Luận Văn A study on techniques to improve learning phrasal verbs for the first year English major students of

Khóa luận tốt nghiệp năm 2012
Đề tài: A study on techniques to improve learning phrasal verbs for the first year English major students of HPU


TABLE OF CONTENT
Acknowledgement
PART A : INTRODUCTION .1
1. Rationale .1
2. Aims of the study .2
3. Scope of the study 3
4. Methods of the study 3
5. Design of the study 4
PART B: DEVELOPMENT 5
CHAPTER I: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND: OVERVIEW OF
PHRASAL VERBS .5
I.1 Presentation 5
I.1.1 The importance of Phrasal Verb . .6
I.1.2 Definition of Phrasal Verb . . .8
I.2 Types of Phrasal Verbs . .9
I.2.1 Prepositional Verbs . 9
I.2.2 Phrasal verbs .12
I.2.2.1 Intransitive – Phrasal Verb . 14
I.2.2.2 Transitive- Phrasal Verb 14
a. Non- Separable Transitive 14
b. Obligatorily Separable Transitive . .14
I.2.2.3 Phrasal – Prepositional Verb .15
I.3 Comparison among Phrasal verbs . 15
I.4 Common mistakes 18
CHAPTER II: STUDY ON LEARNING AND TEACHING
PHRASAL VERBS FOR THE FIRST YEAR ENGLISH MAJOR
STUDENTSS OF HPU
II.1 SET OF THE STUDY .20
II.1.1 Purpose 20
II.1.2 Design .20
II.1.3 Methodology 21
II.2 DATA ANALYSIS .21
II.2.1Students‟ viewpoint on Phrasal Verbs 21
II.2.2Students‟ frequency of using Phrasal verbs in oral
conversations. . 22
II.2.3 Students‟ frequency of learning and practicing Phrasal verbs out of
classes 23
II.2.4 Why are students embarrassed with using Phrasal verbs for
communications 24
II.2.5 Method teachers use to present Phrasal verbs
25
II.2.6 Methods students use to learn and practice Phrasal verbs out o f
classes 26
II.2.7 Obstacle in learning Phrasal verbs . 27
II.2.8 Student‟ knowledge on Phrasal verbs .28
II.3 Discussions and findings 30
CHAPTER III : SUGGESTED METHODS AND TECHNIQUES
FOR STUDENTSS TO IMPROVING LEARN PHRASL VERB
III.1. Suggestions for students to make Phrasal verbs easier to learn 31
III.2. Tips for making Phrasal verbs easier to learn 42
III.3 Tips students‟ should avoid when learning Phrasal verbs .44
III.4 Recommendations for teachers 45
PART C: CONCLUSION 46
1. Conclusion .46
2. Reference .48
3. Appendix 49


PART I: INTRODUCTION
1. RATIONALE
English nowadays is considered to be a “dominant language” because of its
widespread influence in the world, both in developed countries and gradually
common in the rest areas. It is highly essential to know the language for
communication. Wherever you live and work, English has become an
essential requirement for anyone to communicate with others and get a good
job. Today the economical, political, military and commercial relations
among the countries in the world have greatly increased and become more
important. For these relations to be carried out, the subject of learning and
teaching language has gained great importance. Teaching and learning
English are very important and necessary because in the computer age,
English is the only language that anyone uses to catch with the change of
technology. That is reason why people currently get more interest in learning
English, the parents even if facilitate their children to contact with English at
the small age
Learning English is a long and troublesome process. The students must get
equally all the four basic skills: speaking, listening, writing and reading. To
acquire all skills the learners must have one thing that can be said to be the
basis of language: vocabulary.
It wouldn‟t be wrong to say that vocabulary is one of the most important
components of the language. One of the main component to make up the
vocabulary is Phrasal Verbs which pose a number of confusion and
difficulties during learning English
“Phrasal Verb” – a very important and the most difficult aspect for learners of
English language as a second of foreign language. Phrasal verbs are widely
used by native speakers of English. But they have been found to be difficult
for the second language learners to master. In addition, Phrasal verbs have
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been the source of frustration for learners of English. Many students complain
about the difficulties encountered when they have using the phrasal verbs
The subject of how to learn Phrasal Verbs is still quite controversial. There is
no specified way or a programmed manner in which a student can learn all the
phrasal verbs, as well as nouns, adjectives, idioms Because Phrasal verbs
have figurative meanings, when one of the components that form a Phrasal
Verb changes, most of the time, the meaning also changes. The learner find
difficult to use them properly. Thus students need to be encouraged to learn
them well. From where I stand, I realize that the first year major English
students of HPU as well as other Vietnamese students have a lot of difficulties
in learning and practicing Phrasal v erbs. They often fall into confusion when
translating and using Phrasal verbs because of lacking of professional
knowledge and the appropriate learning methods
Due to the above, I have come up with an idea of making an investigation into
these difficulties and recommending more supplementary techniques to
improve the current situation. Hopefully, the study, named “ A study on the
techniques to improve leaning phrasal verbs for the first major English
students of HPU‟‟, may be of some use to those who have faced difficulties
and boredom of learning phrasal verbs to get more effective results in the
near future.
2. AIM OF THE STUDY
The experimental study on Phrasal Verbs aims to figure out an basic
knowledge on Phrasal Verbs and other matters relating area. In detail, my
Graduation paper aims at:
 Collecting and presenting background overview of Phrasal Verbs
 Studying on learning Phrasal verb of the first year English major of
HPU and finding out the encountered difficulties in learning Phrasal verbs
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 Another goal of this study is to suggest some more effective and
appropriate techniques for the first English major students to minimize
boredom and be more passionate with Phrasal Verbs
The most challenging part of a language for the second language learners, as
it is not the mother tongue. The learners really get tired of learning Phrasal
Verbs. I wish my research paper would have been a source of useful and
practical reference material on Phrasal Verbs to help the first year English
major students at Hai Phong Private University minimize tediousness and
difficulties and get higher results in their learning.
3. SCOPE OF THE STUDY
Phrasal Verbs are generally thought to be one of the difficult items for
learners of, English which would require a great amount of time a nd effort to
do research. Besides there is also a abundant material resource on phrasal
verbs. However, due to the narrow scope, the study mainly focuses on
learning condition, and effective techniques in limiting existing difficulties in
learning phrasal verbs. And the major subjects that the study mainly aims at
are the first English major students of HPU
4. METHODS
To catch all above aims of the study completely, the following steps are
employed in my studying process:
 Researching and collecting materials from reference books, internet,
researcher‟s experiences
 Interviewing and conducting the survey questionnaires for the first
major English students at Hai Phong Private University with determination to
discover their learning attitude and the difficulties have existed up to now.
 Basing on personal experiences gained when I was the first major
students, too
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5. DESIGN OF THE STUDY
It is very easy for the readers to get a clear overview of the research paper
through a table of contents inserted pages number. I t also helps the readers to
access to the part they need more easily and quickly. This paper consists of
three parts:
o Part I : The Introduction includes: Rationale , Aim, Scope, Design,
And Methodology Of The Study
o Part II: The Development are three chapters:
 Chapter 1: is the presentation of Background Theory Which Provides
Readers The Basic Knowledge Of “ Phrasal Verbs”
 Chapter 2: consists of
o Set of the survey questionnaire - gives the situation analysis, subjects,
and data collection instrument
o Data Analysis- show the detailed results of survey and make a
comprehensive analysis on the collected data
o Findings and discussions
 Chapter 3: gives suggested methods and techniques for the first year
English major students of HPU to learn phrasal verbs effectively
Part III: The Conclusion presents an overview of the study, suggestions for
further research and limitations of the study


PART II: DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER I: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND:
OVERVIEW OF PHRASAL VERBS
1. Presentation
In our time, one of the most challenging subjects in learning English is
learning the new vocabulary, and one of the most difficult parts of the new
vocabulary is Phrasal verbs
Phrasal verbs consist of two or three words, which are verbs and adverbs or
preposition. Phrasal verbs sometime have meanings easily guesses such as
“sit down” meaning be seated. However, in daily life, they have really
different meaning from the verb forming the phrasal verb such as “make out”
to understand something or draw a plan. The reason is that some phrasal
verbs have an idiomatic meaning which is usually defined as the fact that
“The meaning of the complex unit doesn‟t not result from the simple
combination of those of its constituents”
( Arnaud & Savigon, 1997, p.161)
English learners significantly preferred one- word expressions to phrasal
verbs, while English native speaker did not. This is not surprising since
learning Phrasal Verbs are more complex than learning single words because
of their idiomatic meaning.
We can find that learners chose fewer figurative phrasal verbs than literal
phrasal verbs on a multiple- choice test because of the semantic difficulties of
figurative phrasal verbs.
In conclusion, the idiomatic phrasal verbs might be h arder to learn than
transparent phrasal verb. Therefore, it is necessary for us to spend more time
on investigating the phrasal verbs and reviewing the learning current methods
for phrasal verb
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2. The Reasons of Learning Phrasal Verbs
Making students learn the terms with phrasal verbs is a continuous challenge.
The fact of the matter is that phrasal verbs are just rather difficult to learn.
Schneider (2004; 229) states that particle verbs have a specially historical and
sociolinguistic status in English. However, the English learners cannot ignore
Phrasal Verbs because “the importance of multiword expression to g ain
fluency in language learning has been asserted by many researchers” (Wood,
2004, Folse, 2002).
Firstly, Phrasal verbs are becoming increasingly prominent with the
increasing influence of the English language. They are very important for
learners because they are so prevalent in everyday spoken and informal
written language In order to understand, speak, read and write correct
English, it is important to learn phrasal verbs. Currently there are over 5,000
phrasal verbs, many of which are everywhere in the written (songs, article,
essays, stories, tests .) and spoken forms. Thus, Phrasal verbs are very
common and are really good way to make your sound more natural and
friendly when speaking informal English. It is compulsory to master phrasal
verbs to improve your speaking competence. Not only do learners need to
understand the more common phrasal verbs, but they will also need to use
them as native speakers
Of course it won‟t do you any harm if you know the formal synonyms of
those phrasal verbs but why try to sound very smart and use them when
chatting with friends and word colleagues? Just listen to some native English