Conventional Errors in Employing English Prepositions in the Written Work of EFL Jordanian Students

Abstract

This paper reviews the status of learning and teaching English prepositions in the Arab word and especially in the Jordanian context. However In this process of learning English preposition, Jordanian EFL learners in the attempt to master this part of speech faces different difficulties. Through the related literature of the studies conducted on these difficulties it was suggested that the majority of errors made by the Jordanian EFL students are the results of frequent acquisition and learning process, such as simplification of the target / English language prepositions system and rules overgeneralization .The impact of the subjects’ native language was found crucial. Where most of the errors that could possibly be ascribed to native language transfer, among other sources, such as the prepositions /in/, / into/ and /at / matches / Fe/, /onto/ and /on/ matches /ala/ in the Arabic language where the preposition /of/ is with no match, because of its diverse structural function.