Improving temporal prepositions in Korean students and exploring gender differences in studying space and time

Improving temporal prepositions in Korean students and exploring gender differences in studying space and time

English prepositions of time, (in, on and at) are generally accepted to be challenging forKorean students as shown by studies by Seong and Lee (2008). This study examines thosedifficulties and suggests effective learning strategies which can be implemented to help lessenthese problems. The study took place in a Korean Elementary school involving more than100 students of various ages and levels. Initially the nature of the problems surroundingpreposition comprehension was identified. Then an analysis based on cognitive linguisticswas applied to seek to improve teaching strategies. The study was extended to include foreignborn English Teachers’ and Korean Teachers’ views on the problem. The results showimprovement in temporal understanding and a particularly marked improvement in maleswhen temporal prepositions were also linked to spatial concepts. This could be because withmales, spatial prepositions may be acting as supportive scaffolding linking the abstract temporalprepositions to the more concrete spatial concepts, which appeared to have a more significantimpact on males than females.