Influence of Social Factors on the Acquisition of English Prepositions among Ewe-English Bilingual Children
Keywords:
language learning, sociolinguistics , English prepositions, spatial terms, Ewe , L1 interferenceAbstract
Despite substantial evidence of difficulties in learning English prepositions among L2 speakers, empirical studies on the role of social factors remain limited. This study fills this gap by exploring how Ewe-speaking school-going children in Ghana use English prepositions and whether variations in their learning outcomes may be linked to social factors (age, gender, parents’ educational background, birth order, language learning environment, and familiarity with L1 spatial expressions). The Variationist Sociolinguistics approach informed the data collection. The Topological Relation Picture Series was used to collect data from 40 purposively sampled Ewe-English bilingual children aged 3–13 years. A cross-sectional quantitative research design was adopted for this study. IBM Statistical Package (Version 22) was used to provide a descriptive analysis employing mainly means and frequencies, and the first language interference was qualitatively analyzed. Findings show that age and gender are significant factors in influencing preposition usage, whereas parents’ educational background, birth order, and language learning environment had minimal influence. Findings further suggest L1 interference: some learners experience confusion regarding the meanings of certain English prepositions, a difficulty that appears to stem from their misunderstanding or improper learning of the L1 equivalents of those prepositions.
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