Résumé:
This study is an investigation of English foreign language students’ understanding of the
semantic complexity of the English spatial prepositions’’ in, on, at, for, from, above, over, to,
and across’’. It aimed at diagnosing the factors that account for the difficulty in
comprehending and using these prepositions and checking whether reading facilitates the
comprehension and use of these prepositions. Furthermore, it spotlighted the most problematic
prepositions for the learners. Thus, it was hypothesized that second-year students of English
at Mohammed Seddik Ben Yahia University Jijel will better understand the semantic
meanings of English spatial prepositions while reading texts. To check the validity of this
hypothesis, a grammar test was used to collect the data. It was distributed to 67 sophomores
from the population of 272 second year LMD stydents . The collected data were analyzed
qualitatively and quantitatively. The obtained results indicated that the participants show weak
performances in deciphering the semantics of English prepositions in reading texts. This
semantic complexity is caused by two major reasons which are the students’lack of knowledge
and the polysemous nature of prepositions. Given the findings, it was recommended for
teachers to provide learners with ample instructions about the different meanings of each
preposition in different contexts. Learners, on their part, are required to make extra efforts and
practice to master the meanings and appropriate usages of prepositions
