulsory study of English language in the senior secondary schools in Nigeria. It is the language of educational evaluation in our schools (Ekpe 2010:  31). It is used in testing the students’ proficiency in the use of English in the Senior Secondary School Certificate Examinations, and in evaluating students’ communication ability in the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examinations. Students are, therefore, expected to have a good mastery of the English language. The constant occurrence of errors in students’ written essay writings affects communication.   Also the standard of English language usage is being affected by wrong use of words or word combinations (collocation). Sentences are built by words. Celce-Murcia (2001:5) notes that non-native speakers of the English language encounter three types of problems in using collocations which are preposition induced.  They are, choosing the wrong preposition, omitting a needed preposition and using a preposition where one is not needed. Errors that occur in using preposition- induced collocation in writing, when dictated and analyzed will help to improve the knowledge of grammar and the proper use of prepositions. Errors call for the teaching of requisite knowledge. It is, therefore the need to fill up the gap between the proper knowledge of preposition and its’ use in communication through essay writing that this research is set to do.

1.3       Objectives of the study

The main objective of this study is to examine the performance of the students in using preposition – induced collocational patterns in writing compositions. The specific objectives are to find out:

(i)         the types of errors that students commit in using preposition – induced collocational patterns.

(ii)       whether misformations in teachers’ lesson notes could induce students to commit errors or

not.

(iii)        whether senior secondary school students in schools located in Urban Areas commit more preposition – induced collocation errors than Senior Secondary school students in schools located in Rural Areas or not;

(iv)   if intralingual influence can cause students to commit errors; and

(v)       how differences in class can affect students’ use of preposition – induced collocational patterns.

1.4       Research questions

i           What types of errors do students commit in using preposition- induced collocational patterns?

ii.         To what extent do errors in teachers’ lesson notes contribute to the students’ preposition – induced collocation errors?

iii.        How   does   location   affect   students’   performance   in   using   preposition-   induced collocational patterns?

iv.        To what extent does intralingual influence cause students to commit preposition – induced collocational errors?

v.         To what extent do differences in class attainment affect students’ performance in using

preposition -induced collocational patterns in writing?

1.5      Research Hypotheses

The study is guided by the following null hypotheses:

.i.           Error types has no significant influence on students’ performance

ii.        Errors in teachers’ lesson notes have no significant influence on the performance of SS11 students.

iii.        There is no significant difference between the mean performance of students in schools located in Rural Area and students in schools located in Urban Area.

iv.      Intralingual errors have no significant influence on the mean performance of SS1 students. v.      There is no significant difference between the errors committed by SSI students and SS11

students respectively  .

1.6       Significance of the study

The basic task of EA is to describe how learning occurs by examining the learners output and this includes his or her correct or incorrect utterances. The solutions to the learning problems which the use of preposition – induced collocational patterns generates in grammar will be exposed to the language researcher. One of such problems is the proper restructuring of the prepositions with their collocational patterns. It is known that grammaticality is the evidence of uncovering the principles that constitute a speakers’ syntactic knowledge of his language. This study will, therefore help the language teacher to know the linguistic performance of students in using prepositions and the areas to emphasize on in grammar lessons so as to help improve the learners output. The findings of this work will expose the applied linguist researchers (who may be language teachers) to examine their lesson notes properly to identify preposition – induced collocational errors and correct them. The L2 learner will benefit from this study in learning the differences between his ungrammatical use of prepositions and the grammatical forms. The field of EA will also be enriched by this study.

1.7       Area of Study

The area of study is Applied linguistics. It is an interdisciplinary field of study.  Second language (L2) learning is a major area of study in Applied linguistics.  It involves the application of linguistics principles in second language (L2) study. This study is centered on   SS1 and SS11students.It is , therefore, an applied linguistic search for Senior Secondary school I and II students’ use of preposition- induced collocational patterns in the English language.

1.8       Scope and Limitation of study

This study is limited to the search for prepositions and their collocational patterns as there are also other areas of grammar. It follows critically Corder’s steps of error analysis which investigates what learners’ errors are and why they occur. Greater emphasis was on searching out intralingual errors because they constitute the major challenge of the L2  learner of the English language.   However, there are some limitations in this study. The first limitation is the vast

nature of the term collocations.  Benson, et al (1997, cited in Kim, 2009:9) note that collocations are divided into two groups: grammatical collocations and lexical collocations.  Each of these types of collocations has divisions.  This study did not cover the search for lexical collocations because lexical collocations do not contain prepositions, infinitives or clauses.  The grammatical collocation  in  this  study  is  between  the  content  words  (noun,  verb,  adjective)  and  the prepositions. Searching out the examples was not very easy, but the researcher diligently sought them out. There was the challenge of organizing the research results statistically, but the researcher doggedly worked them out.

Another restricting limitation was the challenge of getting the teachers’ lesson notes. Many of them refused to bring out their lesson notes, if not for the assistance of the head teachers of the English department in the schools visited.   Looking out for the preposition – induced collocational patterns was a big challenge for the researcher, but she carefully read through the lines of all the students written composition work to bring out the corpuses needed for the analysis.  It is clear to note that no single research is enough to bring out all the nuances in the search  for  learners’  performance  in  L2    acquisition.  This  study  is  basically  confined  to structurally- induce collocational patterns as there is, also idiomatically induced collocational patterns.

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