A STUDY OF THE MISUSE OF PREPOSITIONS AMONG STUDENTS

ABSTRACT

This study examined the misuse of prepositions among students of some selected junior secondary schools in Ovia North East Local Government Area, Edo State. Three research questions were raised to guide the study. The descriptive research design was adopted for the study and population of the study comprises of the three thousand four hundred and seventy-four (3,474) junior secondary school students in Ovia North East Local Government Area of Edo state, out of which 200 students formed the sample population. Questionnaire was employed as the research instrument. And descriptive statistics was used to analyze the research instrument.The purposive sampling technique was used to select respondents from the four (4) sampled secondary schools. Based on the analysis of the data, The following findings were drawn concerning the research questions. The results revealed that students generally demonstrate competence in identifying prepositions and understanding their impact on sentence meaning. However, challenges may exist in applying this understanding to more complex linguistic contexts. The study shows that the lack of instructional materials is a contributing factor to preposition misuse. The research also shows that various home-related factors, including students' native language, limited exposure to diverse languages, parental support, reading and writing activities, and the time allocated to language study in school, are also potential contributors to preposition misuse among junior secondary school students. It was recommended that improvements in curriculum development, provision of high-quality instructional materials, monitoring and evaluation of students' language proficiency can help address preposition misuse effectively.