The Problem of English Spatial, Non-spatial and Idiomatic Adpositions in Iranian EFL Environment: A Prototypical Approach

The Problem of English Spatial, Non-spatial, and Idiomatic Adpositions in Iranian EFL Environment: A Prototypical Approach

 

Nassim Golaghaei¹

 

Firooz Sadighi

 

 

Islamic Azad University, Shiraz Branch, Shiraz, Iran

 

 

 

 

Several studies of L2 learners’ interlanguage have addressed the complexity of the English adpositional system due to several reasons like L1 transfer, lack of knowledge in L2, and the strong collocational relations of prepositions with other elements of the English language. The major purpose of the present study is to evaluate the performance of Iranian students dealing with three broad categories of spatial, non-spatial, and idiomatic adpositions in English. To achieve the inclinations of this piece of research, 60 students majoring in TEFL at Roudehen University were selected. A paper-based TOEFL test of English Proficiency was administered to assess the participants’ general language proficiency. Three completion tasks with the division of spatial, non-spatial (nominal, adjectival, and verbal), and idiomatic adpositions were administered. The results presented the fact that the Iranian participants were considerably inclined to transfer their L1 adpositional patterns to their L2 production. The correlational analyses indicated that the scores related to adposition task in general, non-spatial as well as the idiomatic subtests were

strongly correlated with the scores obtained from the TOEFL test. A moderate correlation was found between the spatial subtest and the TOEFL one. The independent sample t-test results between the freshmen and sophomores dealing with spatial, nominal, and adjectival subtests were considered to be significant. However, in reference to the verbal subtest, the difference between the two groups was not significant. The results obtained from the independent sample t-test indicated no significant difference between the freshmen and sophomores regarding their performances on idiomatic adpositions. Finally, the results of the correlation coefficients showed high correlation coefficients between the whole adposition test and the three subtests of spatial, non-spatial, and idiomatic ones. Moreover, high and moderate correlations were reported among the three subtests with the highest correlation between the spatial and non-spatial subtests and the lowest between the idiomatic and spatial ones.

 

Keywords: Spatial, Non-spatial, and Idiomatic Adpositions, Satellite-framed Language, L1 Transfer

 

Technically speaking, the term ‘adposition’ could be crystallized in terms of the three distinct subcategorizations as preposition, postposition, and circumposition with regard to the location each element occupies with reference to its phrase. According to the definition provided by the international encyclopedia of linguistics, an adposition replicates an element that prototypically combines with a phrase and provides clues regarding the way that phrase should be interpreted in the surrounding context. The encyclopedic definition of adpositions resembles these syntactic elements as the members of the syntactic category of prepositions symbolized as “p’’. A Prepositional phrase encompassing an adpositional head and its complement phrase could be utilized for a wide range of syntactic and semantic functions like modification and complementation. To imply a sense of consistency, we employ the term adposition for the three parts of speech: preposition, postposition, and circumposition all throughout this research project.

	By delving into the field of pedagogy, we become   easily
	convinced that many EFL English teachers and   learners refer to

learning and teaching prepositions as a perennial problem which is cumbersome to be eradicated. In the same way, early studies of English prepositions supported the idea that all non-native learners face an imbroglio as they attempt by every expedient to master the prepositional system of English. Therefore, the majority of learners resort to rote memorization which could be obviously judged as the most unsatisfactory situation.

 

The problems emerged from spatial language provides native speakers with a reliable diagnostic tool for the identification of non-native speakers. As stated by Bores and Demecheleer (1998, cited in Koosha & Jafarpour, 2006), prepositions are difficult to acquire for both EFL /ESL learners due to the fact that they are accompanied with literal as well as figurative meanings. Moreover, Mukattash (1976, P.269) believed that “prepositions are an ever-lasting problem for foreign learners of English.’’ Rice, 1999 (cited in Morgestern & Sekali, 2009, p.261) explicated the complexity of the issue by stating the idea that “the factors determining the acquisition of prepositions would be linguistic rather than cognitive, and linked to language use and frequency of input.’’

Such a difficulty may as well arise from different factors: an identical adposition like ’over’ may have different meanings and functions as preposition, noun, adverb, adjective, and particle in English, and part of the complexity may be caused by its diversity in collocational properties. Furthermore, as mentioned by Saric (2001), prepositions are referred to as polysemous words in our cognitive framework that possess particular type of meaning. However, the important fact is that the meanings of prepositions are much more complicated compared with the other lexical categories, and the nature of the meaning could not be easily identified unless we distinguish the prototypical meaning as the best instance and the central model of a category. Consequently, learners resort to rote memorization to escape from the predicament posed by the complexity of the adpositional system in English, which would lead to unsatisfactory results.

Prepositions are difficult for all EFL learners including Persian ones due to the fact that they frequently anchor English prepositions to the prepositional system of their mother tongue. On the other hand, the variety in meaning, application and number of the prepositions in English makes the task much more complicated. Different parts of speech in English have undeniable effect on the omission, selection, and deletion of prepositions in English, which leads to the emergence of syntactic errors in this area. Moreover, the idiomatic and metaphorical usage of some adpositions in English makes the task of learning these constituents laborious even by native speakers of the language.

 

In learning English prepositions, Iranian students attempt to substitute the prepositional system of Farsi for the English one. A thorough analysis of the prepositional systems of Farsi and English reveals the fact that not every English preposition has a definite equivalent in Farsi and vice versa. Furthermore, the two systems are not identical regarding the usage and meaning of their prepositions. For instance, the spatial adpositions, ‘in, on, at’, and the zero equivalent (?), in English may be problematic for L1 Persian speakers due to the fact that they could be replaced with the unique adposition ‘رد’ in Persian. In other words, prepositions do not translate well to other languages including Persian, which implies that their range of senses is arbitrary. Such a difficulty is blatantly encountered in teaching grammars and textbooks, which could be regarded as a barricade hindering the advancement of English students who strive for a helpful logic that would pave their way to understand and learn English adpositions. Besides, overgeneralization may occur where ‘in, on, at’ are used for spatial relations where one of them is more appropriate. In fact, these particular adpositions occur with many different English words in abstract, metaphorical, and idiomatic usage despite the fact that their equivalent is devoid of having such a powerful stance in Persian.

 

The learners’ interlanguage could be prominently evaluated in terms of the most controversial issue in SLA research, namely, ‘transfer’, through which “the adult SLA builds on pre-existing L1 knowledge…….which may guide creative combination in their L2

interlanguage to variously good and bad effects.’’(Macwhinney, 1992 cited in Doughty & Long, 2003, p. 72). As mentioned by Odlin (1989, cited in Ellis, 1994) in spite of the existence of some counterarguments regarding the significance of transfer, a growing body of scholarship stresses the importance of transfer in second language acquisition. Similarly, Robinson and Ellis (2008) believed that the L2 system is devoid of a distinctive conceptual structure. In other words, its formal structure relies on the structure of L1. In this way, due to the frequency of transfer from L1 to L2, the learners’ L2 could be regarded as a parasite on L1. What learners try to accomplish is diminishing this parasitism by constructing L2 representations in a distinct framework. Eckman (1977, cited in Saville-Troike, 2006) in his Markedness differential hypothesis, assumes that while unmarked features in L1 are resistant to be transferred to the learners’ L2, marked features in L2 are cumbersome to be learned. The idea is further confirmed by Kelllerman (1979, 1983, cited in McLaughlin, 1987) who depicts transfer as a cognitive process in which we have to focus on the learners’ perception of similarity between the structures of L1 and L2 as well as the degree of markedness of the intended structure in the learners’ L1 in the way of making any fruitful decisions. In fact, the reawakened enthusiasm referring to the notion of transfer or the so called cross language influence has shifted its direction of interest. The researchers have concerned themselves more with the study of the conditions in which the probability of the occurrence of transfer is enhanced rather than being centralized on the existence or non-existence of the process of transfer in the learners’ interlanguage. As it is stated by Eckman, 1978; Gass, 1979; Kellrman, 1997, 1979; Sjoholm, 1982 (cited in Kellerman & Smith, 1986, p.68), transferability could be evaluated in terms of a number of distinct factors like “the nature of the structures in questions, the distance between the languages, markedness, universals, and various typological criteria.’’

 

As it is evident, the possibility of the occurrence of the two processes of transfer and overgeneralization has been examined by several investigations. The existing pieces of data suggest the fact that some of these possibilities are more probable. Talmy (1985,

cited in Robinson & Ellis 2008) asserted the idea that in reference to spatial adpositions transfer does occur in case of certain languages like Spanish and English. To shed light on the fact, he divided all languages into two groups of “satellite-framed’’ and “verb-framed’’ categories on the basis of the way each language packages motion events. A satellite has been defined by Talmy (2000, p.102) as “… the grammatical category of any constituent other than a noun-phrase or prepositional-phrase complement that is in a sister relation to the verb root. Accordingly, it could be both a bound affix and a free word and can encompass elements like verb particles (e.g., up, over) as well as verb prefixes (e.g., mis as in miscast). Satellite-framed languages like English crystallize path motions like movements in, on, etc… by employing a constituent like a preposition that is a satellite to the main verb, whereas “verb-framed’’ languages like Spanish and Korean denote path in the verb itself, and some languages like Korean lack Spatial prepositions completely. These distinctions allowed a number of researchers to examine whether acquiring a second language with a verb-frame or satellite-frame can be influenced by the structure of the L1 with similar or different typology. The above-mentioned factor seems to be a debatable issue in the case of Iranian students learning English, as both languages of English and Persian could be classified under the category of satellite-framed languages.

 

In reference to other spatial expressions, there are a number of research studies referring to a wide variety of languages supporting the idea of transfer from L1 to L2 to some extent (e.g., Carroll, 1997; Harley, 1989; Ijaz, 1986; Jarvis & Odlin, 2000; Mukattash, 1984, Pavesi, 1987; Schumann, 1986, cited in Robinson & Ellis, 2008).

To have a vivid perspective regarding the two general concepts of prototypical and idiomatic senses of adpositions as well as the significance of finding their relationship within the framework of meaning chains dealing with the polysemous nature of adpositions, it seems beneficial to highlight the underpinnings of the prototype theory. As stated by Geeraerts (1989), the origin of the prototype theory dates back to mid-1970s with the research project carried out by Eleanor Rosch, whose work was primarily

focused on the investigation of the internal structure of categories. In other words, the theory explicates the way through which categories are processed and represented. According to Hu (2002, p.353), the prototype theory stands in opposition with classical theory of categories which presupposes the idea that “a category is defined by a necessary and sufficient set of features and that all members of a category have full or equal status as category members.’’ In contrast, Lakoff (1987, as cited in Hu, 2002) believed in the existence of “asymmetries among category members and asymmetric structures within categories.’’ A prototypical structure could be shaped when a category is accompanied with some members being more prototypical of that category compared with the others. The idea was deeply appreciated by many linguists due to the fact that it could be purposefully utilized for the construction of a model applicable to such semantic phenomena as “the fuzzy boundaries of lexical categories, the existence of typicality scales for the members of a category, the flexible and dynamic nature of word meanings, the importance of metaphor and metonymy as the basis of that flexibility…’’ (Geeraerts, 1989, p. 590).

 

As stated by Lakoff, 1987; Langacker, 1987; Talor, 1995, 1998 (cited in Hu, 2002, p.354), the application of the prototype theory could be simply traced in “theoretical discussions of cognitive patterns underlying linguistic categorization.’’ Moreover, its assumptions have also been utilized in the formulation of plausible accounts of data in L1 acquisition pertinent to different grammatical structures. (e.g., Bates & MacWhinney, 1982; Bybee & Slobin, 1982; de Villiers, 1980; Shirai & Anderson, 1995 cited in Hu, 2002). In spite of the fact that only a few studies have addressed the application of the prototype theory to L2 acquisition, they provide us with results suggesting the idea that linguistic prototypicality exerts an influence on L2 learners’ acquisition and use of grammatical structures (Hu, 2002).

 

Brugman, 1983; Hawkins, 1984 (as cited in Robinson & Ellis, 2008) employed the term prototypical sense and meaning chains dealing with the analysis of spatial adpositions and their polysemous or collocational properties. “It is helpful to realize that

grammatical elements of any sort are likely to be polysemous, having a prototypical meaning as well as an array of other, less central values possibly susceptible to schematic characterization.’’ (Robinson & Ellis, 2008, p. 79). As explicated by Langacker (1987, cited in Robimson & Ellis, 2008), the function of a spatial adposition could be simply defined as the process of positioning or locating one object with reference to another object or entity. In this way, the term trajectory (TR) is assigned to the object which is located, whereas the object utilized as the reference point is regarded to be the landmark (LM).

 

On the other hand, Lakoff (1987 as cited in Robimson & Ellis, 2008) investigated the use of several adpositions in their metaphorical senses in a variety of contexts. He clarified the point by stating the idea that it is common for metaphors to accept image schemas as their input. We have several metaphorical models that apply a spatial domain as their source domain. Such an analysis could be employed in the way of interpreting some idiomatic expressions involving the adposition of ‘over’. For instance, in the sentence ‘Pete Rose is over the hill’ a metaphor is used to imagine a person in a journey dealing with his occupational position. Here, the term ‘hill’ could be interpreted as a landmark and the person is positioned over such a landmark. Therefore, the term ‘over the hill’ implies the meaning that the person has reached and passed the zenith of his occupational status.

Some other researchers have tried to explicate the application of adpositions in both spatial and metaphorical or idiomatic uses in terms of the functional relationships between objects. Garrod, Sanford (1989) and Vandeloise (1991, cited in Robinson & Ellis, 2008) referred to location control as a key component in the description of the use of the two adpositions of ‘in’ and ‘on’. “ For an object to be ‘in’ or ‘on’ a reference object entails that the reference object will constrain the location of the located object over time, such that moving the reference object will cause the located object to move with it.’’ Such a hybrid relationship could be shaped through a bond between both the ‘geometric’ construct of containment and the ‘extra-geometric’ construct of location control. To clarify the point, we can refer to instances of spatial

and idiomatic adpositions set forth by Robinson and Ellis (2008). The statement ‘A person in a queue’ presents the idea that a person’s location is decided by the queue and the movement of the queue and not the person’s movement alone. When we say ‘A person is in a bad mood’, that person’s behavior is being affected and controlled by his/her mood. In the same way, being on social security transfers the idea that the security is provided by social services. As it is evident, the functional relationship between objects could be regarded as a significant factor for interpreting the spatial as well as idiomatic use of many adpositions in English. In other words, the appropriate interpretation and application of a polysemous adposition is to some extent dependent on grasping the relationship between its polysemous properties (spatial and idiomatic adpositions) and prototypical meaning.

 

As it is evident, the acquisition of second language which is necessarily investigated in spontaneous dialogical contexts may give new insights into prepositions as a complicated grammatical category. Which prepositions are transferred more frequently from learners’ L1 to their L2? Is there any significant relationship between the acquisition of L2 prepositions and the learners’ degree of second language proficiency? Are adpositions considered to be more complicated when used in their idiomatic sense compared with the situation in which they are applied in their prototypical sense? In order to tackle these questions, the researchers analyzed the performances of L2 learners on different types of adpositions. Based on their personal experience as English teachers at university, the researchers were well aware of the several problems which English university students have with English, and of their generally poor level of attainment in EFL due, in their opinion, to poor educational system and the methods used by those who are not familiar with the predictable errors that their students will make and the causes behind them.

One particular problem with which Iranian students struggle is the use of English prepositions, an area where they incessantly make considerable number of errors and, interestingly enough, where there have been only a small number of experimental studies at the academic level. All these reasons provided the

researchers with the motivation to scrutinize the difficulties the students face as they endeavor to master the English prepositions. The researchers hope that the results will pave the way for other studies that will cover a far wide area of the English language in future.

 

Research Objectives

 

This research project is primarily based on the following objectives:

 

Basically speaking, it attempts to find out the extent to which Iranian EFL learners’ knowledge of collocation of adposition is affected by transfer from their L1 as well as their lack of knowledge in L2 with regard to the idea that both English and Persian belong to the category of satellite-framed languages. Moreover, the researchers tried to observe any significant relationship between the learners’ performance on the TOEFL test as the measurement of general English proficiency and their knowledge of spatial, non- spatial, and idiomatic subtests as well as the whole adpositional test. The third area of this research project was allocated to the process of finding out whether or not knowledge of collocations of adpositions shared between Farsi & English and, based on interlingual transfer (spatial, nominal, adjectival, and verbal adpositions) could differentiate between the two groups of freshmen and sophomores. Another area of interest of this research project was devoted to the analysis of finding whether or not the learners’ knowledge of metaphorical adpositions in English could differentiate between freshmen and sophomores. Perhaps, such an analysis was carried out with the intention of not being limited to the study of the problems caused by the participants’ L1 (inter-lingual errors) and to expand the scope of the research to a comparative study encompassing the intralingual errors in metaphoric contexts as well. The final area of this investigation could be crystallized in terms of finding out whether or not the students’ performances differ significantly dealing with the three types of adpositional subtests (spatial, non-spatial, and idiomatic) without considering the participants’ educational status (freshmen/sophomores). The following research

questions, therefore, were born in mind regarding the above-mentioned objectives.

 

Research Questions

 

1)      Is the Iranian EFL learners’ knowledge of collocation of adpositions affected by their L1 with regard to the fact that both L1 and L2 languages are satellite-framed?

 

2)      Is there any meaningful relationship between learners’ knowledge of spatial, non-spatial, and idiomatic adpositions as well as the whole adpositional test and their performance on the EFL proficiency test (TOEFL)?

 

3)      Could the knowledge of collocations of adpositions shared between Farsi and English and based on interlingual transfer (spatial, nominal, adjectival, and verbal adpositions) differentiate between freshmen and sophomores?

 

4)      Could the knowledge of collocations of adpositions specialized in English and based on intralingual transfer (idiomatic adpositions) differentiate between freshmen and sophomores?

 

5)      Does the subjects’ performance differ significantly dealing with the three types of adpositional subtests (spatial, non-spatial, and idiomatic) in the test?

 

 

Method

 

Participants

 

A total of 95 female and male Iranian EFL freshman and sophomores learners studying at Roudehen University majoring in English translation constituted the participants of the study. Sixteen of the students were excluded from the study due to the fact that they were not present in the second session of the test

administration and had not taken the adpositional tasks. Furthermore, nineteen students were eliminated since they did not take the tests seriously. Ultimately, there were 60 subjects left (30 freshmen, 30 sophomores) and the data gathered from this group was analyzed.

 

Instruments

 

The Adpositional Test

 

To conduct the present study, four general patterns of the collocations of prototypical adpositions including spatial, nominal, verbal, and adjectival adpositions as well as the metaphorical adpositions were considered by the researchers. Two separate fill-in-the -blanks tasks that deliberately included problems of Iranian students with prepositions were devised by the researchers to measure the knowledge of the above-mentioned adpositions. The first task which was allocated to the measurement of the spatial, non-spatial adpositions included 40 items divided into 4 parts (spatial, nominal, adjectival, and verbal). The researchers tried to select items with highest degree of interference between Farsi and English.

 

The second task, which consisted of 24 items, aimed to measure the metaphorical adpositions. The selected adpositions in this section exactly replicated those of the first section (with, to, of, by, at, for, about). The only difference was that they were used in their metaphorical sense at this section with no reference to the participants’ first language. Three experts in TEFL (one professor and two Ph.D colleagues) were consulted for the validity and appropriateness of the completion tasks. The reliability of this test was estimated .87 by Kudur-Richardson formula 21 (KR-21).

 

TOEFL Test

 

TOEFL as a test of measuring English as a foreign language was used as an instrument for measuring the students’ level of proficiency in English. To evaluate the participants’ level of proficiency in this research project, the researchers utilized the 2004 version of the actual paper-test TOEFL, administered and

copyrighted by ETS. The test included three sections. Section I-listening comprehension—includes 50 items; section II- Structure and Written Expression – includes 40 items; and section III— Reading Comprehension and Vocabulary—includes 50 items. Due to the limitations of time as well as practical considerations, with the exclusion of the listening section, just the second and the third section of the test were administered to the participants. To estimate the reliability of the TOEFL test, the Kudar-Richardson Formula 21(KR-21) was utilized. The reliability of the scores obtained from the test was .85. The descriptive statistics and the reliability coefficient of the TOEFL test are presented in Table. 1.

 

Table 1.

 

Descriptive Statistics and Reliability Coefficients Related to TOEFL Test

 

	Test	N	N	Range	Min	Max	Mean	S.D	Variance	Reliability
		Items
	TOEFL	90	64	49	10	59	36	11.90	142	.85

 

Procedure

 

The tests were administered in two separate sessions. In order to measure the students’ level of language proficiency, the TOEFL test was administered initially under the standard procedures. The students were expected to finish section 2 in 25 minutes and section three in 55 minutes.

 

The adposition test consisting of two major parts was the second test administered during the students’ class hours. To conduct this study, five patterns of adpositions were recognized and scrutinized by the researchers. These patterns are as follows:

Spatial adposition: sitting at a desk Noun+ preposition: attitude to Verb + preposition; arrive at/in Adjective + preposition: jealous of

Idiomatic adpositions: on pins and needles

The above-mentioned patterns were classified under the three subtests of spatial, non-spatial, and idiomatic adpositions.

 

 

 

Research Question 1.

 

Is the Iranian EFL learners’ knowledge of collocation of adpositions affected by the structure of their L1, with regard to the fact that both English and Persian are satellite-framed languages?

 

In order to answer the first research question, the sum of the average number of errors for each distinct preposition at the two subtests of spatial and non-spatial adpositions was calculated. The results are shown in Table 2.

 

Table 2.

 

The Distribution of Adpositional Errors with the Distinction of Inter-lingual and Intra-lingual Ones for Spatial and Non-spatial Subtests among Iranian EFL Learners

 

	Types   of Errors	Spatial	Non-spatial	Total
	N	199	382	581
	Inter-lingual
	P	%70.81	% 57.44	% 64.12
	N	82	283	365
	Intra-   lingual
	P	% 29.18	% 42.55	% 35.86

 

N= number of errors  P = percentage of errors

 

As it is shown in Table 2, 946 errors were extracted from the tasks. Regarding the spatial adpositions, there is a higher degree of transfer (%70.81) compared with the non-spatial ones with % 57.44 percent of inter-lingual errors. The results could be justified in terms of the idea sparkled by Talmy (1989, as cited in Robinson & Ellis, 2008) who asserted the idea that in satellite-framed languages like English and Persian transfer does occur in reference to spatial adpositions. Ultimately, by reference to the obtained

percentage of the errors, we can conclude that the first language interference was statistically significant, since 64.12 percents of errors were caused as a result of interlingual transfer from the participants’ L1.

 

Research question 2.

 

Is there any meaningful relationship between learners’ EFL proficiency and their knowledge of adpositions in general as well as their knowledge of spatial, non-spatial, and idiomatic adpositions?

 

In order to answer the second research question, the descriptive statistics related to the different subtests (spatial, non-spatial, and idiomatic adpositions), the whole adpositional test, and the TOEFL proficiency test are shown in Table 3.

 

Table 3.

 

Descriptive Statistics of the Adpositional Test, Subtests and the

TOEFL

 

 

 

Tests	N	Range	Minimum	Maximum	Mean	S.D	Variance
Adposition	64	30	8	38	17.69	6.69	44.82
Spatial	64	7	1	8	3.42	1.41	1.99
Non-	64	17	3	20	8.61	3.98	15.86
spatial
Idiomatic	64	11	1	12	5.66	2.84	8.10
TOEFL	64	49	10	59	35.66	11.90	141.81

 

In order to detect if there is any meaningful relationship between the participants’ language proficiency and the adpositional subtests as well as the whole adpositional test, the

Pearson   correlation coefficients were calculated. The obtained
results   are presented in Table 4.

 

 

Table 4.

 

Correlations between the Adpositional Subtests, Whole Test and

 

TOEFL

 

__________________________________________

 

TOEFL

 

__________________________________________

Adposition test	.80
**
Spatial   adposition	.48
**
Non-spatial   adposition	.72
**
Idiomatic   adposition	.63
**

_______________________________________________________________

 

** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level ( 2-tailed )

 

As can be seen in Table 4, the obtained scores related to adposition test in general, non-spatial as well as the idiomatic subtests are strongly correlated with the scores obtained from the TOEFL test ( r = .80, .72, .63), whereas a moderate correlation r =

.48 was detected between the spatial subtest and the TOEFL one. The obtained correlational relationships are presented graphically in the following scatter plots.

 

p	8								A
a								A		A
t
i	6						A
a
l						A	A	A   A A	A
a
d			spatialadposition = 1.39 + 0.06 * TOEFLtotal
p	4			A	A	A A A AAAAA		A A	AA	A
			R-Square = 0.23
o
s		A	A	A	A	AA	AA AAA AA		A
i
t	2	A AA	A	A	A		AA AAAA	A	A
i
o				A	A		A
n		10		20			30	40	50	60
						TOEFL

 

Figure1. Language proficiency & adpositional test

                       

 

 

 

 

 

 

										A	A
d
p										A
o	30
s
									A
it			adpositiontotal = 1.64 A+ 0.45A							* TOEFLtotalAA
i			R-Square   = 0.64							A
									A	AA
o							A		A
								A	A	A
n							A	AA
	20			A		A		A	AA
								A
t							AA		A
								A	A
o							A	AAA	A
							A	A	A
t		A A		A		A	A	A
				A   A
a					A	A	A
		A		A A	A
l	10	A	A				A
		A					A
		A	A	A
		10	20			30			40	50	60
					TOEFL

 

Figure 2. Language proficiency & spatial adposition

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