Learning English Prepositions in Iraq

The objective of this study would be to identify the various types of difficulties that challenge the Iraqi students learning English as a second language. The study would identify and classify the sources of errors as either interlingual or intralingual. The research would assist the Iraqi students to recognize and acquaint the challenges in learning the English prepositions and the causes of such difficulties. The study would also prepare the teachers of English to train the learners while they already know the sources of errors. The curriculum could also be designed to accommodate the solutions to the mentioned problems. Ideally, the Iraqi learners believe that they can use the correct English prepositions in the condition that the prepositions have an equivalent in the Arabic language.

Therefore, the learners could perhaps use the incorrect prepositions due to lack of the direct counterpart in the Arabic language. Moreover, the prepositions in English could be assumed if it is not needed in the native languages (Loewen and Philp 70). Majority of the Iraqi students also add the unnecessary prepositions if their equivalents are significant in Arabic. On the other hand, the target language confusion hypothesis encompasses three aspects of challenges. The first investigation is to analyze and identify the best methods that can be used to predict the kind of errors made by the Iraqi learners when communicating in English. The study would also encompass the investigation of the temporal prepositions that are difficult for the learners to comprehend and use.