FEHLERANALYSE BEIM GEBRAUCH DER PRÄPOSITIVERGÄNZUNG – EINE UNTERSUCHUNG MIT ALBANISCHSPRACHIGEN DEUTSCHLERNENDEN IN NORDMAZEDONIEN
ERROR ANALYSIS BY USING THE PREPOSITIVE COMPLEMENT – A STUDY WITH ALBANIAN-SPEAKING GERMAN LEARNERS IN NORTH MACEDONIA

Summary/Abstract: The goal of this paper is the contrastive analysis of the prepositions and prepositional supplements of the German and Albanian language. This paper also analyzes and assesses the difficulties of learning a foreign language and the causes of the error frequency in the Albanian native speakers learning German as a foreign language concerning the prepositions and prepositional supplements. It further provides an overview of the problems during the usage of prepositions required by verbs, adjectives and nouns by Albanian learners of the German language. Additionally, there will be an evaluation of the error analysis and the presentation of some methods which provide an easier way to learn the correct usage of the prepositional objects. To achieve this goal, it is necessary to investigate the reasons for the errors, so they can be avoided in the future. The error analysis was done using both qualitative and quantitative methods in order to make a more detailed examination. It investigated which errors had occurred, whether they were interference errors, over-generalizations of a rule within the foreign language or other categories of errors. Simultaneously, the number of each type of error was checked so that we can get a better overview of which errors we should pay more attention to in German language lessons. A questionnaire was distributed to Albanian native speakers, and the reasons for the errors in the usage of prepositions were investigated. The study participants are at level B2 and they all learned the prepositional objects in the same way. From a morpho-syntactic point of view, both of the examined languages showed similarities and differences. The results showed that both languages have prepositional suffixes in common. A major difference lies in the prepositions used in the prepositional supplements: in German they are mostly meaningless and in Albanian they are not. As a result of that, the Albanian prepositions in prepositional supplements are considered to be easier to use than those in German and thus the second hypothesis, H2: The Albanian prepositions are easier to use than those of German because of their polysemy, was demonstrated. It is worth mentioning that it is very difficult to acquire the governed prepositions in German due to their semantic intransparency. There are no rules that can be acquired and then easily applied. The use of prepositions in prepositional supplements is grammatically fixed; consequently, the prepositions must be learned together with their verbs and the case that they govern together. In Albanian there is no preposition that governs the dative object, but in German there is. Even the sentence: " Ich trinke mit meiner Freundin einen Kaffee.” can be seen as a hurdle by the learners. After all, the learners will not be able to form such a common sentence until they learn the dative case. However, both languages present great similarities in their morpho-syntactic properties of the prepositional supplements, since there are fixed prepositions in both languages. Unfortunately, there are rare equivalents when comparing the governed prepositions of both languages. Exceptions in such cases include the meaningful prepositions in prepositional supplements. Another objective of this paper was to find out to what extent learners find the German language difficult. According to the self-assessment of the Albanian-speaking learners of German, the level of difficulty in some areas of German grammar is average. The reason for this may be that the learners have already learned a lot of grammar structures. Prepositions are considered to be the most difficult area of learning in German grammar. Although the learners have reasonable experience in the area of prepositions, these are considered to be the most difficult sub-area by the respondents. Nevertheless, prepositions were ranked in the middle of the difficulty level with an average of 3.33. The examined topics were: the choice of articles, declination, conjugation, prepositions, word order and learning vocabulary. Based on the results, an error analysis of the governed prepositions in prepositional supplements and to derive the causes of these errors from the evaluated data, the data analysis revealed the following: The analysis of the questionnaire shows that 35% of the answers to the first task indicated the incorrect use of the governed prepositions. Out of that 35%, 22% were interference errors because the preposition was taken directly from the mother language into the target language (in this case German) and translated one-to-one. The next issue was interesting, because only 47% of the analyzed sentences were correct. In this task, there was a variant for each sentence in Albanian that did not require a preposition. Here the participants also paid attention to the definite articles (Der König herrscht über das Land. – Mbreti sundon vendin), which led them to take these sentences directly from Albanian. The independently translated prepositions clearly show that the learners primarily binds the prepositions with local or temporal meanings. The reason for this may be that the textbooks deal more with the information and the preposition suffixes are embedded in the learning material very late in the process of acquiring a foreign language. In foreign language lessons, it is particularly important to look for the causes of errors and to justify them. This can be of great benefit, especially if all learners speak the same mother language. With the help of this study, teachers can avoid these mistakes in advance in DaF-lessons (German as a foreign language) with native Albanian speakers by specifically drawing the learners' attention to these mistakes. The results clearly show that Albanian speaking learners of German make more interference errors than other types of errors. Further research in the field of the methodology of prepositive objects is urgently needed. There are not enough methodological techniques to make it easier to master the required prepositions. In the future, this study could be used to create textbooks and practice materials for learners of German who are Albanian native speakers. This fact, the process of acquiring German language by the Albanian learners of German in conditional situations in which they feel insecure or do not know the governed preposition in prepositional supplements, is also considered particularly important. Foreign language learners use in general their mother language directly and almost always carry out a one-to-one translation of the counterparts of certain prepositions. A contrastive teaching method may seem old-fashioned or unsuitable for learners, but it may be the most suitable method when learning the prepositional supplements, since the learners are aware of where the dangers of making mistakes lie and these mistakes can, in those cases, be avoided. Only when the learners understand from the beginning that they should not look for the meaning of the preposition in the prepositional supplements would it be of great importance to learn them together with the regents (verbs, adjectives or noun-verb combinations). The mother tongue should serve as a means of aiding understanding and should be a relief for the learner. Unfortunately, there is not a large selection of books that offer contrastive learning of German for Albanian native speakers. This type of approach in the classroom might be more successful than learning the foreign language abroad, because you can only learn properly if you understands the language correctly. The meanings of the prepositions are fixed in a certain embedded and situational context very early by the learners. The preposition “an” in German does not always mean pranë or afër in Albanian, and it is not a rare case. There is no other use of this preposition, as long as you do not do something against this fixation. This fact leads to a consistent reaction against this phenomenon. Textbook authors should use the pedagogical-didactical tasks to tempt the learners to take a different perspective on the prepositions and to perceive them differently. The similarities and differences should be clearly shown, so that the learner is aware from the beginning that prepositions can also be meaningless. In addition, it can be said that the awareness of the differences helps the learner to avoid interference errors and learn the similarities, improving transfer opportunities. Similarities can lead to errors, but this fact is still considered to be an advantage in making it easier to learn German. The differences in the prepositions in prepositional supplements should have priority in German as a foreign language lessons, so that the learners should notice right from the beginning that in most cases they are dealing with meaningless prepositions. This automatically leads to learners being more attentive in class. Learning the governed prepositions by heart should be at the beginning of learning stage in this area. The prepositions should be used in classes as often as possible, presented in different sentences until these constructions are applied automatically. The best part should come at the end: the similarities. It should be made clear to the learners that they have done the hard part of the work already and that this hard work will pay off in the end. Then, when the easy part comes, they will not pay much attention to the prepositions and so the learning time will automatically be shortened. Working on similarities and differences requires learners to pay attention to the prepositions at the beginning and then memorize and practice them at the end. During this time, the learner can easily give up because this method offers slow progression. Furthermore, the learners should also be given a clear understanding of the reason for the interference errors. In these cases, the learner should also be shown that the base meaning of the preposition cannot be applied to all contexts. On the other hand, the teacher should never lose the impulse to motivate his/her learners. Various activities lead to an easier process of automating the prepositive complements. The learners should be asked to create a list of the prepositions and their regents themselves. As they gradually add new ones, an eye is automatically kept on the prepositions they wrote down earlier. It would also be an interesting task if the learners were given a text with prepositive suffixes and the teacher made a game out of it. The learners should be divided into groups of two and the group that finds the most differences and similarities between their native language and German wins. Although it has been found that most errors are due to reasons that arise from the learner’ native language, it should be noted that there are many other factors that can lead to an error. For this reason, the teacher should always create a learning-friendly atmosphere to eliminate factors such as anxiety or shyness. In the learning process, it is also important to recognize the type of the learner and to use it in a targeted manner. According to Hufeisen and Neuner (2005), there are visually oriented, auditory oriented, communicatively or cooperatively oriented, haptically oriented, experience oriented and abstractly analytical learners. It can be concluded that we cannot use a single learning method in a group in which all learners are treated equally. On the other hand, we should address the learners in the classroom according to their individual learning habits and learning styles, so that they are encouraged. This means that with the help of the teacher, the learners should find their own learning style through individual learning habits and then develop them. With this method, the learners can cope with their own learning stress, because they specifically promote their skills according to their learning style (Hufeisen & Neuner 2005: 89-90). It often happens that foreign language learners unconsciously use a construction from another language when they are in a stressful situation, in which they have not yet mastered this construction in German or they cannot think of the correct form at the moment. However, this does not mean that the construction is necessarily taken from their mother tongue (in our case Albanian). It also happens that learners automatically fall back on another foreign language that they speak better than German. This also applies to the prepositions in prepositional supplements. It often happens that learners use the preposition ‘von’ in German instead the English counterpart ‘from’ or the English preposition ‘to’ instead the German ‘zu’. In their native language, the learners use the correct prepositions because these have already been automated since childhood through extensive influence on the language. In the foreign language, the prepositions still have to be become automatic, although it is quite understandable that the learners unconsciously transfer the prepositions from Albanian or from another foreign language into German. In summary, it takes a lot of patience and practice to master the governed prepositions in prepositional supplements. Further research in the field of the methodology of prepositional objects is urgently needed. There are not enough methodological techniques to make it easier to master the required prepositions.

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