Ability in the Use of Prepositions in Free Writing

Abstract

The present study entitled "The Use of Prepositions in Free Writing" was carried out with the aim of finding out the ability to use prepositions in free writing of grade nine students, and comparing the ability of grade nine students of the government and private schools. It was a quantitative research, and the respondents were forty selected students and ten English teachers of grade nine from four schools namely Shree Janapriya Higher Secondary School, Amar Singh Higher Secondary School, Prativa Higher Secondary School, and Kumudini Homes Higher Secondary School of Pokhara valley. The schools and the students were selected using judgmental sampling procedure. Six topics were provided to these selected students and they were asked to write on any one of these topics and questionnaires were distributed to these grade nine English teachers. The collected data was analyzed to find out the ability to use prepositions in free writing of grade nine students. On the basis of analysis and interpretation some findings are derived and some recommendations have been made to improve the existing pedagogical situation. The results of this study indicated that grade nine students of private schools use more prepositions, more correctly than the students of government-aided schools. Prepositions in, of and to are frequently used prepositions whereas along, towards, during, between, through, after, around, up, besides, inside, into were rarely used prepositions. This thesis consists of four chapters .Chapter one includes theoretical background and introduction of the study, review of the related literature, objectives of the study and significance of the study. Chapter two consists of sources of data (primary and secondary), population of the study, sample population of the study, tools for data collection, process of data collection, and limitations of the study. Chapter three deals with the analysis and interpretation of the data. The data were analyzed separately in two parts: i, analysis and interpretation of the data collected from these forty selected students i.e. students' essays, and ii, analysis and interpretation of the questionnaires with the help of statistical tools like percentage. This chapter analyzed the total used prepositions as frequently and rarely used prepositions, and correctly and wrongly used prepositions. Chapter four incorporates of summary, findings and recommendations. On the basis of analysis and interpretation made in third chapter some findings have been listed and, in turn on the basis of these findings some recommendations have been made at the end of chapter four.