Las preposiciones a, en, de y los estudiantes japoneses al estudiar español: Gramática contrastiva

Abstract

In this article, a research in applied linguistics will be presented in the area of Pedagogical grammar and error analysis. It is about the way in which Japanese students develop their process of learning a, en and de, three of the Spanish language prepositions with a higher frequency in language. With that objective we developed a questionnaire in Spanish using these prepositions, and thirty Japanese students answered it. They are students who are in total immersion because they are living in Mexico, and because they are studying or studied the Spanish program in the Language Center for Foreign Students (CEPE) of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). In this study we analyze different characteristics of the prepositions, their various meanings determined by their usages and contexts, their equivalence to certçtin ‘particles ’ in Japanese language. We also give an explanation about the reasons why these students selected certain prepositions in Spanish, depending on the level of comprehension they have about these concepts, and also to the analogy with their mother tongue. The analysis of the results of the questionnaire made us arrive at the conclusion that the accurate choice of these prepositions in Spanish depends more on the analogy of the basic concepts and their functioning in the intersection of the two languages; and not so much on the proficiency of the Spanish level that the Japanese student has.