The Incidental Acquisition of English Prepositions by Arabic-Speaking EFL Learners: Evidence From Al Ain University of Science and Technology

Abstract

This study examined the incidental acquisition of English prepositions by Arabic-speaking English as a foreign language (EFL) learners. Employing reading comprehension exercises as a treatment, we adopted the experimental design of a pre- and post-test to determine the effectiveness of the treatment on the participants’ incidental acquisition of English prepositions. For the purpose of the study, we divided the participants into a treatment group, who engaged in reading comprehension exercises for one academic term, and a control group, who did not. We used a multiple-choice test and a fill-in-the-blank test to measure the participants’ receptive and productive knowledge of English prepositions, respectively. We also conducted an introspective session with the treatment group following the administration of the post-tests to determine the areas of difficulty. The results of the study mainly indicated that reading accompanied by exercises resulted in better incidental gains in the acquisition of English prepositions, especially on the multiple-choice test. The study concludes with recommendations for further research.

Keywords

incidental acquisition applied linguistics prepositions Arabic-speaking EFL learners pre- and post-tests

Introduction

It has been argued by several researchers (e.g., Bitchener, Young, & Cameron, 2005; Celce-Murcia, Larsen-Freeman, & Williams, 1983; Shakir & Yaseen, 2015; Song & Sardegna, 2014) that the acquisition of English prepositions by English as a foreign language (EFL) learners, regardless of their first language (L1), is viewed as a stumbling block. One of the most important reasons that account for this problem is the unpredictability of the way certain English prepositions are used. In other words, many English prepositions do not follow any rules, making their acquisition a substantial challenge for EFL learners (e.g., Ahranjani & Shadi, 2012). In this respect, one can suggest that these prepositions can be acquired through incidental learning, for example, via reading comprehension exercises. Incidental learning can be defined as learning unintentionally or learning of a particular linguistic phenomenon when the learner is focusing on learning another aspect of L2 (Schmidt, 1994). It has been suggested that continuous exposure to contextualized input in L2 (e.g., extensive reading [ER]) can enhance the learner’s incidental learning even though the main focus will be on semantics or meaning (Krashen, 2004; Min, 2008). Taking these pieces of evidence as a departure point, this study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of incidental learning, reading comprehension in particular, on the acquisition of English prepositions by 50 Arabic-speaking EFL learners studying English at the University of Al Ain, using the experimental design of a pre- and post-test.

Literature Review

The Acquisition of English Prepositions by Arabic-Speaking EFL Learners

Shakir and Yaseen (2015) studied the acquisition of English prepositions among students of Iraqi secondary school in Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia through investigating how Iraqi EFL learners use English and Arabic prepositions. The results revealed that L1 interference is the main reason for all errors done by the students in the study (Shakir & Yaseen, 2015). Iraqi EFL learners subconsciously tend to transfer their mother tongue’s syntactic, semantic structures and patterns to English Language as well as their prepositional system without being aware of the differences between the systems of the two languages, and this could lead to lack of proficiency and errors in using EFL (Shakir & Yaseen, 2015). In similar vein, AlQbailat, Al-Momani, and Almahameed (2016) examined the use of prepositions of standard, prepositions of possession and prepositions of accompaniment by Jordanian EFL learners. The results revealed that the participants witnessed a difficulty in learning certain usages of prepositions, which were aforementioned by the researchers, as a result of the first language interference (AlQbailat et al., 2016). Moreover, they showed the hardest use of prepositions to learn by the participants was prepositions of standard followed by prepositions of accompaniment and prepositions of possession, respectively (AlQbailat et al., 2016). All in all, it seems that L1 interference has a negative impact of the acquisition of English prepositions by Arabic-speaking EFL learners.

Studies on the Incidental Learning

One of the studies that employed incidental learning to measure the acquisition of various linguistic phenomena is Kweon and Kim (2008). They conducted a study on 12 Korean learners, studying EFL. All students were of an intermediate proficiency level and the average of their age was 21 years old. The researchers implemented the pre-test–post-test experimental design to measure the degree of change in the participants’ vocabulary attainment as a result of using ER. Comparing tests’ results showed significant improvement in the students’ vocabulary repertoire, which emphasizes the positive effect of ER. Similarly, in the study conducted by Brown, Waring, and Donkaewbua (2008), the rate of English vocabulary acquisition through reading, reading-while-listening, and listening to stories was examined. The study was implemented on 35 Japanese students whose ages ranged between 18 and 21. All students were of pre-intermediate or intermediate English proficiency level. The participants were divided into three groups; each received one of the tested instruction methods. The students’ recall of new English vocabulary was then tested. This assessment was done over three test periods. Among the results of the study, the results revealed that the more frequently a word is encountered (incidentally), the higher the probability of it being learned.

In another study, Shintani and Ellis (2011) investigated the incidental acquisition of one of the most common grammatical rules, which is using “s” in plural forms. The study was conducted on a sample of 36 Japanese students, studying EFL. The participants’ ages ranged between 6 and 8 years old. The researchers adopted an experimental methodological approach and divided the sample into three groups. One group received Comprehension-Based Instruction (CBI), another was taught by Production-Based Instruction (PBI), while the third was kept as a control group. The outcome of the study indicated that the two groups that received the CBI and PBI instruction exhibited significant improvement in their incidental grammar acquisition in comparison with the control group.

More recently, Alavi and Keyvanshekouh (2012) investigated the impact of using the MoodleReader as an ER tool to test the incidental vocabulary learning by Iranian EFL students. The study was conducted on 38 students, who were divided into two groups: an experimental group, which was taught by the MoodleReader website, and the control group, which was taught by the traditional ER method. The study aimed to find out whether incidental vocabulary learning occurs as a result of ER activities, and how ER affects the recognition or production of incidentally learned vocabulary items. The findings of the study showed that using the MoodleReader affected the students’ incidental acquisition of vocabulary more than the traditional ER method. However, it must be noted that the control group also showed improvement in the vocabulary production tests’ scores. This indicates that the traditional ER program has also contributed to vocabulary acquisition, though not as much as the MoodleReader has.

In an attempt to further investigate the effectiveness of incidental reading on the acquisition of grammatical rules, Song and Sardegna (2014) applied this approach on Korean secondary school students, studying EFL in after-school classes. The sample of Song and Sardegna’s study included two groups of 12 students; the treatment group was instructed for a whole semester using the ER approach aiming to improve students’ incidental acquisition of English prepositions, while the other group was kept as a control group. Song and Sardegna suggested that using reading instruction as an incidental learning technique in L2 not only enhances students’ mastery of vocabulary but also improves their knowledge of verbs and collocations, including knowledge of the correct preposition that should be used in a particular context. Unlike explicit instruction in which the student is asked to provide the correct preposition relying, to a great extent, on memory than actual understanding of the phenomenon in question, incidental learning can help the student observe the way prepositions are used in context, and thus be able to establish a link between a word or expression and the correct preposition to be used in that context.

The test results of students in Song and Sardegna’s (2014) study as well as their responses during the introspective session illustrated clear evidence that the incidental acquisition of English prepositions was significantly enhanced through ER. The current study differs from Song and Sardegna’s study in three aspects. First, the participants in the current study have a different linguistic background to those who participated in Song and Sardegna’s study. Specifically, Arabic is typologically different from Korean; thus, the effect of Arabic (L1) on acquisition of English prepositions by Arabic-speaking EFL learners could vary, yielding insightful results into the acquisition process of English prepositions. Second, this study focused on certain prepositions, that is, in, on, and at, which are quite problematic to Arabic-speaking EFL learners, rather than testing a wide range of English prepositions (see Song & Sardegna, 2014). Finally, this study employed a multiple-choice test to measure the participants’ receptive knowledge of English prepositions, rather than using a test in which the participants determine whether the preposition used in context is correct or incorrect (see The Appendix). This suggests that this study may produce new results that can contribute to the body of knowledge as far as the cross-linguistic acquisition of English prepositions is concerned.

In a recent study, Altakhaineh and Zibin (2017) investigated the effect of incidental learning on the comprehension of 30 English affixes by 50 Arabic-speaking EFL learners. Altakhaineh and Zibin adopted the experimental design of a pre- and post-test to examine the participants’ knowledge of English affixes before and after the treatment. The latter included taking part in the prediction of the meaning of contextualized English affixed words for one academic semester. The participants’ attention was not drawn to the meaning of the affixes themselves, only the words. This was done to test whether incidental learning of English affixes may occur and whether it can affect the participants’ knowledge of these affixes. Thus, the participants were divided into treatment and control groups. Altakhaineh and Zibin administered a 30-item multiple-choice test as the pre- and post-test to decide whether the treatment enhanced the participants’ knowledge of English affixes. The results revealed that the treatment group outperformed their control group counterpart on the post-test on both the prefixes and suffixes. This, according to Altakhaineh and Zibin, may suggest that the treatment that involved incidental learning may have played a major role in the treatment group’s remarkable performance. Their results were also supported by an introspective session, which was conducted with the treatment group after the post-test. Note, here, that this study also administered an introspective session with the treatment group after the post-test.

Drawing on the above literature, it is apparent that employing incidental learning (e.g., reading comprehension) to examine its effectiveness in an L2 acquisition context, especially by Arabic-speaking EFL learners, has not received enough attention. Other studies have used incidental learning to measure the knowledge of Arabic-speaking EFL learners of English affixes (Altakhaineh & Zibin, 2017), yet this method of learning has not been used to test their knowledge of English prepositions. Therefore, this study aims to bridge this gap through providing answers to the following research questions:

Research Question 1: To what extent are 50 Arabic-speaking EFL learners aware of the correct use of English prepositions in context?

Research Question 2: Does incidental learning (i.e., reading comprehension exercises) enhance the participants’ acquisition of English prepositions?

The next section discusses the method adopted in the current study.

Method

Participants

In total, 50 Arabic-speaking EFL learners, first-year students at Al Ain University of Science and Technology in Al Ain, United Arab Emirates (UAE), took part in the current study. At the time of data collection, the participants with a mean age of 22 years old were enrolled in English 1 course. To ensure that the participants’ English proficiency level is suitable for the purpose of this study, all the participants took the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) exam as a prerequisite for enrolling in the English language program at Al Ain University. Their scores ranged between 4.5 and 5.5. Students with this level of English proficiency would be suitable to take part in this study. To provide a clearer picture of the IELTS scores of both groups, Table 1 presents the number of students in each group and their IELTS score.

Table 1.

IELTS Scores in Both Groups.

	IELTS scores		4.5	5	5.5
Number of students in the treatment group			8	8	9
Number of students in the control group			8	8	9

IELTS = International English Language Testing System.

Due to the fact that this study adopted the experimental design of a pre- and post-test, the participants were divided equally into two groups: Group 1 included 25 students and Group 2 included 25 students. Group 1, who served as the treatment group, took part in reading comprehension exercises twice every week for one academic term (the first term of the academic year 2016-2017), whereas Group 2 did not; hence, they served as the control group. This procedure was followed to determine whether the treatment had any impact on the participants’ scores on the post-test.

It is worth mentioning that even though the sample in this study may be representative of Arabic-speaking EFL learners in the UAE, the results of this study may not be generalized to all Arabic-speaking EFL learners.

Treatment

The treatment group or Group 1 took part in reading comprehension exercises for one academic term, particularly twice every week, in addition to regular instruction. These exercises consisted of a reading passage and a number of exercises that were based on that passage. These passages had several examples of time and place prepositions in English (especially in, on, and at), yet there were no exercises on these specific prepositions. That is, the exercises used were aiming to enhance the participants’ vocabulary knowledge, sentence structure knowledge, and reading skills. For instance, the participants were asked to search the text and find the meaning of certain words, or to find synonyms or antonyms. The participants were also asked in these exercises to find the referent to a pronoun and answer general questions about the text (e.g., who, why). The participants were informed that the main aim of these exercises is to enhance their reading comprehension skills. Thus, there was no focus on prepositions, because the acquisition of these prepositions was intended to be incidental rather than direct. On the contrary, the control group received no reading comprehension exercises unlike that of the treatment group. This could be ascertained due to the fact that both groups were taught by the same instructor. The materials they have been exposed to is the same as that of the treatment group with the exception of the reading comprehension exercises (cf. Zibin & Altakhaineh, 2019).

Data Elicitation Tools

The current study adopted the experimental design of a pre- and post-test to determine the effectiveness of incidental learning on the acquisition of time and place English prepositions, that is, in, on, and at. These prepositions were chosen because they are the most problematic ones for Arabic-speaking EFL learners based on our experience as English language teachers. In addition, the distinction between these prepositions in Arabic is not obvious and can be a source of errors to Arabic-speaking EFL learners as discussed by other researchers in the relevant literature (see Shakir & Yaseen, 2015). Our selection of these prepositions was also based on their high frequency in the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA; n.d.), that is, in (10354193), on (3917422), and at (2826363). Two tests were used in the current study to elicit the data, namely, a multiple-choice test and a production test (see appendix). The former was employed to measure the participants’ receptive skills of English prepositions in contextualized sentences. It consisted of 17 items (20 blanks) followed by four choices: one correct answer, two incorrect answers, and one I don’t know option, which was used to reduce the probability of the participants choosing a wrong answer (see Altakhaineh & Rahrouh, 2015). The production test included 17 items (20 blanks) and was used to test the participants’ productive skills of English prepositions in contextualized sentences. The participants were asked to fill in the blank with the correct preposition out of five prepositions, namely, in, on, at, from, and over. The extra two prepositions were provided as distractors (see Zibin, 2016a). The production test was administered before the comprehension test to reduce the possibility of the participants remembering the prepositions, which in turn may reduce the value of the results (see Zibin, 2016b). The same tests, that is, the multiple-choice and the production tests, were used as the pre- and post-test to compare the participants’ results before and after treatment. Note that both tests were carefully checked by a professor of linguistics for validation and objectivity. Any items deemed confusing were removed from the final version of the test. Finally, we conducted an introspective session with the participants in the treatment group following the administration of the post-tests to determine the areas which they found most difficult (see Altakhaineh & Zibin, 2017). This session was immediately conducted following the post-test to ensure that the participants’ memory is still fresh (Hammarberg & Williams, 2005; Wesche & Paribakht, 2000). In this session, which lasted for 90 min, participants in the treatment group were asked questions about the exercises they have been engaged in during the semester, and whether these exercises helped them answer the questions in the post-test. In this type of session, all the participants are interviewed together, rather than individually. That is, we addressed the questions to all participants and recorded the session to analyze and interpret their results later. We provided the participants with contextual information taken from the reading exercises they participated in during the academic semester to activate their memory (see Ericsson & Simon, 1984). The questions we asked were related to a specific situation or problem, and leading questions were completely avoided to reduce the influence of researcher bias (Ericsson & Simon, 1984). Note, also, that the participants were not informed that they will take part in an introspective session until after the post-test was administered. This is done so as not to influence their performance on the test. According to Hammarberg and Williams (2005), using introspective data has been shown to be of great use in both linguistic analysis and cognitive psychology, because it provides more in-depth information about a specific issue, allowing the researcher to supply a valid interpretation of the acquisition process.

Data Analysis

A chi-square test was employed to determine whether there is a statistically significant relationship between the participants’ scores on the tests and the treatment. That is, this test determines whether the differences between the answers of the two groups on the post-test were statistically significant. The aim of this statistical analysis is to determine whether the treatment had a positive impact on the treatment group’s incidental acquisition of English prepositions.

Results and Discussion

Results

As explained in the previous section, the authors administered two tests, that is, multiple-choice and fill-in-the-blank to examine the participants’ knowledge of English prepositions. A multiple-choice test was used to measure the participants’ receptive knowledge of English prepositions, while a fill-in-the blank test was employed to measure their productive knowledge. The tests were used as both the pre- and post-tests to compare the results of both groups, that is, treatment and control. We administered the pre-test at the beginning of the term, while the post-test was administered at the end of the term to evaluate the effectiveness of the treatment on the participants’ acquisition of English prepositions. Table 2 presents the total number of correct answers provided by both groups on the multiple-choice test (both pre and post) out of 500, which is the total number of accurate answers the two groups were expected to supply on each test. Table 3 shows their results on the production test.

Table 2.

Number of Accurate Answers of Groups 1 and 2 on the Multiple-Choice Test Out of a Total of 500 Answers in Each Test.

Type of test	Group 1 (the treatment group)	Group 2 (the control group)
Pre-test	188	176
Post-test	312	204

Table 3.

Number of Accurate Answers of Groups 1 and 2 on the Production Test Out of a Total of 500 Answers in Each Test.

Type of test	Group 1 (the treatment group)	Group 2 (the control group)
Pre-test	103	92
Post-test	175	120

Tables 2 and 3 show that Group 1 outperformed Group 2 on the post-test on both the multiple-choice and production tests. The total number of accurate answers supplied by Group 1 on the post-test in the multiple-choice test was 312 out of 500, whereas that provided by Group 2 was 204 out of 500. This result indicates that the performance of the treatment group has improved. The same observation can be made about the production test, where the total number of correct answers provided by Group 1 on the post-test is higher than that of Group 2. To determine whether there is a statistically significant relationship between the results of the two groups, on one hand, and the treatment, on the other, two chi-square tests (2 × 2 contingency tables) were used. The results of the chi-square test conducted on the multiple-choice test are presented in Table 4 and those of the production test are presented in Table 5.

Table 4.

The Chi-Square Results of the Total Number of Accurate Answers Provided by the Two Groups on the Multiple Choice.

Group	Pre-test	Post-test	Total
Treatment	188	312	500
Control	176	204	380
Total	364	516	880

Note. The two-tailed p value equals .0106 < .05.

Table 5.

The Chi-Square Results of the Total Number of Accurate Answers Provided by the Two Groups on the Production Test.

Group	Pre-test	Post-test	Total
Treatment	103	175	278
Control	92	120	212
Total	195	295	490

Note. The two-tailed p value equals .1632 > .05.

Table 4 shows that the differences between the answers provided by both groups on the multiple-choice test were statistically significant, that is, p value .0106 is less than .05. This result suggests that the treatment, that is, reading comprehension exercises, has positively influenced the comprehension of English prepositions by the treatment group. In contrast, Table 5 shows that the differences between the answers supplied by both groups on the production test were not statistically significant, that is, p value .1632 is higher than .05. This result, in turn, indicates that, statistically, the treatment has not improved the production of English prepositions by Group 1. Even though there is a difference between the answers provided by Group 1 on the pre- and post-tests in the production task, these differences were insufficient to differ statistically. In the next section, we discuss these results in detail.

Discussion

The results presented in the previous section suggest that incidental learning can be helpful as far as the comprehension of English prepositions is concerned. In particular, being engaged in reading comprehension exercises twice a week for one academic term did help Group 1 enhance their comprehension of English prepositions. Even though the main aim of these exercises was to improve the participants’ L2 reading comprehension skills, vocabulary knowledge, and sentence structure knowledge, encountering several time and place prepositions during these exercises and being exposed to that much input in L2 have improved the participants’ awareness of these prepositions indirectly. This result supports the effectiveness of reading comprehension exercises in L2 on the incidental learning of English prepositions by EFL learners. Looking at similar studies, the results of the current study support studies which examined the advantages of ER for the incidental acquisition of phenomena such as English prepositions (see Song & Sardegna, 2014), vocabulary (see, for example, Nishino, 2007), and grammatical competence (e.g., Sheu, 2003). Given the fact that mastering English prepositions is quite challenging for EFL learners (see Bitchener et al., 2005), the results of this study can be taken as evidence that an improvement toward mastery of these prepositions employing reading comprehension exercises is certainly possible. According to Min (2008), reading accompanied by exercises results in better incidental gains in both receptive and productive knowledge. Indeed, reading alone can contribute positively to EFL learners’ awareness of various linguistic phenomena in L2, but when this reading is accompanied by exercises that help these learners not only be exposed to input in L2 but also process it carefully to be able to provide correct answers to the exercises is possibly more helpful as shown by the participants’ results on the multiple-choice test. Thus, it can be suggested that frequent L2 reading comprehension accompanied by exercises provide the opportunity for EFL learners to be exposed to English prepositions in meaningful contexts, which helps them to be aware of the correct use of these prepositions and, in turn, enhance their intuition of their use. Hence, this intuition can be activated when asked to recognize the correct answer on a multiple-choice test. Despite the fact that Group 1 provided more correct answers on the post-test in the production task, their results were not statistically significant. This result may propose that reading comprehension exercises yield better incidental gains as far as receptive knowledge is concerned. This result is inconsistent with that of Min, who suggested that both receptive and productive skills can be enhanced via reading and activities. Specifically, Min concurred with Krashen’s (2004) input-oriented language acquisition theory, which suggests that if the input is contextualized, learners will be able to link the meaning to the form. Thus, it has been argued that linguistic aspects, for example, vocabulary, can be acquired incidentally through ER (Krashen, 2004).

Given the fact that prepositions are mainly functional words with little effect on meaning, recognizing their correct use may be easier than producing them. Drawing on the results presented in the previous section, the participants in Group 1 definitely found the productive test more challenging than the receptive one given their answers on the post-tests. According to Zibin (2016b), Arabic-speaking EFL learners’ receptive knowledge of metaphorical expressions is better than their productive knowledge. The same observation was made by Shehata (2008), who noted that Arabic-speaking EFL learners’ receptive knowledge of English collocations exceeds that of their productive knowledge. Here, one may argue that the lack of equivalence between the prepositions in Arabic and English is a major source of error facing many Arabic-speaking EFL learners. The fact that the three prepositions of time and place used in the current study, that is, in, on, and at, can all be captured by one preposition in Arabic, that is, fi: “in” is one of the main causes for erroneous responses on both the multiple-choice and production tests (cf. Shakir & Yaseen, 2015). Hence, when presented with the following sentences taken from the production test, Arabic-speaking EFL learners provided the following answers:

(1) *The library is in the end of the street.

(2) *Ali is waiting for his friend in the bus stop.

(3) *It’s better to get a taxi if you are out alone in night.

(4) *Christians eat turkey together in Christmas Day.

These answers suggest that using the preposition fi, “in” in Arabic to indicate time has influenced the participants’ ability to produce English prepositions on the test. Negative transfer from Arabic can be also noticed in Example (5) where the participants translated the preposition ʕala “on” directly from Arabic, which resulted in them providing a faulty answer (cf. AlQbailat et al., 2016, p. 1; Shakir & Yaseen, 2015, p. 157). Examples (6 and 7) show that the participants have a problem with the preposition at, which does not have an equivalent in Arabic.

(5) *My plane arrived on Amman three hours late.

(6) *My plane arrived at Amman three hours late.

(7) *When will you arrive in the office?

In addition, the two prepositions in and on, which are found in Arabic, are used differently in English in some cases. For instance, if one wants to convey the same message of Example (6) in Arabic, he or she would say my plane arrived on Amman three hours late with the preposition ʕala “on” rather than in. Yet, very few participants provided the above answer on the production test. As mentioned previously in section 3.3, we conducted an introspective session with the participants of the treatment group following the post-tests to get an idea about the challenges the participants encountered during the tests. Based on the answers provided by these participants, they indicated that they remembered from the exercises they engaged in during the term that in English, the preposition in is used with cities. The following is an excerpt from a student in the treatment group (translated from Arabic):

I was able to answer questions in the test about the preposition in, because while I was reading the texts you gave us, I noticed that in is used before names of cities like in Paris. So it was easy for me to answer questions with in.

This result may indicate that reading comprehension exercises can enhance the participants’ intuition about certain linguistic phenomena as alluded to before. That is, through incidental learning, EFL learners can start to form patterns and generalizations about linguistic phenomena in L2. The exercises these participants were engaged in contained several instances of the English prepositions in, on, and at in context and through frequent encounters, the participants started to notice certain patterns about these prepositions. For instance, the following is an excerpt from another student in the treatment group (translated from Arabic):

Yes, I put on before days of the week immediately without thinking because in the texts you gave us, on was used with days of the week and I think also with dates like on 12th May.

This result is similar to Altakhaineh and Zibin (2017), who conducted an introspective session with the participants in the treatment group after the post-test. Specifically, this session showed that regarding the target prefixes, the participants were able to remember English words to which the prefixes are attached, following that they translated their meanings into their first language (L1), that is, Arabic. Using this process of recall, the participants established a connection between the prefix and its meaning. In the current study, the participants were able to remember the occurrence of some prepositions with particular words, which helped them form generalizations about these occurrences and answer the questions on the post-test. Therefore, we recommend that to enhance EFL learners’ awareness of English prepositions, reading comprehension exercises can be accompanied by ER of L2 material (cf. Song & Sardegna, 2014). That is, in addition to reading comprehension exercises, to improve EFL learners’ incidental acquisition of English prepositions, EFL teachers can recommend some English novels to the students to read and then summarize the story’s plot. Hence, the two methods will complement each other.

Conclusion and Recommendations

This study has examined the incidental acquisition of English prepositions by 50 Arabic-speaking EFL learners using reading comprehension exercises as a treatment. Adopting the experimental design of a pre- and post-test, we measured the participants’ incidental acquisition of English prepositions before and after treatment. We divided the participants into a treatment group, who took part in reading comprehension exercises for one academic term, and a control group, who did not, to test the effectiveness of incidental learning of English prepositions. To measure the participants’ receptive and productive knowledge of English prepositions, we employed a multiple-choice test and a fill-in-the-blank test, respectively. Following that, we conducted an introspective session with the treatment group to determine the areas which they found most difficult. The results revealed that the intervention may have affected positively on the acquisition of English prepositions by the treatment group, especially on the multiple-choice test. Their performance on the post-test in the productive task did improve, but not enough to differ statistically. The productive task was found to be more challenging than the receptive task. The participants encountered difficulties with certain prepositions and these were accounted for by the difference between prepositions in English and Arabic. This study showed that reading accompanied by exercises results in better incidental gains in the acquisition of English prepositions. It can be suggested that these types of exercises that aim to help EFL learners acquire prepositions incidentally should be integrated into the curriculum. It is recommended that other studies which investigate the incidental acquisition of other L2 phenomena (e.g., compounds; see Altakhaineh, 2017) by Arabic-speaking EFL learners are needed to shed more light on these methods.

Footnotes

Appendix

The tests:

Production test

Multiple-choice test

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Abdel Rahman Mitib Altakhaineh

Author Biographies

Abdel Rahman Mitib Altakhaineh is an assistant professor of English language and linguistics at Al Ain University of Science and Technology, UAE and he is currently the head of English Department. His research interests lie in the areas of morphology, lexical semantics, morphosyntax, applied linguistics, and psycholinguistics. He has published research papers in several journals, including: Studia Linguistica, Lingua, Acta Linguistica Hungarica, Metaphor and the Social World, Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, Research in Language and Sage Open.

Mona Kamal Ibrahim is the deputy dean for International Accreditation, College of Education, Humanities and Social Studies, Al-Ain University of Science and Technology, UAE. She received her PhD in the philosophy of Education from Manchester University, UK in teaching English as a foreign Language. Ibrahim main research interests are in the education, English as a foreign/second Language teaching, quality assurance and accreditation.

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