The Relations between Learning Phrasal Verbs and Language Proficiency in English (original) (raw)
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Pragma-linguistic Difficulties in the Recognition of Phrasal Verbs by Iraqi EFL University Learners
Advances in Language and Literary Studies, 2018
The purpose of this paper is to recognize the level of pragma-linguistic difficulties Iraqi EFL university learners face when handling phrasal verbs. Despite the fact that phrasal verbs are easy to understand by native speakers of English, non-native speakers usually encounter some difficulties in understanding the meaning of a phrasal verb depending on the meaning of the root verb, or different phrasal verbs of the same root. The problem might be attributed to pragma-linguistic knowledge. However, culture gap could be the reason behind such difficulties. The aim of the study is (1) to evaluate the pragma-linguistic level of interpreting phrasal verbs as understood and used by Iraqi EFL university learners, (2) to check the level of difficulty they experience while recognizing phrasal verbs, and (3) to find out reasons behind such misinterpretations. It is hypothesized that (1) the pragma-linguistic interpretation of phrasal verbs tends to play an important role in understanding the message conveyed by the speaker; (2) cultural gap could be the reason that EFL learners recognize phrasal verbs incorrectly, and (3) mother tongue language might make it difficult for EFL learners to understand phrasal verbs. To verify the aforementioned hypothesis, a test has been constructed and administered to a sample of 100 fourth-year Iraqi EFL university learners, morning classes at the department of English Language and Literature, College of Arts, in Mustansiriyah University, during the academic year 2017-2018. The responses of the students have been collected and linguistically analyzed according to a model given by Richards and Schmidt (2010). It has been found that Iraqi students' lack of cultural norms of the target language makes it difficult for them to understand phrasal verbs. The lack of this knowledge is considered as a factor of confusion and then failure. The influence of the first language culture on the recognition of phrasal verbs may be seen as a negative first language transfer. The reason behind this negative transfer is that the norms and principles of first language are different from the norms and principles of the target language. It has been concluded that Iraqi EFL university learners have difficulties in pragma-linguistic knowledge as far as phrasal verbs are concerned. Iraqi EFL university learners face great difficulties in using phrasal verbs while communicating with other people. While using phrasal verbs, Iraqi EFL university learners have been highly influenced by their mother tongue language.
L2 Learners' Receptive and Productive Knowledge of Phrasal Verbs
2019
Phrasal verbs (PVs) are very common in English, indicating their usefulness in everyday settings. However, it was reported that language learners generally have great difficulties in understanding and using this linguistic form. This study investigated Malaysian learners' receptive and productive knowledge of PVs, and some possible factors which may contribute to their difficulties in understanding and using this language feature. A set of PVs test was developed and distributed to 480 secondary school learners in Malaysia to identify their receptive and productive knowledge with respect to PVs. Real data from the English of Malaysian School Students (EMAS) Corpus was used to examine the actual use of PVs by Malaysian learners. Results of the PVs test indicated that in general, Malaysian learners had an average level of knowledge of PVs. Analysis of the EMAS corpus revealed that they faced a lot of problems in the production of PVs. Some possible factors are highlighted which may contribute to such difficulties.
The Impact of English Proficiency on University Students’ Use of One- word or Phrasal Verbs
2020
Ahmad S Haidera, Hadeel A Saedb, Riyad F Husseinc, Linda S. Al-Abbasd, Samah R. Meqdadie, a,b,c,eDepartment of English Language and Translation, Applied Science Private University, Amman, Jordan, dDepartment of English Language and Literature, Middle East University, Amman, Jordan, Email: aAh_haider86@yahoo.com, bhadeel_99@yahoo.com, crfhussein@hotmail.com, dlindaalabbas_84@yahoo.com, es_miqdad@asu.edu.jo
2020
This research paper mainly focuses on the students" background knowledge concerning phrasal verbs, their difficulties on phrasal verbs, to what extent their practice of structure word exercises helps them improving their understanding, and to which degree their dictionary skills support them for guessing the meaning of the phrasal verbs. The aims of the research are to realize the learners" difficulties on learning phrasal verbs and to describe some suggestions to develop their learning. For these reasons, needs analysis is used to point out learners" difficulties. In the questionnaires how much exercises and practices relates to the phrasal verbs is measured. Random sampling method is used to collect the data after asking for the volunteering students to answer the questionnaires. Frequency and percentage of descriptive statistics method is used to analyze the data. The research mentions that the more frequent the learners have the contact with structure word exercises, the more confident they will have to face with phrasal verbs, and consequently the more their background knowledge about phrasal verbs,the more favourable they are to get the right answer. Moreover, using dictionary book is more reliable and can make the learners improve more than using applications of this kind, as everyone is the great tendency to find out the meaning of the word simultaneously, without paying much attention to the other points in the dictionary. This makes the learners decrease their dictionary skill, which may affect to develop the language skill. Therefore, the learners should have continuously touched with prepositions or adverbs which are combined with verbs to give the different meaning of the base verbs. In addition, developing dictionary skill actually helps all the learners not only to develop their knowledge about phrasal verbs but also to upgrade their language skills.
Investigating the Difficulties of Understanding and Using English Phrasal Verbs
2019
College Of Graduate Studies College of Languages (MA, in linguistic) Investigating the Difficulties of Understanding and Using English Phrasal Verbs (A Case study of Second year English Language Student) (at AL-Neelain University College of Arts ) مهف يصقت مادختساو تابوعص هبكرملا لاعفلاا يف ةيزيلجنلاا هغللا دلأا ةيلكب ةيزيلجنإ ةغل ةيناثلا ةنسلا بلاط ةلاح ةسارد( ا ب – ج ا ةعم ) نيلينلا A Thesis Submitted in Fulfillment of the Requirement for the Degree of M.A in Linguistics
Particles in Common: Mastery of Advanced EFL Learners over the Phrasal Verbs
Phrasal verbs are considered as one of the most important, although difficult, feature of English language. They are supposed to have the capability of distinguishing a native and a non-native speaker. This paper investigates the impact of classified phrasal verbs' list containing particles in common on the effective use of phrasal verbs in advanced learners of English. Accordingly, it aims to find a more thorough way to facilitate phrasal verbs' practical learning. To reach the goal of the paper, 30 EFL learners who signed up for IELTS courses were chosen, and divided into two groups. The study is designed based on an experiment suggesting that the phrasal verbs are not as problematic as they were portrayed in general, at least for the advanced learners. Concerning the utilization of phrasal verbs, the result indicates that the learners in the experimental group, who were exposed to the phrasal verbs with the use of classified list, had better performance than those in control group exposed to unclassified lists.
2020
The aim of this study is to investigate the ability of Iraqi university students to recognize and produce English phrasal verbs and their synonymous simple lexical verbs from a syntactic and semantic point of view. It is hypothesized those students find it difficult to recognize and produce phrasal verbs. The results show that the students seem to have insufficient skill or capacity to recognize phrasal verbs and consequently to produce meaningful sentences. The data was collected by testing 50 Year-4 students in an English department in an Iraqi university.
Use of phrasal verbs in an ESL learner corpus and its corresponding pedagogic corpus
2019
Phrasal verbs are one of the most notoriously puzzling aspects of English language instruction. Despite their potential complexities, they are of high relevance for ESL/ EFL learners because knowledge of them is often equated with language proficiency and fluency. With the emergence of corpus linguistics, phrasal verbs have been extensively studied in General, Learner and Pedagogic corpora. Literature, however, is lacking in how learners' use of phrasal verbs reflects the corresponding pedagogic corpora to which they are exposed. To fill this research gap, this study adopted a corpus-based content analysis as its methodological approach to investigate the treatment of phrasal verbs in an ESL learner corpus and its corresponding pedagogic corpus. Findings are also compared against the presentation of these combinations in the British National Corpus (BNC). The study reveals that the selection of teaching materials is more intuitively than empirically based. It also suggests that teachers can use available corpora as supplementary teaching sources to work out the areas of L2 that tend to cause problems for the learners.
Phrasal verbs in a longitudinal learner corpus: Quantitative findings
This study analyses Chinese learners' use of phrasal verbs from a longitudinal perspective. Through a comparison of the learners' output of phrasal verbs with that of two groups of native English speakers (American university students and British secondary school leavers), Chinese learners were found to be capable of producing an adequate number of phrasal verbs. Yet, they did not demonstrate appropriate choice of phrasal verbs. The longitudinal data reveal that the learners' acquisition of phrasal verbs during their three years of study was not always linear. A considerable decrease in the number of phrasal verbs used in the students' writing in their second year was noticed. No considerable increase in the use of phrasal verbs was observed at the end of their third year. Another important finding of this study is that the American students tend to use far more phrasal verbs than their British and Chinese counterparts.
The Lexical Knowledge and Avoidance of Phrasal Verbs: The Case of Egyptian Learners of English
Recent studies in different parts of the world have highlighted that phrasal verbs constitute a learning difficulty for English language learners despite their confirmed significance and high productivity in English. Proposed explanations include cross-linguistic differences, the complex nature of phrasal verbs, low language proficiency and psychological factors. The present study examines this difficulty among an Arabic-speaking population of Egyptian undergraduates in a foreign language context. To this end, a total of 407 Egyptian undergraduates in a private English-medium university completed a paraphrase task, two gap-filling tasks and a survey. The results confirm the difficulty highlighted in earlier studies, particularly at the production level. The results also show that the under-representation of phrasal verbs in the participants’ production can be interpreted in terms of cross-linguistic differences, passive learning for comprehension and limited language exposure. The study thus supports a multi-faceted model for the explanation of the limited use of phrasal verbs by English language learners, and calls for a revision of the English language teaching programs in Egypt.