The Effect of Transfer on Arab and Portuguese Learners' Use of the English Prepositions to and for.

Sammanfattning: The researcher has studied, in this paper, the effect of transfer on the Arabic and Portuguese learners’ using prepositions during their process of learning English as a second language. The prepositions that the study deals with are to and, for. The aim of the study is to show the influence of the learner’s first language on the target language. The study draws upon literary sources such as Littlewood’s book Foreign and Second Language Learning (Littlewood, 1984), as well as practical experiments which are divided into a multiple choice test and a translation test. Through the analysis of the results of these tests, the study shows the extent of influence of the first language on the process of learning a second language. The answers of the students are analyzed by comparing the rules of using prepositions in the learner’s first language and English. The participants in this study are students in ACS international school in Qatar. The study also includes interviews with two teachers. The interviews are done in order to provide additional information on the effect of the learner’s first language on learning a second language. The teachers express their views which was formed after many years of teaching experience.