DECLARATION I hereby declare that no part of the enclosed Master Thesis has been copied or reproduced by me from any other’s work without acknowledgement and that the thesis is originally written by me under strict guidance of my supervisor. Hanoi, 31st December 2013 Do Thi Ngoc Lan APPROVED BY ________________________________________________ (Supervisor’s signature and full name) i ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I would like to thank my supervisor, Ly Lan, Ph. D, who gave me valuable suggestions, useful comments, experience and support during the time of completing the graduation thesis. Without her professional instructions and patient advice, this thesis may not be finished I also would like to pay my homage to all my lectures at the Faculty of Graduate Studies at Hanoi Open University for their useful lectures, supports, encouragement and for inspiring me the love for English Foreign Language teaching and doing scientific research.
I express my affectionate and deeply gratitude to teachers and students at University of Economic & Technical Industries, who supplied me with a great deal of practical figures. My sincere thank goes to my family, my friends who encouraged and helped me with valuable materials, gave me energy and advice during the time I implemented this study. Hanoi, 31st December 2013 Do Thi Ngoc Lan iii ABBREVIATIONS AND SYMBOLS Adv. Preposition Phrases UNETI University of Economic and Technical Industries * An asterisk signifies that what follows it is incorrect [ ] Reference Number [ :] Reference Number and page are separated by ‘:’ For example: [15: 27] the reference number is 15 and the page in the reference is 27 ( : ) Illustration examples reference resources (reference number : page number) ^ An omission signifies that where are needed in the sentence iv LIST OF TABLES, FIGURES, GRAPHS Table 2.1: Information of the research participants 24 Table 2.2: The learners’ acquisition levels on the syntactic items 31 Table 2.3: The learners’ acquisition levels on the semantic items 31 v vi TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION.
iii ABBREVIATIONS AND SYMBOLS .iv LIST OF TABLES, FIGURES, GRAPHS. v TABLE OF CONTENTS. Rationale of the study. Aims and objectives of the study.
Aims of the study. Objectives of the study. Scope of the study. Methods of the study.
Design of the study. 4 CHAPTER 1THEORETICAL BACKGROUND. Previous studies overseas. Previous studies in Vietnam.
Definition of English prepositions. Classification of English prepositions. Position of English prepositions in sentence. Definition of Vietnamese prepositions.
Classification of Vietnamese prepositions. English and Vietnamese prepositional phrases. English prepositional phrases. Vietnamese prepositional phrases.
Data collection instruments. The survey questionnaire. Data analysis methods. 34 CHAPTER 3FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION.
Syntactic features of ‘by’ prepositional phrases. Position of ‘by’ prepositional phrases. Function of ‘by’ prepositional phrases. Semantics features of ‘by’ prepositional phrases.
‘By’ prepositional phrases denoting time. ‘By’ prepositional phrases denoting place or direction. ‘By’ prepositional phrases denoting means or agents. ‘By’ prepositional phrases denoting manner.
‘By’ prepositional phrases denoting motion. ‘By’ prepositional phrases denoting selfness or without help. ‘By’ prepositional phrases denoting means of transport. ‘By’ prepositional phrases denoting method.
'By' prepositional phrases and their Vietnamese equivalents. In terms of syntactic features. In terms of semantic features. Difficulties in mastering ‘by’ prepositional phrases at UNETI.
Difficulties faced by teachers. Difficulties faced by learners. In terms of syntactic features. In terms of semantic feature.
Implications for mastering 'by' prepositional phrases……………………. Being well aware of mother tongue interference. Getting familiar with the omission or addition of ‘by’ prepositional phrases…………………………………………………………………………. Broadening knowledge of semantic features of ‘by’ prepositional phrases 3.
Being aware of how native speakers use ‘by’ prepositional phrases. Limitations of the study. Suggestions for further study. Rationale of the study There is a well-established fact that English prepositions pose a big challenge for the acquisition of second language.
Learners of English as a Foreign Language often face with huge difficulties in actively mastering the language. Generally, they seemingly hold the view that English notional categories, namely nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs are crucial, hence striving to learn as many of them as possible and functional categories as prepositions are of minor significance because they are limited in number and their meanings are not important to the meaning of the whole sentence. Moreover, the traditional view considers that all the senses of the prepositions and prepositional phrases are highly arbitrary and are not related to another one. Both dictionaries and grammars provide long lists of unrelated senses for each preposition, prepositional phrase and its possible uses in different contexts.
In terms of syntactic function, prepositions and prepositional phrases are words used to connect nouns or noun phrases to other phrases in a sentence. They exist in both English and Vietnamese language systems, in which their characteristics and usages, however, are quite different. Mastering prepositions and prepositional phrases more often than cause a great deal of troubles for Vietnamese native-speaker learners when learning English. In the process of teaching English, great attention has been paid while dealing with ‘by’ prepositional phrases.
It is due to their syntactic and semantic features, as well as stylistic peculiarities. Therefore, an effective way of mastering ‘by’ prepositional phrases should be found to help learners overcome their difficulties in acquiring English. 1 For all mentioned above reasons, the topic relating to ‘by’ prepositional phrasesand their Vietnamese equivalents has been chosen for my graduation thesis. Aims and objectives of the study 2.
Aims of the study The research aims at investigating into ‘by’ prepositional phrases and their Vietnamese equivalents in terms of syntactic and semantic features and raising Vietnamese learners’ awareness of this type of prepositional phrases, so that they could be able to use them exactly and successfully in a real world of English communication. Objectives of the study The two main objectives of this study are: 1. Describing the syntactic and semantic features of ‘by’ prepositional phrases and their Vietnamese equivalents. Proposing some implications for mastering ‘by’ prepositional phrases in an effective way.
Research questions The study is carried out to find out the answers to the following questions: (1) What are the syntactic and semantic features of ‘by’ prepositional phrases? (2) What are their Vietnamese equivalents like? (3) What are the implications for mastering ‘by’ prepositional phrases? 2 4. Scope of the study It is due to the framework of a Master thesis this study mainly focuses on analyzing the syntactic and semantic features of ‘by’ prepositional phrases and their Vietnameseequivalents. The implications for mastering ‘by’ prepositional phrases will also be taken into consideration with a view to helping Vietnamese native-speaker learners at University of Economic & Technical Industries to overcome their difficulties in acquiring English as a foreign language. Methods of the study In order to deal with the research subject effectively, a flexible combination of methods is employed.
This thesis is basically carried out with the descriptive, comparative and statistic method. First, the descriptive method is utilized to give a deep and detailed description of the ‘by’ prepositional phrases and their Vietnamese equivalents. Then examples for illustrating the description will be taken from the grammar and reference books written by contemporary influential linguists in English as well as from translated publications available in Vietnam, which comprises various genres such as short stories. Second, the comparative analysis method is used to analyze the ‘by’ prepositional phrases and their Vietnamese equivalents, hence suggesting some implications for mastering these particular phrases.
Last but not least, other supporting method such as statistic technique is also used for the data collection and analysis process. Design of the study Apart from the Introduction and Conclusion, the main part of the thesis will be divided into three chapters: - Chapter 1 presents the theoretical background issues relating to English and Vietnamese prepositions and prepositional phrases. - Chapter 2 gives the methodology that has been applied to conduct the study of ‘by’ prepositional phrases. - Chapter 3 describes the findings anddiscussion on ‘by’ prepositional phrases, their Vietnamese equivalents and proposes some possible implications for mastering ‘by’ prepositional phrases.
4 CHAPTER 1 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 1. Literature review For hundred years, prepositions have attracted the attention of many language researchers. Prepositions convey important relations in text. They cannot appear independently and therefore we treated it together with its prepositional complement, which forms prepositional phrases.
Previous studies overseas According to the traditional view, the researchers consider that all the senses of a preposition are highly arbitrary and are not related to one another. Otto Jesperseen [6:171], who is one of the prominent traditional linguists and grammarians, groups prepositions as a subclass of particles and defines them very briefly in ‘Essentials of English Grammar’ as elements which signal different types of relationships in the sentence as follows: at, in, through, for, etc. Concerning the usage of prepositions, Hayden, et. al [5:171] mentions in his grammar textbook “Mastering American English” that: ‘a preposition shown a relationship between its object and other words in a sentence…Some of the relationships that prepositions express are place or position, direction, time, manner and agent.’ Quirk and Greenbaum [12] concerns about the relational meanings the prepositions establish among the constituents of the sentence and the fact that prepositional meanings are difficult to describe systematically in “A Concise Grammar of English”.
Some prepositional uses may be best elucidated by seeing a preposition as related to a clause. Eg: The 5 man with the red bread; The man who has the red bread; My knowledge of Hindin; I know Hindi. Charles Fillmore’s view of prepositions differs from those of the other grammarians and linguists. Charles Fillmores [4] attributes a very distinctive role to English prepositions in “Toward a Modern Theory of Case”.
He regards them as elements which specify the different cases of the noun phrases. Focusing on the implications for teaching prepositions, Celco – Murcia and Larsen – Freeman [2:1978] introduce the nine most frequent prepositions (at, by, for, from, in, of, on, to, with) and recommend that ‘beginning student should master at an early stage the primary meanings of the nine prepositions in “An English Grammar for Teachers of English as a Second Language”. In short, a number of views on English preposition have been taken into consideration, but they are so controversial and divergent that it is difficult to be convinced by any one of them. Previous studies in Vietnam Prepositions and prepositional phrases have been deeply studied by Vietnamese linguists, such as Nguyen Kim Than [25], Diep Quang Ban [13], Bui Duc Tinh [20], Nguyen Tai Can [16] and Dinh Van Duc [18].
Dinh Van Duc [18] states that preposition like conjunction is used to express the relationship among words of open word classes. The function of conjunction is not to express the grammatical meaning. 6 Bui Duc Tinh [20] mentions that preposition and preposition phrase are words used to show the meaning correlativeness of two words or two phrases. On the basis of the previous studies, it can be seen that the investigation of prepositional phrase in the formal documents particularly in terms of ‘by’ prepositional phrases and their Vietnamese equivalents have not discussed so far in both languages, English and Vietnamese.
A research problem relating to ‘by’ prepositional phrases and their Vietnamese equivalentshas been chosen for my graduation thesis. English prepositions The word preposition comes from Latin, a language in which such a word is usually placed before its complement. It is often used in English, both in spoken and written language. Agoi [1] described preposition as a word or group of words used with a noun or noun equivalents to show the link between that noun which it governs and another word.
According to Lawal [7] indicates prepositions have various relationships between words or phrases in sentence. The relationship includes those of time, points, position, direction and various degrees of mental or emotional attitude.