avoidance of english phrasal verbs efl learners saad

Avoidance of English Phrasal Verbs EFL Learners

Saad Alshomrani Ron Thomson

AVOIDANCE OF PHRASAL VERBS BY SAUDI EFL LEARNERS

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Abstract

Developing the ability to use phrasal verbs (PVs) in English oral production is

known to be challenging for second language (L2) learners, and may lead L2 learners to

avoid these constructions altogether. After briefly reviewing previous research, the

present study examines the use of PVs by 29 Saudi EFL learners and compares their

performance against 29 native speakers (NSs) of Canadian English performing the same

four counter-balanced tasks: (1) a multiple-choice sentence completion task, asking

participants to choose between PVs and one-word verb counterparts; (2) a grammatical

judgment task; (3) a phrasal verb elicitation task using visual illustrations of target PV

events; and (4) two picture-narrative description tasks assumed to be more likely to result

in avoidance of PVs. Results indicate that NSs use a much wider range of PVs than do

L2 learners, and use more PVs in speaking tasks than in written tasks, supporting claims

that PVs are a feature of spoken discourse. In contrast, although L2 English learners

often demonstrate knowledge of PVs in written tests, they tend to avoid using them in

production. Implications for EFL learning and teaching will be discussed.


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Acquiring phrasal verbs is known to be difficult for second language (L2) learners

of English (Siyanova & Schmitt, 2007), and especially for those in English as a Foreign

Language (EFL) settings, where exposure to spoken English is limited. Previous research

shows that EFL learners prefer to use one-word verbs over phrasal verbs, and that

avoidance of PVs can be attributed to the semantic nature of the PVs, their syntactic

structure, and the differences between the learners’ first language and their L2 (Dagut &

Laufer, 1985; Ghabanchi & Goudarzi, 2012; Hulstijn & Marchena 1989; Liao & Fukuya

2004). In this paper, I summarize background literature related to L2 avoidance in

general, and the avoidance of PVs by L2 learners in particular. I then report on a study

examining PV use by Saudi EFL learners, focusing on whether explicit knowledge of

English PVs taught in the classroom generalizes to their oral production.

Avoidance in L2 Learning

The use of avoidance strategies by L2 learners has attracted the attention of

linguists for several decades (see Irujo, 1993; Kleinmann, 1977; Kleinmann 1978; Laufer,

2000; Schachter, 1974; Sjoholm 1995). According to Ellis (2008), “avoidance is said to

take place when specific target-language features are under-represented in the learner’s

production in comparison to native-speaker production (p. 954).” Schachter (1974) was

the first to shed light on avoidance behavior in learning a foreign language. She

conducted a study examining the production of English relative clauses by Arabic,

Persian, Chinese, and Japanese ESL learners, and found that the Arabic and Persian

learners made more errors than Chinese and Japanese learners. However, she also

discovered that differences in the quantity of relative clause errors were related to the fact

that Persians and Arabs attempted to produce many English RCs, while Chinese and


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Japanese learners produced relatively few. Schachter suggests that Arabic and Persian

learners are more likely to attempt RCs in English because the structure of English RCs is

somewhat similar to that of the Arabic and Persian RCs. On the other hand, Schachter

argues that the Chinese and Japanese learners in her study found using English RCs more

difficult because English relative clause structure is quite different from the structure of

RCs in their native languages. Thus, Schachter maintains that Japanese and Chinese

learners produce fewer RCs than their Arab and Persian counterparts, because they are

avoiding the production of what seems like a difficult construction. Schachter concludes

that differences and similarities between the learner’s native language and his or her

target language is a primary cause of L2 learner avoidance of particular forms.

Moreover, she emphasizes that “the learner apparently constructs hypotheses about the

target language. If the constructions are similar in the learner’s mind he will transfer his

native language strategy to the target language. If they are radically different, he will

either reject the new construction or use it with extreme caution (p. 212).”

Another reason for avoidance is the semantic or syntactic structure of some forms

in the target language (Dagut & Laufer, 1985; Hulstijn & Marchena, 1989). That is,

some lexical or syntactic forms may be especially difficult for L2 learners to acquire,

hence they may avoid using them. Learners replace the difficult items with easier, for the

learners, structures or words.

Kleinmann (1992) identified three contexts of avoidance:

• When learners superficially know the target structure and anticipate problems

with it.


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• When learners know the target structure but find it too difficult to use it in

particular contexts.

• When learners know the target structure and how to use it, but tend to avoid using

it because they do not know how appropriate it is in a particular context. (Cited in

Ellis 2008, p. 358).

In addition, Brown (2007) describes two types of strategies L2 learners usually resort to

in order to avoid a particular syntactic or lexical item in the target language:

• Message abandonment: Leaving a message unfinished because of language

difficulty, and

• Topic avoidance: Avoiding topic areas or concepts that pose language difficulties

(p. 138).

All in all, there are many reasons for the avoidance of certain syntactic or lexical items in

L2 output. In this paper the focus will be on the avoidance of English PVs.

Defining English Phrasal Verbs

Before discussing avoidance behavior of EFL learners in their use of PVs, it is

important to first define PVs. In the research literature related to this topic, English PVs

are also referred to as compound verbs, multi-word verbs, or prepositional verbs.

According to the Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics

(Richards & Schmidt, 2000), a PV is “a verbal construction consisting of a verb plus an

adverbial particle (p. 399)” (e.g. look into, hand in, take out, call off, come along with).

In addition, although PVs consist of two words or more, they are considered to be single

lexical units. Following this premise, Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech, and Svartvik (1985)


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define PVs as “a unit which behaves to some extent either lexically or syntactically as a

single unit (p. 1150).”

PVs can be further classified into two main groups based on their semantic or

syntactic composition, as illustrated below:

Semantically, PVs are subdivided into two categories:

1. Literal: The meaning of this type of PV can be predicted from the meaning of its

two constituent parts (e.g. stand up, sit down, write down).

2. Non-literal (figurative): The meaning of this type of PV cannot be predicted by

the meaning of its constituent parts (e.g. give up, put out (fire), call off).

Syntactically, PVs are also subdivided into two types:

1. Separable: In these PVs, the particle can be separated from the main verb by a

direct object. (e.g. turn it on, hand it in, and take it out are allowed).

2. Non-separable: In these PVs, the particle cannot be separated from the main verb

(e.g. look it into, go it over, come it along with, are all disallowed).

Avoidance of Phrasal Verbs

English PVs are recognized as one of the most difficult areas for ESL/EFL

learners as this kind of verb is found only in Germanic languages (Al-Otaibi, 2008). The

first study known to have tackled the avoidance of PVs by EFL learners was by Dagut

and Laufer (1985). They first identified 15 PVs preferred by a group of NSs of English.

Next, they used these PVs in three different tasks with three different groups of EFL

learners, with each group consisting of 60 participants. In the first task they provided

participants with a 15-item multiple-choice test. Each item was constructed to allow for


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two correct answers (a target PV and a synonymous one-word verb) and two distractors.

In the second task, the participants were provided with 15 sentences with the target PVs

omitted and the Hebrew translation of each target PV was written at the end of each

sentence. Participants were asked to fill in the blanks with the target PVs or their

equivalent one-word verbs. In the last task participants received 15 sentences with the

target PVs and their Hebrew translation. Participants were asked to memorize the

sentences and after an hour they were given the same sentences without the PVs, but with

their Hebrew translations. Participants were to provide the missing PV for each sentence.

The researchers concluded that “Hebrew-speaking students of English display a marked

tendency to avoid using PVs when trying to express themselves in English (p. 77)”. They

went further and attributed the avoidance phenomenon to the absence of a structure in

Hebrew similar to English PVs. In other words, this avoidance behavior is caused by the

syntactic nature of the learners’ mother language. Although the study has very important

findings, it also has some limitations. The researchers did not mention the number of

NSs who participated in the study, and did not take into account the proficiency level of

the participants. In addition, the study did not investigate the learners’ understanding of

the target structure, and instead, the researchers assumed that the learners knew the target

structure.

In response to Dagut and Laufer (1985), Hulstijn and Marchena (1989) replicated

the study with two groups of intermediate and advanced Dutch EFL learners. Dutch

learners were selected for the latter study because PVs are found in the Dutch language.

Therefore, if Dagut and Laufer’s conclusion that EFL learners tend to avoid using the

English PVs due to the lack of such verb structures in the learners’ first language was


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correct, the Dutch learners would not avoid PVs as they have this structure in their first

language. However, Hulstijn and Marchena hypothesized that Dutch learners will also

tend to avoid PVs when expressing themselves in English, not because PVs do not occur,

but rather because of the semantic nature of these verbs in English. Hulstijn and

Marchena found that neither the intermediate nor advanced learners tried to avoid PVs.

However, their Dutch learners did tend to avoid idiomatic (non-literal) PVs, even when

they had similar counterparts in Dutch. In addition, they found that advanced Dutch EFL

learners tended to employ more PVs than did intermediate learners. They attributed this

limited avoidance behavior to the semantic nature of the English PVs, rather than to their

syntactic structure.

A third study in the research literature that sheds light on this issue is that of a

study by Laufer and Eliasson (1993). They used a multiple-choice test and a translation

task to measure the extent to which Swedish EFL learners would avoid the use of PVs.

In addition, they compared the results of the Swedish learners with those of the Hebrew

learners who participated in their earlier study (Dagut & Laufer, 1985). The results of the

follow-up study revealed that advanced Swedish EFL learners do not avoid English PVs,

whether figurative or literal. In addition, the Swedish learners used far more PVs than

their Hebrew counterparts. As Swedish is a Germanic language and has PVs, the

researchers concluded that the avoidance behavior evidenced by the Hebrew EFL

learners in their earlier study is largely attributable to the differences between the

learners’ first language, being Hebrew, and the target language of English.

Numerous other studies have expanded on the early research in this area. For

instance, Liao and Fukuya (2004) conducted a study that examined Chinese EFL


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learners’ avoidance of PVs. They used a multiple-choice test, a translation task, and a

recall task, and compared the Chinese learners’ performance in the first task with that of

English NSs. They also took into consideration the proficiency level of the Chinese

learners, forming one group of 30 advanced learners and another of 40 intermediate

learners. The results showed that the advanced Chinese EFL learners did not avoid the

use of PVs, while their intermediate EFL learner counterparts did tend to do so. The

researchers concluded that the avoidance phenomenon in the use of PVs by EFL learners

“seems to point more to a manifestation of learners IL [inter-language] development than

to the L1-L2 differences or similarities (p. 98).”

Al-Otaibi (2008) investigated the use of PVs by Saudi students. In her study, she

used a multiple-choice test with a group of advanced female Saudi EFL learners and

observed two other groups at different proficiency levels. The first observed group was

composed of 40 beginner learners and the second group had 14 advanced learners. The

main purpose of the observation was to look at the participants’ oral production of PVs,

taking into consideration their level of proficiency. The researcher found that the Saudi

EFL learners did not avoid either figurative or literal PVs and that the learners’ level of

proficiency did not affect their oral production of PVs. Both the advanced learners and

the beginner learners produced the same number of PVs. However, in this study, the

results of 40 beginner learners were compared against the results of 14 advanced learners,

which could explain why both groups produced the same number of PVs. In addition, the

comparison was conducted in different contexts; the beginner learners were observed

during a regular speaking lesson, while the advanced learners were observed during a

debate class. Therefore, as stated by the researcher, the oral production of Saudi EFL


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learners in relation to the use of PVs should be further investigated using different

research instruments. It is also unclear whether the PVs used reflected native speaker

usage patterns.

From the findings of previous studies, it can be concluded that EFL learners may

avoid the use of PVs due to the semantic nature of the PVs, their syntactic structure, the

interference from their L1, and the context of learning. It is not necessary that the

avoidance phenomenon be attributable to only one of these reasons, however, but instead

could be due to a combination of factors.

Research Gap

As discussed earlier, PVs are known to be a challenge for ESL and EFL learners.

In addition, research has shown that while ESL/EFL learners often demonstrate

declarative knowledge of PVs, and the ability to use them in controlled settings, they

avoid the use of them in written and oral production. Therefore, it is of utmost

importance to identify the areas of difficulty in learning such verbs, and find strategies

that make understanding and using them easier for language learners. Previous

examinations of PVs use by second language learners of English identify target PVs

through reference to native speaker corpora, often taken from writing, and do not

typically test knowledge of PVs in spoken production, by rather rely on writing and

multiple-choice questions. To extend previous research, this paper will include both

written and oral production of non-native speakers (NNSs), and will compare the

performance of NNSs against NS performance on the same tasks, rather than through

reference to corpora. In the EFL learning contexts in Saudi Arabia, the specific research

questions are:


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1. Do adult Saudi EFL learners demonstrate knowledge of common English PVs in

written tasks, and how do they compare to NSs performing the same task?

2. To what degree do Saudi EFL learners use PVs in spoken language, relative to

NSs performing the same tasks?

3. Do Saudi EFL learners avoid the use of PVs in their written and/or oral

production? If so, why might this be the case?

Methodology

Participants

This study involved 29 Saudi NNSs of English and 29 Canadian NSs of English.

The non-native speaker (NNS) participants were college students at Jubail Industrial

College in Saudi Arabia, ranging in age from 19 to 24, with a mean age of 22. Since the

education system in Saudi Arabia is segregated, all of the NNS participants were males.

All had studied English as a compulsory course for a minimum of six years at Saudi

public schools, before joining the college, and had completed a one-year intensive course

of English at the college. According to the standards of Jubail Industrial College, which

are based on the Common European Framework of Reference, participants’ overall

proficiency level in English was intermediate. The native-speaker (NS) participants were

primarily undergraduate and graduate students studying at three Canadian universities

(Brock University, Guelph University, and Kingston University). The NS participants

were predominantly undergraduate students studying at Brock University with such

majors as Applied Linguistics, Early Childhood Education, Physics, Chemistry, and

Kinesiology. Twenty of the participants were female and nine were male. Two of the


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NS participants were personal acquaintances who were working for Canadian companies.

All of the NS participants were born and raised in Ontario, Canada.

Selection of Phrasal Verbs

In order to ensure that the NNS participants were familiar with the target PVs

used in this study, all the verbs were selected from Azar (2003), which all the Saudi

participants had used as a course text during their intensive English program. All the

selected target PVs were selected from a chapter that was a required part in the course

syllabus, and the students had been tested on its content in the course’s final exam. In

general, the way the target verbs are presented in the book is by providing learners with a

decontextualized list of PVs and their definitions, followed by fill-in-the-blank exercises.

Instruments

To answer the research questions, all the participants were asked to perform four tasks.

The order of the tasks was counter-balanced across participants.

1. Multiple Choice Sentence Completion task.

In this task, participants were provided with a 20-item multiple-choice test. For

each item there were two correct answers and two distractors. One of the correct answers

was a phrasal verb and the other was a one-word verb. Participants were allowed to

choose only one answer.

Example:

Sarah could not __________ her homework yesterday because she came down with a bad case of flu.

a. submit b. release c. catch up d. hand in


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In the example above, a and d are both correct answers. However, participants had to

choose only one answer. This task was intended to determine the participant’s preference

in the selection between PVs and one-word verbs. This task was selected based on its use

in many previous studies that investigated English PVs (e.g., Dagut & Laufer, 1985;

Hulstijn & Marchena, 1989; Liao & Fukuya, 2004).

2. Grammaticality Judgment task

As mentioned above, one of the reasons that learning and acquiring PVs is

believed to be difficult for NNSs of English relates to the syntactic structure of such

verbs. Therefore, participants were provided with 20 sentences and they were to

determine whether each sentence was grammatically correct or incorrect. A total of 10

target PVs were used and each verb was presented twice.

Example: 1- a. I ran into an old friend yesterday.

b. I ran an old friend into yesterday. 2- a. The dentist took my tooth out. b. The dentist took out my tooth. All the sentences above are grammatically correct except sentence 1(b). This sentence is

incorrect because the PV, ran into, is a non-separable verb.

3. Picture Prompts task

To measure the participants’ overall knowledge and use of PVs in production,

they were provided with a set of 23 pictures and asked to orally describe what the

person/people in each picture was/were doing. The first 10 pictures were intended to

allow speakers to use the same PVs or one-word verbs found in the first 10 items of the

multiple-choice test. The other pictures elicited sentences where other PVs, not in the

multiple-choice task, could be used. The researcher developed this task, as none of the

previous studies had explicitly investigated the oral use of these PVs by the NNSs..


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Example:

1-

4. Picture Narrative task

Most previous studies that have investigated PVs have used either multiple-choice

questions or questionnaires. However, since PVs more often occur in speaking than in

writing, all participants were also given two sets of pictures, as shown in Appendix D,

which sequentially illustrate a short story, and were asked to tell each story orally two

times in the past tense. The first time they were instructed to tell the stories using the

first person singular. The second time they were instructed to tell the stories in the third

person. Both stories allowed the selection of a wide range of PVs , such as wake up, run

into, bumped into, brush up, clean up, and sneak into. All the stories were recorded and

transcribed.

Results

Each of the tasks described above was analyzed separately.

1- What is the student doing? Possible answers are: a. He is handing in the homework. b. He is submitting the homework.

2- What is the boy doing? Possible answers were: a. He is putting out a cigarette. b. He is extinguishing a cigarette.


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Multiple Choice Sentence Completion

For the multiple choice sentence completion task all the answers were coded by

the researcher. The researcher hypothesized that the NNSs would not show any

preference towards either the phrasal or the one-word verbs; the same hypothesis was

made for the NSs. Therefore, a one-sample t-test was run for both groups. The results,

as reflected in Table 1 below, indicate a significant preference by NNSs for one-word

verbs (t(28) = -3.619, p = .001) over PVs. On the other hand, NSs used almost the same

number of one-word verbs and PVs when they performed this task (t(28) = .311, p =

.758), as hypothesized.

When results of the NNSs were compared to those of the NSs, a significant

difference (t(56) = 2.553, p = .013) was found between groups in their use of PVs, as

shown in Figure 1. In addition, interesting differences between NNSs and NSs in the use

of the target PVs was also found when the results were analyzed item-by-item. For

example, the target PV run into (Item 10) was chosen by 79% of the NSs, while only

14% of the NNSs chose the same PV. Moreover, the target PVs put out and go away

(Items 5 and 17 respectively) were used by 100% of the NSs, while only 69% and 62% of

the NNSs used these PVs, as shown in Figure 2.

Table: 1 NNSs and NSs Selection of PVs and one-word verbs Participants PVs One-word verbs P Value

NNSs 40% 60% .001 NSs 51% 49% .758


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Figure 1. NSs and NNSs selection of PVs in the multiple-choice questions task

Grammaticality Judgments

All the participants’ answers on the grammaticality judgment task were coded by

the researcher. The results of this task show a significant difference between NSs and

NNSs in their familiarity with the syntactic structure of the target PVs (t(56) = 4.990, p

<.0001). However, as illustrated in Figure 3, it was noted that the score for the NNSs

was 73%, which indicates that they are, to a great extent, familiar with the syntactic

structure of the target PVs. When the results for the NNSs were analyzed according to

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

120%

NSs NSSs

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

NSs NNSs

NSs

NNSs

Figure 2. NSs and NNSs selection of the target PVs in the MCQ task by item.


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the syntactic structure of the target PVs, either separable or inseparable, their average

score for the items in which separable PVs were used was 70%, and they scored an

average score of 76% for the items with non-separable PVs. A paired-samples t-test

(t(28) = 1.431, p = .164) did not reveal any significant difference between their responses

to separable versus inseparable items. Moreover, when the results for separable verbs

were analyzed independently, the average score of the NNSs was virtually the same,

whether or not the sample sentence included a separated verb form, as shown in Table 2.

Figure 3: Performance of NSs & NNSs on the Grammaticality Judgment Task Table 2. Performance of NNSs according to the syntactic structure of the target PV

All PVs P value Separable PVs P value NNSs

Separable Non-sep. Separated Not-separated 70% 76% .164 69% 71% .712

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

NSs NNSs

NSs

NNSs


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Picture prompts

In the third task, where all participants were asked to orally answer questions

based on picture prompts, the researcher took notes while the participants were answering

each question. The researcher noted all the verbs used by each participant, whether PVs

or one-word verbs. The results of this task revealed a significant difference (t(56) =

13.525, p < .000) in the use of the target PVs by NSs and NNSs. The tendency was for

NSs to use more PVs than one-word verbs. On the other hand, NNSs used far more one-

word verbs, as shown in Figure 4.

Recall that the first 10 times on the picture prompts task were the same as the first

10 items on the multiple-choice sentence completion task. When the results of these

matching items were compared across tasks, a paired samples t-test (t(28) = 1.653, p =

.109) did not show a significant difference in the use of PVs in both tasks by NSs.

However, for the NNSs a significant difference in their use of PVs in both tasks (t(28) =

7.951, p < .000) was revealed. That is, they tended to avoid using the target PVs when

they were asked to orally answer questions that promoted the use of the same verbs they

had chosen in the multiple-choice test, as shown in Table 3.

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

NSs NNSs

NSs

NNSs

Figure 4. Performance of NSs and NNSs on the Picture prompts task


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The analysis of the overall performance of both NSs and NNSs groups showed

that the NSs used far more PVs in the picture prompt tasks than in the multiple-choice

task, while the opposite is true for the NNSs. In addition, as shown in Table 4, when the

PVs used by NNSs were analyzed according to their meanings, either literal or non-

literal, it was found that 94% of those verbs had literal meanings; from a total of 19 verbs

used by NNSs in this task, only one verb has a non-literal meaning.

Table 4: List of verbs used by NNSs in the Picture Prompts Task

Literal Non-literal Ask for Put out (fire)

Come back Fall down Fall down Fall into Fall off Get up

Give back Hand in Jump in Look at Look for Put down

Put on Stand up Take out

Throw away Wake up

Table 3: Performance by NNSs and NSs on the Multiple-Choice Task and the Picture Prompts Task (first 10 items)

Participants MCT Picture Prompts

p value

NNSs 36% 9% <.000 NSs 49% 41% = .109


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Picture narratives

In the picture narratives task all the stories produced by the participants were

recorded and transcribed by the researcher. Results indicate that NSs produced a more

wide range of PVs than NNSs. Almost 40% of the verbs used by NSs in this task were

PVs, while only 18% of the verbs used by the NNSs were PVs. In addition, by analyzing

the PVs produced by NNSs, it was found that all the PVs they used were literal. On the

other hand, NSs produced both literal and non-literal PVs. Table 5 shows a list of all the

verbs used by both NSs and NNSs.

Table 5: a List of PVs produced by both NNSs and NSs

PVs (NNSs) PVs (NSs) Fall down Brush off Open up Fall off Bump into Pick up Get in Carry on Pull out Get up Catch up Put on

Go away Clean off Reach down Go on Climb into Run into Go up Come back Sleep in

Look at Crash into Slide into Run out Creep in Slip into Sit down Dust off Smash into

Sneak into Fall down Sneak in Stand up Fix up Sneak into Wake up Flip into Speak back Walk into Freak out Stand up

Gain back Straight up Get back Stumble over Get back up Take off Get in Tip-toe into Get into Turn around Go off Turn out Grab up Wake up Head on Walk around Look around Walk off

Look at Walk over Mix up Yell at Move on


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Results Discussion

What conclusions can be drawn from the results outlined above with relation to

the original objectives of this study? The first research question asked if adult Saudi

learners demonstrate knowledge of English PVs in written tasks, and how their usage

compares to that of English NSs performing the same tasks. The data indicates that the

adult Saudi learners are aware of PVs and their syntactic structure, despite the fact that

such constructions are unknown in their native Arabic language. In the data, however,

the Saudi participants employed PVs far less frequently than the English NSs when

carrying out identical writing tasks. The second research question referred to the use of

PVs in oral communication. It asked to what degree Saudi EFL learners use PVs in

spoken language, relative to English NSs performing the same tasks. Three interesting

observations can be extracted from the data. Unsurprisingly, as for the written tasks, the

Saudi English speakers used fewer PVs than the NSs in the speaking tasks. The second

observation was that English NSs used phrasal verbs more in spoken than written

language, which supports the claim that PVs are used more in spoken language.

However for the Saudi English speakers, the opposite was the case; they tended to use

more PVs in written tasks than in speaking. The third research question asked if Saudi

English learners avoid using PVs in their written and oral production, and if so, why.

The data above shows that they clearly do avoid using PVs in both oral and written

production, and the possible reasons for this will be discussed below.

The overall performance of the NNSs across the four tasks indicates a genuine

case of avoidance. In all tasks they used more one-word verbs than PVs. This finding

indicates that declarative knowledge of the lexical and syntactical structure of PVs does


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not necessarily translate into online selection of PVs in written contexts and even less in

spoken contexts. Although the NNSs had been explicitly taught the target PVs in this

study, they did not choose to use them in context. This emphasizes the importance of

teaching such lexical items in context, and of providing learners with appropriate

contexts in which to practice the use of PVs. Ellis (2008) suggested that “for practice to

work for the development of the speaking skills it must involve learners producing the

target structure in the context of communicative activity” (p. 480). In addition, he states

that this type of practice will eventually help L2 learners understand and internalize the

target structure. Moreover, during this type of practice, providing learners with

constructive feedback is essential for the learning process (Johnson, 1996) and will

encourage the learners to use the target structure and increase their self-confidence in

using it. In other words, in order for learners to convert their declarative knowledge of

PVs into procedural knowledge, they need to be provided with contextualized practice

followed by constructive feedback.

It was also found that the NNSs chose and used PVs that were rarely chosen or

used by NSs. This indicates that the instructed knowledge of PVs does not guarantee

native-like selection because the selection of which PVs verbs are to be included in a

textbook is largely based on the author’s intuition. For Example, Zarifi (2012) conducted

a study in which he investigated the use of PVs in Malaysian textbooks and found that

many of the PVs used in these books are not among the most frequent 100 English PVs.

He also states that this finding is of utmost importance because as EFL teachers we spend

time teaching less important lexical items at the expense of the more important ones.

Furthermore, Sansome (2000) conducted a study to measure Japanese and Korean


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university students’ knowledge of PVs and found that the participants in her study were

not able to adequately acquire these verbs. In addition, she highlighted that most

textbooks are not able to explain how these verbs should be used. Moreover, most of the

PVs used in the grammar books are not amongst the most common English PVs (Darwin

& Gray, 1999). Finally, Gardner and Davies’ (2007) attempt to identify the most

frequent PVs in English is a rich resource for ESL/EFL course book designers.

The results of the current study also shows that NNSs seem to mostly avoid the

use of non-literal PVs, even though they have been explicitly taught these PVs.

Moreover, although the NNSs in this study avoided the use of PVs as a category, most of

PVs they did use were literal (e.g. 94% of the verbs they used in the picture prompts task

were literal PVs). This indicates that NNSs do not feel confident in using such verbs,

despite being aware of them, and probably need more time to become comfortable using

them. Furthermore, Armstrong (2004) suggests that one of the reasons for ineffective

teaching of PVs is that teachers themselves lack awareness of their semantic and

syntactic structures. He suggests that “teachers of English should be able to identify and

classify any phrasal verbs they encounter (p. 213)”, and that this practice will result in a

more effective teaching of those verbs. Mart (2012) suggests that presenting PVs in

context and encouraging their use is a good way of teaching them. From my experience,

I believe that presenting PVs to students in context, and supplementing the text with

pictures, is one of the best ways to help EFL learners internalize the meaning and

structure of such verbs, and subsequently learners will feel more confident in using these

verbs when it is appropriate to do so. To be able to achieve this goal, EFL learners

should be given more exposure to lower frequency and non-literal PVs in contexts where


24

they are actually used, rather than in decontextualized sentences or exercises, such as the

Azar textbook used by the Saudi participants.

Conclusion

Phrasal verbs are very common and widely used by NSs of English. Therefore,

learning these verbs is essential for EFL/ESL learners who wish to communicate with

people whose native language is English. In fact, some claim that EFL/ESL speakers

who use more PVs are deemed to have a more native-like fluency. This study

investigated the use of PVs by a group of Saudi EFL learners. It was found that Saudi

EFL learners tend to avoid PVs and instead use one-word verbs. Also, they were aware

of the structure of the English PVs to a great extent, but used far more literal than non-

literal PVs. This suggests the main reason Saudi students do not feel comfortable with

using these PVs is the semantic features of these verbs. Therefore, Saudi learners should

be given more exposure to this type of verb in appropriate contexts, especially the non-

literal ones. One of the limitations of this study is that it did not take into account the

proficiency level of the learner. Therefore, I suggest that the same study be repeated with

more advanced Saudi English speakers and the results be compared with those of the

current study.


25

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