Investigating Difficulties Encountering MA Students of Linguistics in Using Prepositions in a Written Text

Abstract

This study aimed at investigating the problems that MA students of linguistics batch 7 are encountered by using and understanding prepositions. The researcher adopted a descriptive analytical method, which followed a quantitative analysis. A test was used as a tool for data collection, the sample of the study consists of 30 students drawn from MA programme in Linguistics, Sudan University of Science and Technology, Graduate Studies. The data were analyzed by using the statistical program SPSS which provides percentage results for the test. The study comes out with the results that MA students of linguistics face problems in using prepositions, MA students of linguistics fail to use suitable prepositions to fill in the blanks which make the context not cohesive and MA students of linguistics are poor in identification different types of prepositions. At the end of the study the researcher presented some recommendations. These recommendations focus on paying attention to the use prepositions when designing syllabuses, students should do more practice in using prepositions.