A Cognitive study of Nonlinguistic Factors Affecting the use of Prepositions by Vietnamese Native Speakers

This article investigates factors that influence the use of English expressions made by Vietnamese native students at Ho Chi Minh City University of Food Industry (HUFI). The research is conducted to analyze the factors that validly affect the usage of prepositions by EFL learners based on a variety of personal data and background of the participants. It is hypothesized that the application of prepositions is affected by some of geographical and social factors rather than linguistics matters. With the help of the software SPSS, the research took a thorough exploration into certain hindered elements in Vietnamese that may affect the language acquisition through negative interference to EFL learners. The data came from the survey of 141 EFL students at HUFI. A number of factors that appear to influence the use of English prepositions made by EFL learners. The findings discovered that location, favourite colours and negative transfers influenced the use of prepositions rather than the other factors, e.g. gender, reading habits, leisure activities, outdoor activities. The result of the study contributes to the understanding of the hindering factors to the SLA in teaching English prepositions under the light of Cognitive Linguistics. Practical suggestions for EFL pedagogy and research are also included in this paper.