new ar629 006 soule external lsa4 be all vertical · 2020. 2. 17. ·...

Rachel Soule -‐ LSA 4 -‐ Helping Lower Level Students Learn Phrasal Verbs 1

Helping Lower Level Students Learn Phrasal Verbs

Candidate Name: Rachel Soule

Center Name: International House Buenos Aires

Center Number: AR629

Candidate Number: 006

Assignment Focus: Systems -‐ Vocabulary

Assignment: LSA4 -‐ External

Level: Elementary to Pre-‐Intermediate

Date of Assessment: Mar 1, 2018

Word Count: 2500


Contents

A. Introduction.........................................................................................p3 B. Analysis................................................................................................p3

1. Defining Phrasal Verbs...............................................................p3 2. Meaning & Use...........................................................................p4 3. Pronunciation.............................................................................p5 4. Form...........................................................................................p5

C. Problems...............................................................................................p7 1. Avoidance/Errors of Register......................................................p7 2. Opaqueness of Meaning.............................................................p7 3. Vast Number of Items and Polysemy..........................................p8 4. Excessive Focus on Form............................................................p9 5. Listening Comprehension...........................................................p9

D. Conclusion............................................................................................p10 E. Bibliography..........................................................................................p11 F. Appendices...........................................................................................p12

Appendix A: Excerpt from The PHaVE List.....................................p12 Appendix B: Annotated Example Utterances.................................p13 Appendix C: Register Change Practice Exercise..............................p14 Appendix D: Making Sense of Phrasal Verbs Table of Contents.....p14 Appendix E: Grouping Phrasal Verbs by Particles............................p15 Appendix F: Teaching Phrasal Verbs in a Context ...........................p16 Appendix G: Teaching Phrasal Verbs Alongside Other Vocab..........p16 Appendix H: Phrasal Nerds Smartphone Game................................p17 Appendix I: Teaching Phrasal Verbs in a Text...................................p18 Appendix J: Activating Awareness of Connected Speech ................p19


A.Introduction Phrasal verbs are both an important and a challenging area of lexis to develop. They are quite common, Gardner and Davies estimating about 1 for every 150 words of written text (2007:347), and frequency in spoken English is even higher (at least for L1 speakers). Therefore receptive knowledge of phrasal verbs is important for listening comprehension, and productive knowledge for spoken fluency. In my experience, motivated learners sometimes expressly ask for phrasal verb work. However, challenges such as idiomaticity, polysemy, and complexity of form make it difficult to know how best to meet this need. I have decided to focus on lower learners for two reasons. Firstly, phrasal verbs are often ignored at lower levels only to overwhelm learners later on (as I experienced with several Japanese business English students). Secondly, my current lower level Argentinian students hardly use phrasal verbs at all, so I think this area will benefit them. I hope that by exploring this area deeply, I will be able to better help my current and future students tackle phrasal verbs. B.Analysis 1. Defining Phrasal Verbs For the purposes of this paper, I will define phrasal verbs as: multi-‐word items consisting of a lexical verb followed by either an adverbial particle (e.g. wake up), or a preposition (e.g. look into), or both (e.g. look forward to). When distinction is not needed, I will refer to both adverbial particles and prepositions as particles. This definition reflects Naunton's work, which like many resources groups phrasal verbs into four grammatical types including both those with prepositions and those with adverbial particles (1989 in Thornbury,2002:123). Some sources prefer not to include [verb + preposition] combinations under the umbrella "phrasal verbs". Willis limits the definition of "phrasal verb" to only those units where a direct object can come between lexical verb and particle (2003:147). Similarly, Gairns and Redman define them as items containing an adverbial particle, in contrast to the term "prepositional verbs" which contain prepositions (1986:33). However, I prefer the broader definition for two reasons. Firstly, many words can act as both prepositions and adverbial particles, such as off in turn off (see Analysis of Form). Further, both require similar treatment in the classroom; as Gairns and Redman state, many prepositional verbs are "semantically opaque" (or idiomatic) like other phrasal verbs, explaining why many people group them together (1986:33).


2. Meaning & Use Idiomaticity Thornbury rightfully states that phrasal verb meanings exist on a cline "from very idiomatic to very transparent" (Thornbury,2002:115). Gairns and Redman exemplify this clearly: some phrasal verbs "retain the meaning of their individual verb and particle e.g. sit down" while other meanings "cannot be deduced from an understanding of the constituent parts e.g. take in (deceive/cheat somebody)" (1986:33). Often but not always, particles share related meanings between phrasal verbs; for instance on gives the sense of continuing in "carry on, drive on, hang on, go on" (Thornbury, 2002:124). Polysemy McCarthy and O'Keefe define polysemy clearly as "the concept that words can have many meanings, especially in different contexts" (2010:158). A single phrasal verb can have numerous meanings, for instance break up (end a relationship, have a bad connection, separate into parts). Using modern corpus data, Gardner and Davies found that the top 100 occurring phrasal verbs averaged 5.6 meanings each (2007:353). Unsurprisingly, not all meanings occur with the same frequency. Garner and Schmitt found that for the most common phrasal verbs, the most common one to two meanings account for more than half of occurrences -‐-‐ see Appendix A (2015:658). Appropriacy Many phrasal verbs have single word (often Latinate) counterparts. These are synonyms in the sense of "words that share a similar meaning" (Thornbury, 2002:9). Gairns and Redman correctly write: "Some common phrasal verbs are informal, and have one-‐word equivalents which are preferred in more formal contexts (e.g. put off / postpone; get along / manage)" (1986:34). The two options convey essentially the same information, but differ in register. McCarthy reminds us that register is determined by "the relationship between the content of a message, its sender and receiver, its situation and purpose, and how it is communicated" (1992:61). Painting with a broad brush, phrasal verbs are more frequent in spoken word and in neutral to casual registers, while single-‐word Latinate counterparts are more typical of formal contexts and written texts. Of course, looking item-‐by-‐item, exceptions exist. For instance, Marks identifies "consign to, impinge on, renege on" as "formal and/or literary," noting that these are also of Latinate origins (2005).


3. Pronunciation Shifting Stress Phrasal verbs can be classified into two groups: one-‐stress verbs and two-‐stress verbs. One-‐stress verbs always carry main stress on the lexical verb; two-‐stress verbs carry main stress on the (first) particle, but this stress shifts if the particle is immediately preceded or followed by an important content word (Oxford,2001:378-‐379). See annotated examples in Appendix B. Interestingly, when two-‐stress verbs change into nouns, stress generally moves from the particle to the lexical verb, e.g. meet up (v)/meet-‐up (n); set up (v)/set up (n). Connected Speech Two features of connected speech are particularly salient in phrasal verbs. First, weak forms: when the particle is unstressed it usually takes a weak form, unless it occurs at the end of the phrase (Oxford,2001:378) -‐-‐ see Appendix B. Next, particularly when taking a pronoun as an object, phrasal verbs are a rich area for catenation, i.e. when "a consonant sound at the end of one word joins with a vowel sound at the beginning of the next" (British Council,2006). See Appendix B. 4. Form Inflection Any necessary inflection happens to the lexical verb, and phrasal verbs can be regular (e.g. pick up-‐picked up) or irregular (e.g. break off-‐broke off-‐broken off) just as single-‐word verbs can. Transitivity & Separability The table on the following page divides phrasal verbs into four basic grammatical types. Just as one phrasal verb can have multiple meanings, it can also vary in type. For instances, turn off can be intransitive (She turned off onto a side street) or transitive inseparable She turned off the main road) (Oxford,2001:325).


Type Constituent Parts Syntax Examples

intransitive lexical verb + adverbial particle

No object. wake up You need to wake up.

transitive separable

lexical verb + adverbial particle If the object is a noun (phrase), it can go before or after particle. Longer noun phrases typically go after. If the object is a pronoun, it must go before. (Willis,2003:147)

put off They put off the meeting. They put the meeting off. The put off the meeting that was going to be held today. (*)They put the meeting that was going to be held today off. They put it off. *They put off it.

transitive inseparable

lexical verb + preposition ___________OR____________ lexical verb + adverbial particle

Object goes after preposition. _______________________________ A complement must follow particle: usually verb-‐ing but sometimes adjective or prepositional phrase.

look into We'll look into the matter. end up We ended up going home. We ended up happy. We ended up in New York.

three-‐part (transitive inseparable)

lexical verb + adv. part. + prep. Direct object goes after preposition. If there is an indirect object, it goes after adverb particle.

put up with I won't put up with this anymore. talk sb through sth They talked us through the process.

Adapted from Naunton (1989 in Thornbury,2002:123) except where otherwise noted


C.Problems 1. Avoidance/Errors of Register As McCarthy states, "(a)pparent synonyms may often be distinguished on the grounds of register alone" (1992:62). Students often avoid phrasal verbs, preferring their single-‐word counterparts instead. Spanish and Portuguese speakers do this regularly, preferring Latinate verbs due to L1 similarity. Resulting phrases (for instance "I need to investigate" rather than "I need to look into it") sound overly formal or technical. Perhaps more importantly, if students avoid phrasal verbs when speaking, they are unlikely to understand them when listening. Solution 1: Give students a listening task of spoken conversation (ideally authentic) with phrasal verbs blanked out. Students listen and fill in gaps, then match the verbs to their meanings. Evaluation 1: Allen reminds us to value "creating a sense of need for a word" (1983:90 in McCarthy,1992:87). This exercise elucidates the gap in students' knowledge, creating a need. An authentic text would be particularly convincing for students who need to use English in L1 environments. Drawbacks include that it could be demotivating for students who have low listening comprehension skills or phrasal verb knowledge to begin with. Solution 2: Use exercises in which students need to make formal texts more informal. See Appendix C. Evaluation 2: This type of exercise should be effective for Spanish and Portuguese speakers because it raises their awareness of and gets them to address a common error, while avoiding the potential embarrassment of calling out specific own errors. This specific exercise is probably too high for the lowest levels, but can be adapted accordingly. It may be less effective for multilingual groups where some students do not speak Romance languages, because the errors are not as relevant and the Latinate verbs could be blocking. 2. Opaqueness of Meaning As discussed above, phrasal verbs often do not reflect the meaning of their lexical verbs. Traditional approaches sometimes group them by lexical verb regardless -‐-‐ see Appendix D. Resources like this lead students to confuse similar looking verbs with unrelated meanings -‐-‐ as I found to happen with intermediate Japanese one-‐to-‐one students. Solution 1: Teach phrasal verbs in groups by particle where the particle carries similar meaning, as in Appendix E.


Evaluation 1: This is useful for more literal/physical phrasal verbs like those in Appendix E. The visuals are fun and useful ways to convey meaning. This solution, however, is limited to those verbs where such patterns can be easily drawn. Solution 2: Present phrasal verbs in a context and group them by semantic field or topic, as in Appendix F. Evaluation 2: This type of exercise of is effective at conveying meaning because (1) it provides a context (getting up in the morning), (2) it presents the phrasal verbs in example sentences, and (3) it includes pictures to aid understanding. It also lets students personalize the language, making it more memorable. Solution 3: Relate phrasal verbs to their single-‐word counterparts. Students play the memory game pelmanism, as suggested in Thornbury (2002:124). Evaluation 3: This is a fun way to build students' memory and associations between English words. Latinate counterparts quickly get meaning across to Spanish and Portuguese speakers, though teachers need to exclude false cognates. Drawbacks include students equating meaning with the Latinate word. For this reason, words should first be introduced in context (as in Appendices G/J) and issues of appropriacy clarified. As Thornbury states, "learning the meaning of a word... is a gradual approximation" (2002:84); synonyms are just one way to guide students toward the meaning. 3. Vast Number of Items and Polysemy As discussed in Analysis of Meaning, there is a vast number of combinations between lexical verb and particle(s), some with various meanings. Unfortunately, phrasal verbs are often ignored at lower levels, and students can be demotivated when inundated with them later on (Gairns&Redman, 1986:34). This was the case with my Japanese intermediate students, who had not learned phrasal verbs in school but later needed to them pass proficiency tests. Solution 1: Start by focusing on the most frequent phrasal verbs and their most frequent meanings (only teaching one meaning at a time), starting from the lowest levels, alongside other vocabulary -‐-‐ see Appendix G. Evaluation 1: This is an important solution for lower level learners across contexts. The most common and literal phrasal verbs (get up, throw away, etc.) are necessary for effective basic communication. Also, by teaching them alongside other lexical items, we reduce stigma that they are uniquely difficult. Solution 2: Encourage students to use applications like that in Appendix H, outside of class to expand their knowledge of phrasal verbs.


Evaluation 2: This can be a fun way for self-‐motivated students to chip away more at the vast number of phrasal verbs. It is also a fun way for students to engage with English if they dislike more traditional homework/self-‐study. Of course, it lacks freer practice, but the memorability of the visuals and gameplay make up for this at least in part. 4. Excessive Focus on Form Because of their syntactic complexity, phrasal verbs are often given a heavy grammar focus. Traditional approaches often present new phrasal verbs by type, giving information about meaning almost as an afterthought. In my experience, most students struggle and are demotivated when my lessons fail to adequately clarify meaning before analyzing grammar. Solution 1: Take a lexical approach: Lewis supports the decentralization of the role of grammar teaching and explicit structural analysis (2002:3-‐5). Instead, teach phrasal verbs in chunks (e.g. wake up late, turn the TV off. Students experiment with changing the words (e.g. wake up early, turn the radio off). Evaluation 1: In Experimental Practice, my pre-‐intermediate Argentinian students responded well to learning chunks, believing them to be memorable and practical. This approach can help students use phrasal verbs more fluently and decode them more easily when heard in common patterns. A drawback is that some students prefer explicit grammatical analysis; teachers need to be aware of and respond to students' learning preferences. Solution 2: Teach phrasal verbs as lexical items grounded clearly in texts and contexts -‐-‐ see Appendix I. Evaluation 2: This exercise is strong because it has a clear context and focuses on meaning before addressing form -‐-‐ when students must implicitly analyze examples in the text to inform their answers in Exercise 2. This particular exercise is too advanced for lower level learners, and it is restricted to intransitive phrasal verbs, but it can be adapted as needed 5. Listening Comprehension This is important because of phrasal verbs are common in speech. Features of connected speech such as catenation, elision, and weak forms may prevent students from successful decoding. Lower level Spanish speaking students have told me they cannot understand short words all run together, as in fill them in (/ˌfɪləˈmɪn/) or pick it up (/ˌpɪkəɾˈʌʔ/). Solution: Do exercises that raise learners' awareness of, and practice decoding, connected speech with phrasal verbs -‐-‐ see Appendix J.


Evaluation: This exercise is good because it illustrates a need and provides an opportunity to raise awareness. An exercise like this would be good for lower level learners because it offers scaffolding (the blanks) and contextual clues (the first sentences). However it is quite inauthentic; it could be adapted into a conversation instead, making it a continuous text while providing more natural context clues for the blanks. D.Conclusion This assignment was very useful to me; I increased my knowledge of key issues with understanding, teaching, and learning phrasal verbs. I also explored useful methods to assist teaching and learning -‐-‐ from awareness raising activities, to effective ways of grouping phrasal verbs, to ways of conveying and practicing them. I look forward to putting these methods and knowledge to use to help my current and future students master phrasal verbs.


E. Bibliography Books and Scholarly Articles Gairns, R; and Redman, S: Working With Words: A Guide to Teaching and Learning Vocabulary

(Cambridge University Press) 1986. Gardner, D; and Davies, M: Pointing Out Frequent Phrasal Verbs: A Corpus-‐Based Analysis

(Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, Inc.) TESOL Quarterly, Vol 41, No. 2 (Jun., 2007) pp339-‐359.

Garnier, M; Schmitt, N: The PHaVE List: A pedagogical list of phrasal verbs and their most frequent meaning senses (Language Teaching Research) Vol 19(6) (2015) pp645-‐666.

Lewis, Michael: The Lexical Approach (Thomson Heinle) 2002. McCarthy, Michael: Vocabulary (Oxford University Press) 1992. McCarthy, M; O'Keefe, A; and Walsh, S: Vocabulary Matrix (Heinle Cengage Learning) 2010. Oxford Phrasal Verbs Dictionary for Learners of English (Oxford University Press) 2001. Thornbury, Scott: How to Teach Vocabulary (Pearson Longman) 2002. Willis, Dave: Rules, Patterns, and Words: Grammar and Lexis in English Language teaching

(Cambridge Language Teaching Library) 2003. Websites British Council. 2006. "Catenation." Retrieved Feb 25, 2018 from the World Wide Web

https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/catenation Teaching and Learning Resources Gairns, R; and Redman, S: Oxford Word Skills Basic (Oxford University Press) 2008. Murphy, Raymond: Essential Grammar in use (Cambridge University Press) 2007. Oxenden, C; Latham-‐Koenig, C; and Seligson, Paul: American English File Student Book 2 (Oxford

University Press) 2008. Oxenden, C; Latham-‐Koenig, C; and Seligson, Paul: American English File Student Book 3 (Oxford

University Press) 2008. Redman, Stuart: English Vocabulary in use (Cambridge University Press) 1997. Shovel, Martin: Making Sense of Phrasal Verbs (Prentice Hall International) 1992.


F. Appendices Appendix A: Excerpt from The PHaVE List -‐Common Phrasal Verbs Meanings by Frequency (%)

(Garnier and Schmitt, 2015:658)


Appendix B: Example Utterances Annotated for Key Issues of Pronunciation

Adapted from Oxford Phrasal Verbs Dictionary (2001:378-‐379)


Appendix C: Exercise to Practice Changing Register

(Redman, 1997:39) Procedure: 1. Set the context, perhaps telling students that the texts in the exercise were spoken in conversation by students, but they are too formal/technical sounding for spoken conversation. 2. Make it obvious to students, through eliciting and/or dramatic readings and/or doing an example together, that the use of single-‐word Latinate verbs makes the utterances sound odd. 3. Invite the students to comment on what is the effect on the reader when we use words of a higher (or lower) register than appropriate for the context. 4. Students complete the exercise, compare with a partner, and check whole-‐class. 5. Follow up by having students write a fourth example for another student to correct. Appendix D: Excerpt from Table of Contents from Making Sense of Phrasal Verbs

(Shovel, 1992:3) -‐ I have underlined instances where phrasal verbs are grouped by lexical verb.


Appendix E: Grouping Phrasal Verbs by the Meaning of their Particles

(Murphy,2007:238)


Appendix F: Teaching Phrasal Verbs in a Context / By Semantic Field

(Oxenden, Student Book 2, 2008:92) Appendix G: Example of Teaching Phrasal Verbs Alongside Other Vocabulary

(Gairns&Redman, 2008:78)


Appendix H: Example Pages from Phrasal Nerds Smartphone Game

Explanation: The player needs to help Alex the otter build a rocket ship to the moon. To collect the parts, they must study and text themselves on phrasal verbs, each question helping Alex get closer to the prize. (Fernandez, 2015:Level 1)


Appendix I: Teaching Phrasal Verbs in a Text

(Naunton, 1989 in Thornbury, 2002: 126)


Appendix J: Activating Awareness of Connected Speech with Phrasal Verbs

(Oxenden, Student Book 3, 2008:110) Answers: 1. Pick it up. 2. Turn it off. 3. Pick it up. 4. Take it off. 5. Turn it up. 6. Give it up. Procedure: 1. After teaching a set of phrasal verbs including the relevant ones, complete exercise d. 2. Encourage students to check with a partner, considering what answer makes the most sense. 3. Provide answers and play the recording again or model the utterances asking students to tell you how the words sound. Highlight aspects of connected speech (elision, catenation, weak forms) on the board. 4. Ideally, follow up with a listening text that includes phrasal verbs, with detail questions that require an understanding of the phrasal verbs.

new ar629 006 soule external lsa4 be all vertical · 2020. 2. 17. ·...

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