Preposition Usage among Level 300 Students of English Language at the University of Buea

CHAPTER ONE

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

This study seeks to look at Preposition Usage among Level 300 Students of English Language at the University of Buea. This chapter presents the background to the study, the statement of the problem, the purpose of the study, the significance of the study, research questions, hypothesis and definition of some terms. This chapter also includes the reason for this research.

Background to the study

The study is built on the idea of the use of prepositions by the Students University of Buea. Preposition like any other part of speech or word class is supposed to be used correctly in writing in order to guarantee a smooth and creative manner of writing.

When a preposition is used wrongly in a sentence it makes that sentence wrong. After having looked at other works of other researchers, and the manner in which some students write, this study is built to bring out the level of proficiency in the use of prepositions by Level 300 students of English Language at the University of Buea.

According to Crystal (2000), English occupies a dominant position in the world today and it’s unlikely that this role will diminish even if there are changes in attitude vis- à-vis indigenous languages.

English is a world language according to Kachru’s theory on English, ft is the world’s leading of education, international conferences and gatherings and even technology. For example one of the worlds most used computer software (Microsoft) is developed in English.

Those countries who have English as their mother tongue are native speakers: Britain, America and Australia. Those who have English as their second language involve most of the British colonies like Nigeria, Cameroon and Ghana.

Those who use English as a second language tend to face a lot of problems in both speech and writing. Some of these difficulties they face include; tenses, places in which phrase is in the past tense or in the present tense and some aspects of grammar such as prepositions.

Mbihlufeuin (2014) expands more on the seriousness of this problem in her review on the use of prepositions. Her results show that the use of prepositions poses a

a very serious problem to students of the University of Buea, placing more emphases on level 400 students who were her case study

The research saw a 40% percentage failure, which is a clear indicator that students of the University of Buea have very poor mastery of the use of prepositions.

The research also saw a 60% per cent pass. This shows that students of the University of Buea have been putting effort to have a mastery of the use of prepositions, yet much needs to be done to Enable the rest of the 40% to be step up.

This study is therefore aimed at unavailing the poor mastery of prepositions by students of the University of Buea and to suggest possible solutions to remedy the situation.

Statement of the problem

Although the University of Buea is in Cameroon which has English as a second language and the students of the University of Buea speak English, the qualities of English differ by the use of prepositions.

Sufficient research has not been carried out on the use of English prepositions by students of the University of Buea especially level 300 students of English. Hence research seeks to investigate the use of prepositions by Level 300 students of the University of Buea.

Purpose of the study

The purpose of this study h to investigate the use of prepositions by Level 300 students of English language at the University of Buea, so as to increase the English proficiency at the University of Buea especially amongst Level 300 English students.

Objectives of the study

The following are research objectives used for the study;

1. To find out the use of preposition by Level 300 students of English at the University of Buea.
2. To find out the extent of the use of preposition by Level 300 students of English Language at the University of Buea.