Identifying Determining Factors of EFL Learners’ Stage of the Acquisition on English Prepositions

Abstract

In the instruction of English prepositions, the unidirectionality hypothesis which derives from cognitive linguistics has been widely assumed. However, there are few researches about the validity of this assumption from the viewpoint of data-based or knowledge-based methodology. This paper conducts the survey on the knowledge of various uses of preposition over and analyze the results by employing the decision tree to identify the crucial factors to predict the score which determine Japanese EFL learners’ proficiency levels of an English preposition over. The results of our analysis show that there are three important question items which predict participants’ scores on the acquisition of over, and the usages of over in these items do not follow the unidirectionality hypothesis as is assumed in the literature. This suggests that any instructional method to enhance Japanese EFL learners' knowledge of prepositions assuming the unidirectionality hypothesis needs to be reconsidered in terms of acquisitional order.