Phrasal Verbs in Learner English: A Corpus-based Study of Lithuanian and Polish Learners of English (original) (raw)
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Lexical-phraseological features of phrasal verbs and difficulties in their study
2018
Modern English language has a particularly large number of combinations of postpositions with verbs. Their number is growing steadily. This is evidenced by books, dictionaries, dedicated to phrasal verbs and their use. Along with the increasing number, the frequency of their use is also growing. This means that they perform a desired function due to their greater brevity and expressiveness. The study of phrasal verbs is one of the most difficult tasks for a person who wants to improve his or her level of the English language. Phrasal verbs that are more infrequently used in conversation have already moved to the language of the media, business and economy. Phrasal verbs have strengthened their position in the verbal lexicon of contemporary English. Having become a phenomenon of conversational level, they are essential for the communicative act, and offer unlimited opportunities to express virtually all concepts. The article investigates research into the use of the lexical set strategy for teaching phrasal verbs in Kazakhstani universities. Even though the incidence of phrasal verbs is significant in English-speaking countries, little has been written about other causes of the non-use of the forms of PVs except for avoidance. Accordingly, this study explored 302 PVs used in 60 talks by the University students. The author comes to the conclusion that a well-defined strategy for teaching and learning PVs promotes the development of students' foreign language communicative competence.
THE NATURE OF ENGLISH PHRASAL VERBS: A SYNTACTICO- SEMANTIC INVESTIGATION
Journal of Communicative English, 2017
The main thrust of this paper is to investigate the syntactic and semantic features of the English phrasal verbs and examine the extent to which undergraduate students understand these features. Phrasal verbs from the stand point of this study were classified into subgroups according to their syntactic and semantic characteristics. The investigation, which is preceded by an extensive literature review, is aimed at tackling silent issues related to phrasal verbs. The paper shades light on the basic definitions of phrasal verbs, deals with the importance of phrasal verbs in English, and examines the syntactic and semantic features of phrasal verbs; to reveal whether these phrasal verbs are transitive or intransitive and separable or inseparable. It also focuses on the differences between phrasal verbs and prepositional verbs. Finally, the literal and idiomatic usage of English phrasal verbs has been reviewed. 684 fresh undergraduate students of Federal College of Education, Zaria, who registered and passed GENS 103 (English and Communication Skills) at credit level and above were selected for the study out of the over 1,200 that have registered for the course. In the light of the findings of the study a number of conclusions are drawn which includes: English phrasal verb consists of two basic components: a lexical verb and a particle (an adverb or a preposition), the meaning of the phrasal verbs is not implied in the meaning of the constituent elements that form them, both transitive and intransitive phrasal verbs can be used as phrasal verb but their state will be different. The results also reveal that although a number of the participants can be said to understand the different characteristics of English phrasal verbs,(43.85% on semantic knowledge, 50.58% on syntactic knowledge and 39.91% on the distinction between Phrasal verbs and Prepositional Phrases) however, larger percentage of them(56.14%, 49.41% and 60.08% respectively) still find phrasal verbs difficult to understand.
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
A Comparative Corpus-based Study on the Use of Phrasal Verbs by Turkish EFL Learners and L1 English Speakers, 2021
This quantitative study aims to reveal the most frequently used phrasal verbs (PVs) by L1 speakers of English and Turkish EFL learners in written and spoken registers. With the purpose of spotting any overuse and/or underuse by Turkish EFL learners, it compares their usage to L1 English speakers' through four corpora-two learner corpora and two native corpora. Additionally, the study investigates the most frequent adverbial verb particles (AVPs) and lexical verbs (LVs) in phrasal constructions comparing learners and native speakers. The results show that although LV types differ to a large extent, Turkish EFL learners display a similar profile to L1 English speakers in terms of types of PVs and AVPs. However, these verbs and particles are significantly underused, especially in spoken register-a result that contradicts previous research. Specifically, within the scope of this study, regardless of the register Turkish learners tend to favour few AVPs out of the mostly used ten while leaving out the others. The findings might be of use to EFL teachers regarding raising their students' awareness on the contextual use of PVs in different registers with a combination of both implicit and explicit teaching in mind. In addition, learners can benefit from the ready-made PV lists to enhance their prospective usage in meaningful contexts.
2013
Phrasal verbs are said to be one of the greatest indicators of linguistic competence for speakers of English as a foreign language. A phrasal verb consists of a verb and a preposition, a verb and an adverb, or a verb and an adverb as well as a preposition. Multi-word phrases such as phrasal verbs are characterised by degrees of opacity of meaning, where some are quite literal and some are completely idiomatic. This can cause learners to avoid using phrasal verbs. Conflicting definitions of what phrasal verbs are make them even harder to learn. This study employs a combination of methods, which together are intended to shed light on the use, teaching, and perception of phrasal verbs through quantitative studies of student texts, the British National Corpus, teacher surveys, and textbooks of English as a foreign language (EFL). The primary sources for this study consisted of 30 national tests written by students in upper secondary school, five textbooks used in upper secondary school, and 33 survey replies from English teachers in upper secondary schools. This study shows that phrasal verbs are only taught explicitly in one of the textbooks studied. Still, the essays written by the Swedish students show that they are quite commonly used. In fact, the frequency of use is quite near to that of native speakers, with a phrasal verb appearing almost twice a page. The students rarely use the phrasal verbs incorrectly in a grammatical sense; that is they usually conjugate them correctly. There are several instances, however, when the wrong phrasal verb is used, and particle movement is not as common in the Swedish text as in texts written by authors from the United Kingdom and Ireland. Phrasal verbs are used more often by students whose essays received a higher grade This can be seen both when looking at absolute numbers and when factoring in the length of the essays. The survey of the teachers, however, suggests that phrasal verbs themselves do not directly affect grading.
1983
This study is the result of an interest in the fields of linguistics and ESL begun ten years ago and nurtured through academic studies and a professional career. I acknowledge and thank Dr. Mary Jane Coole for having introduced me to this very interesting and fascinating field. I thanle her also for encouraging any potential she saw in me that would result in my becoming an 'ES~ specialist'. Finally, I thank her for helping me to continue work leading to a doctoral degree, particularly through the difficulties time and place have offered. This dissertation could not have been completed without her help and professional guidance. I also thanie Dr. William Christie and Dr. Anoop Chandola, who were so kind as to sacrifice vacation time in order to serve on my committee. A large debt of gratitude goes to my mother, Germaine B. Sproul, who took over many of my duties as homemaker and mother to allow me t!1e time and energy to complete this study. Finally, I aclmowledge the love and encouragement of my husband, Reginald A. DaIle, whose emotional support provided the help I needed to continue and finish this worle. I will be forever indebted to him.
The Relations between Learning Phrasal Verbs and Language Proficiency in English
Journal of Educational & Psychological Sciences, 2005
The purpose of this study is to examine the multivariate relationships of students' acquisition of a number of common phrasal verbs and their proficiency scores on the cloze test with their scores on two internationally recognized tests, i.e. the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) and the First Certificate of English (FCE). This is to determine whether students' scores on the phrasal verb test can act as a predictor of their achievement in the TOEFL or the FCE together with their performance at the University as measured by the overall grade-point average (GPA). The subjects for the study were 78 students enrolled at the University of Bahrain. The bivariate analysis of the data showed that the students' scores on the phrasal verb test correlated vary significantly with all the variables tested. Results indicate that the students' acquisition of phrasal verbs is a better test instrument in predicting their success in either the TOEFL or the FCE than the cloze. The methodological outcome of the study leads educational practitioners to focus their attention on familarising the students with commonly used phrasal verbs in English through the use of both intensive and extensive EFL supplementary reading materials.
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.
A Corpus Study on Brazilian Learners` Usage of English Phrasal Verbs
2020
ABSTRACT: The present study attempts at using corpora to determine if the most common phrasal verbs used by Brazilian learners of English are the same as the most commonly used by native speakers; whether there is evidence of avoidance of phrasal verb usage by learners in Brazil; and finally if the most common meanings used by Brazilian learners match the most common meanings found in native-speaker language. The tools used for this research were a Brazilian learner corpus called CoMAprend and the toolkit AntConc. Results showed that there was significant avoidance of phrasal verb usage by the learners and that a large number of phrasal verbs found in the corpus was not within the group of most common phrasal verbs native speakers use. In spite of this a good part of the phrasal verbs` meanings appearing in the learner corpus were listed as the most usual in the Bank of English. KEYWORDS
Creativity and Unnaturalness in the Use of Phrasal Verbs in ESL Learner Language
Interest in ESL learner language has gained momentum since the 1990s with the generation of learner corpora, development of robust Concordance software and the establishment of the principles of the corpus-linguistic methodology. All these innovations have empowered researchers to investigate not only the frequent but also the idiosyncratic features of different language phenomena in learner language. This corpus-based content analysis stydy was an attempt to explore the phenomena of creativity and unnaturalness in the use of phrasal verbs in an ESL context. Findings revealed that albeit the ESL learners were competent enough in creating compositional phrasal verbs, hence creative, they often produced unusual forms in their attempt to use and create idiomatic phrasal verbs. Materials developers and teachers are, therefore, recommended to provide materials and learning activities that would enable ESL learners to more effectively acquire phrasal verbs in general and idiomatic combinations in particular.