luận văn the use of phrasal verbs in academic writing by english majored students at thu dau mot university

The researchquestions addressed are: 1 What are the types of phrasal verbs used inacademic writing by English majored students at Thu Dau Mot university?. The findings revealthat the mos

INTRODUCTION

Background of the study

English is an international language used to present scientific research at conferences around the world However, using English fluently is a challenge for people from non-English speaking countries, including Vietnam and other countries around the world To write a scientific article in English, English as Second Language (ESL) learners must spend a lot of time learning and looking up how to use unknown phrases (Vu and Burns, 2014).

Along with the continuous development of society in science, technology,and education in the era of national industrialization and modernization,English plays an increasingly important role; it is a tool to help learners learn human knowledge, and a communication tool in an open, integrated country situation (Nguyen, 2011) Because of its importance, it is essential to learn and improve the quality of English in schools Therefore, to learn English well,students need to practice all skills: Listening, Speaking, Reading, Writing andGrammar Teaching grammar has always been focused on teaching foreign languages in Vietnam In addition, there are many grammar points that are quite difficult for students especially verbs (phrasal verbs), especially in the given context of academicwritings Memorizing and using fairly proficient verbs seems to be very difficult thing for learners However, if a student learns the grammar in general and the verb phrase well, the language they use will become natural and the student's English level will also improve Phrasal verbs are widely uby the native speakers of English in oral and written communication.According to Bolton (2012; as cited in Mahmoud Abdulmoneim, 2015: 263) states that most native English speakers often use one or more phrasal verbs in their daily life It can be said that most of the sentences, paragraphs, novels, films, speech in English use phrasal verbs It means as the learner of English, the students could not ignore the use of phrasal verbs in their daily life.

There are many different perspectives on phrasal verbs As stated by Mahmoud Abdulmoneim (2015, pg.35): “phrasal verb is a combination of two or three words functioning as a unit of meaning Realizing these difficulties, in Bera (2017), researchers in Italy launched the Lugdwig language search tool to help people write correct English sentences by finding similar patterns in Articles published on famous news sites such as New York Time, BBC, and so on However, this tool only supports writing in ordinary English, and is limited to scientific and academic research fields In addition, author Yu-Chih Sun atNational Chiao Tung University, Taiwan has built a website application to support writing scientific articles and looking up useful phrasal verbs However,the author's method uses hand-drawn phrases, namely, assigned by students to read and select useful phrases in the article, then experienced teachers will check if the phrase is a useful phrase in the article or not (Liu et al, 2011).FLOW (Chen et al, 2012) is a writing support system that directs user interaction to suggest phrases used in drafting scientific articles for Chinese people The distinctive feature of the system is that it helps users to complete articles without being interrupted by words that they do not know in English.For Vietnamese language today, there is a website "www.hellochao.com" that supports English learners, when the user queries Vietnamese keywords, the application will search in the built-in database is available to provide completeEnglish sentences that are commonly used for everyday communication The website's database system has about 300,000 pairs of bilingual Vietnamese-English sentences, English sentences translated into Vietnamese sentences suitable to the context and culture Therefore, the practice of using phrasal verbs is promoted in the context of academic writing to prove for the efficiency of the language and professional writing skills of writers.

The statement of the problem

Academic writing plays a crucial role in higher education, particularly in the context of Thu Dau Mot University in Vietnam, where students are expected to produce high-quality academic papers, including scientific research and theses However, many English learners, including English majored students at Thu Dau Mot University, struggle with using phrasal verbs in their writing, which can result in imprecise language and lower grades This is partly due to the fact that many ESL course teachers do not teach common English phrases, which are essential for academic writing and conversation.

Writing academic essays at Thu Dau Mot University level can present a variety of challenges for students One major obstacle is the need to demonstrate a high level of contextual understanding, meaning the ability to clearly and accurately convey the relevant information and concepts related to the topic being discussed This requires students to conduct thorough research, critically evaluate sources, and synthesize information effectively Another challenge is maintaining coherence and cohesion in the essay This involves ensuring that ideas flow logically and that there is a clear and consistent connection between paragraphs and sections Additionally, students must strive to produce high- quality essays that meet the standards of academic writing, including clear and concise language, appropriate use of evidence, and correct formatting and citation practices Overall, these challenges require a combination of strong writing skills, effective time management, and dedication to producing high- quality work.

Purpose of the study

Vocabulary used in academic writing is one of critical issues for English majored students at Thu Dau Mot University, especially with the use of phrasal verb It is trivial to enrich their language to be more acquainted with English academic writing At the same time, it is grasping the use of native English speakers using phrasal verb and meanings.

Therefore, the objectives of this research are identified:

(1) To examine the types and functions of phrasal verbs used in academic writing by English majored students at Thu Dau Mot university;(2) To get insights into the reasons for the use of phrasal verbs in academic writing by English majored students at Thu Dau Mot university.

Research questions

This study is designed to examine the utilization of phrasal verbs in academic writing by English majored students at Thu Dau Mot university. Accordingly, this study addresses the following research questions:

(1) What are the types of phrasal verbs used in academic writing by English majored students at Thu Dau Mot university?

(2) What are the functions of phrasal verbs in academic writing by English majored students at Thu Dau Mot university?

(3) What are the underlying reasons for the use of phrasal verbs in academic writing by English majored students at Thu Dau Mot university?

Scope of the study

The study is designed to examine the use or frequencies of phrasal verbs in grammatical and functional classifications in academic writing by English majored students at Thu Dau Mot University In addition, the functions of phrasal verbs are explored in the process of data analysis from the conducted survey Finally, underlying reasons in the usage and function of phrasal verbs in academic writing are explored The limit of the research is that the number of samples is reduced in minimum quantities in accordance with the degree of the dissertation of Bachelor of Arts Hopefully, a substantial number of studies on phrasal verb in academic writing will be soon conducted to fill up this gap in the linguistic field, especially for English majored students at Thu Dau Mot university.

The participants of this research are 50 English majored students from Thu Dau Mot university Data are gathered through small group interviews and 50 academic writing used to build the corpus with total of 150 writing at average of 250 words in length The findings would shed light on the types and functions of phrasal verbs and more significantly on the reasons’ learners use phrasal verbs in academic writing.

Significance of the study

On completion, the study is hoped to provide an insight into the effects of using phrasal verbs techniques on EFL university students’ interest and acquirements in their academic writing application.

This study is emphasizing on the theoretical support of phrasal verb in respect to the styles and functions of academic writings for multiple diverse groups of users One of the key applications is the typical and common use of phrasal verbs in academic writing sentences and styles Communicators or writers will apply a new smooth method for listeners or readers to get transmitted information with a little requirement of cognitive activities The study shows that there is a considerable importance in usage of phrasal verbs for ESL learners in academic writing For a practical perspective, the findings can help writers compare and emphasize on different semantic and syntactic functions of phrasal verbs In addition, the study may help ESL learners to identify the similarities and differences in academic use, as well as showing the possibility of effective applications of phrasal verbs in the linguistics fields in Viet Nam.

The result of this research is supporting English majored students at the university in Viet Nam in respect to their practical use of phrasal verb in academic writing It is not about how to use the phrasal verbs, but it is more about the practical lessons on what type of words and functions are commonly use in serving the best interest of the academic writers in Vietnam.

Definition of key terms

It has been obvious in the above of the introduction section that the research will be implemented to find out the use of phrasal verbs, and their functions in academic writing Therefore, some key terms in this study are defined as follows:

Academic writing: is a type of writing used at the higher education level (from University level and above) and used in research and academic fields. The writer uses this scholarly style to convey and explain complex research issues or topics to many readers The information must be presented in a clear and easy-to-understand way so that both inside and outside the area of expertise covered in the article or journal can receive it (Zemach, and Rumisek, 2016).

English as a Foreign Language: abbreviation as EFL (English as a ForeignLanguage), means teaching English to people who do not speak English.Around the world today, English has become the primary language of communication, engineering science, political economy - and everything from folklore-modern to international tourism to education, and publishing About two-thirds of scientists read the guide in English and three-quarters of the world communicates via this language (Maxom, 2012).

Phrasal verbs: Phrasal verb is a combination of a verb and a particle The particle, particle (s), can be an adv, or a preposition, or both (Hornby, 1995).

Organization of the study

This study is composed of five chapters.

Chapter 1provides the introduction, which includes the rationale, the aim and research questions, the significance, definitions of terminology, the theoretical framework, and the organization of the study.

Chapter 2 presents the literature review of this study, which includes the definitions of phrasal verbs in English, the functions of phrasal verbs in academic writing, and the previous research of those fields both domestically and internationally.

Chapter 3 describes the methodology, which consists of the research setting, materials, research design, research tools, data collection and data analysis procedures, and ethical consideration.

Chapter 4provides the data analysis and discussion of the findings.

Chapter 5 deals with the conclusions, recommendations for the use of phrasal verbs with in respect to the academic writing in English by university students (EFL learners), the limitations of the study, and some suggestions for further research concerning to this field.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Introduction

There are many grammar points that are quite difficult for students, especially phrasal verbs (White, 2012) Memorizing and quite proficiently using phrasal verbs seems to be an exceedingly difficult thing for learners. However, if students learn well in general grammar as well as phrasal verbs, the language they use will become natural and their English level will also be improved, students will have many choices use a variety of words and expressions Using phrasal verbs can improve students' style in speaking and writing English (Liu, and Myers, 2020) Therefore, this chapter of literature review is the definitions of phrasal verbs in linguistic field as well as the characteristics of academic writing The next part is followed by the overviews of the literature review and the third section of this chapter will be discussed about some previous studies on phrasal verbs both in international and domestic research articles The conceptual framework is the part which presents how the study will be conducted.

In addition, ESL students sometimes learn and memorize a large number of common and complex English words in order to make clear, effective comprehensive English statements Instead, they can easily learn such phrases to convey their meanings shorter and better In this way, they continue their English speaking skills and their audience will follow and understand them better The use of common English phrases makes speech or text more vivid, tangible, engaging and detailed Learning these phrases helpsESL students quickly visualize and imagine the figurative meanings these phrases contain It also helps students make deep connections with English writing or speaking.

There are many definitions of verb phrases According to Alexander Longman noted by Side (1990), one of the outstanding features of verbs in English is that it can be combined with prepositions and nouns Broadly speaking people call this association the phrasal verbs Meanwhile, Hornby (1995)'s definition says that phrasal verbs (also called verbs of more than one word: multi-word verbs) are verbs consisting of two or three words One of the words must be a verb and it is followed by an adverb or a preposition or both. According to Randolph Quirk and Sidney Greenbaun (1973), at University Grammar of English-Longman Group UK Limited, the definition of verb phrases is used a lot as that a phrasal verb is a verb with two elements, the main verb and a sub-verb that follows it All the below examples are collected from various sources of LOI English (2021), and 7ESL (2021).

Verbs in English are one of the indispensable features in the grammar and vocabulary of the English language It is difficult to learn and understand a simple verb (single-word verb), but it is not easy to learn and use a phrasal verb (more than one single-word verb or phrasal verb) In recent years, with the innovation of teaching methods and the new form of exams in English in the graduation and university exams, the use of phrasal verbs in exams is increasing and the level of difficulty also gradually increased Phrasal verbs become a difficult topic for university students In the teaching process, phrasal verbs have been introduced from the middle school program and continue to develop in the university program One of the most difficult aspects of learning a verb phrase is that the same phrasal verb but with different contexts has different meanings (Quirk, & Greenbaun, 1973).

Verbs are one of the basic words in all languages and the most complex and widely used words in the word system of languages Linguist Palmer (2014) said that verbs as well as phrasal verbs are central to the structure of a sentence, no parsing can be carried out without carefully studying this issue To investigate the word order of the elements in the structure of English verb phrases and compare it with the word order in the structure of Vietnamese verb phrases, it is first necessary to establish a general understanding of the concept of "verb phrase".

In the metamorphic languages with English as the typical representative, verbs are recognized by their specific affixes and by their ability to deform according to person, time, form, and mode (Fang, Lamme, and Pringle, 2010). English is an agglutinative language with transformations, and the sentence structure in English is completely opposite to that of Vietnamese Verbs in English are recognized by their ability to inflection according to person, time, and consciousness, but especially thanks to their position always at the end of their sentences In non-transforming languages represented by Vietnamese, the criterion for verb recognition is the ability to center a type of main-sub-phrase called a verb phrase (Nguyen & Pearl, 2018).

Usually, students learning a foreign language will find some grammatical structures relatively easy to grasp and some extremely difficult in their learning process Structures that are familiar and like students' mother tongue are easily absorbed by students, while structures that do not exist or are similar to their mother tongue make it difficult for students to remember and grasp catch And phrasal verbs in English are considered as one of the structures that cause many difficulties for students in their English learning process.

There are many reasons why students find phrasal verbs in English a difficult grammar point (González, 2010).

First, phrase verbs only exist in English, not in Vietnamese.

Second, a phrasal verb can have many meanings, and its meaning is sometimes not the combination of the meaning of the stem verb and the particle. Example in the sentence "Both teachers and students must put up with many problems" The meaning of the stem verb "put" and the particle "up", "with" stops as if it has nothing to do with the meaning of the verb phrase "to endure, to face".

E.g.: Do you like to warm up? (LOI English, 2021)

E.g.: She has just turned the radio off (LOI English, 2021)

As mentioned above, a verb phrase consists of a single word verb with a particle and can be an adverb or a preposition or both.

- V + adv + preposition: look up to

The following phrasal verbs examples are to see its complexity:

E.g.: The alarm goes off at 4:30 = rings (ring, ring) (7ESL, 2021)

E.g.: The bomb went off with a loud bang which could be heard all over the town (7ESL, 2021) = exploded

E.g.: Suddenly the lights went off (7ESL, 2021) = stopped (shut down, stop working)

E.g.: This milk has gone off (7ESL, 2021) = soured (sour, spoiled food)

The second reason is the degree of use of verbs in everyday life A phrasal verb is a special kind of verb, meaning it includes more than one single verb(multi-word verbs) Phrases are quite common in English, especially the everyday language of native speakers Phrasal verbs are often used in informal English so that the speaker can express their feelings and emotion.

E.g.: Her mother passed away yesterday (LOI English, 2021) (Her mother passed away yesterday)

Instead:Her mother died yesterday(LOI English, 2021) (Her mother died yesterday)

Verbs in phrasal verbs are single-word verbs.

Verbs to form verb phrases can beintransitive verb orTransitive verb

E.g.: She brought up her children to be truthful (LOI English, 2021). (Transitive verb)

E.g., LOI English (2021), and 7ESL (2021): I can’t carry on alone any longer I’ll have to get help(LOI English, 2021).(Intransitive verb)

According to The Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (2021):

“Particle is a minor part of speech, especially a short word that doesn’t change its form” The particle in this subject is a special adverb called "adverbial particle" Adverbial particles function as an adverb and complement the verb with which they accompany (Alexiadou, 1997).

Adverbial particles are meant to expand the impact of verbs.

E.g.: My car was broken down (7ESL, 2021)

An adverb is a very wide set of words that can describe how, where, or when an action takes place They can also express the person's point of view about the action, the intensity of the adjective or another adverb, or some other function (Hummel, 2014) In short, the adverbial particle is a type of adverb that is used after a verb to indicate position, direction, or motion, etc. b Functions of adverbial particles

Adverbial particles have a function that gives verbs new meaning when combined with single verbs In other words, in respect to the functions of adverbial particles in phrasal verbs mean to create new meaning of the verbs (Darwin, and Gray, 1999).

E.g.: My parents bring me up well (7ESL, 2021) (means: educate)

Some adverbial particles change the meaning of the verb compared to the base verb However, they do not change the normal meaning of verbs In this case, the meaning of this combination is predictable (Darwin, and Gray, 1999). E.g.: All the shops have been closed down (7ESL, 2021)

Some adverbial particles emphasize the meaning of accomplishment In other words, the adverbial particles can indicate or add up to the completeness of the use of words (Darwin, and Gray, 1999).

E.g.: She has washed it (7ESL, 2021) (The action of “washing”)

She has washed it down (7ESL, 2021) (The completion of this action)

Some adverbial particles function as prepositions, but when the modifiers of the prepositions are removed, they become adverbs (Darwin, and Gray, 1999).

E.g.: So shy was he, he went up (7ESL, 2021) (the stair)

E.g.: The dog run across (7ESL, 2021) (the door)

Characteristics of academic writing

Academic Writing is a type of writing that is being used increasingly popularly, catching many areas of life, or from students' dissertations to papers published in newspapers of specialized researchers Academic writing helps writers deepen, contribute to the development of the field they pursue, as well as improve their expertise and critical thinking It is so important, but nowadays, there are still some misunderstandings about this genre (Zemach, and Rumisek, 2016).

In the age of knowledge economy, people increasingly realize the importance of universities in promoting economic growth and social development Many emerging countries have great plans and ambitions to build for themselves top universities that can rival the academic monuments of the world such as Harvard or Cambridge In the movement towards long academic traditions in the West for experiential learning, it is recognized that the core values of the college spirit, which are seen as the foundation of academic excellence Western arts, such as scientific culture and academic freedom, are concepts that are quite far from the cultural context and traditions deeply rooted in East Asian societies (Horowitz, 1986) This question has become increasingly acute in the face of plagiarism, fraud, and corruption in academia and in education, which are becoming a pervasive practice and devastating their spiritual foundations and prices value of the university The goal of higher education reform is therefore inseparable from the consideration of scientific culture and the nurturing of those values in universities This comes to be basic or the ground of the requirements and characteristics of academic writing at universities.

According to Dill (1982), academic institutions should be seen as the units whose essence is the values on which it is based, a strong cultural foundation that can be described as a system Confidence and epistemology in the newcomers' academic culture guide, the National University of Singapore writes that a university is a scientific community whose purpose and mission are gather and promote, improve knowledge First year students are new to this community, the success depends partly on how well students adapt to that culture, you absorb all the values and standards how it is, how well students are mastered in implementing those values and standards In the next, academic writing requires for outlines the practices and explains the valuable foundation behind these agreed practices: punctuality, language style of communication, proper dress, usage of academic function to call professors, how to quote references, understand plagiarism and punishment, etc This understanding of the "academic culture" is quite broad and seems to include the concept of

"university's culture" in it (Oshima, and Hogue, 2007).

Then, Swales, and Feak (1994) state that academic culture or scientific culture can be generally understood as the written or unwritten rules for the correct behavior in scientific activities, including research, teaching, and learning These laws are quite general but essential to maintain the quality of scientific evidence and ideas and to create a healthy mental environment for scientific activity Science culture can also be understood as norms for the behavior, practices, and expectations of how the scientific community behaves while interacting with each other Obviously, behind these laws or conventions is a system of beliefs and values Therefore, the scientific culture is influenced by the national culture, and more or less has distinct characteristics in different societies (Hyland, 2004).

Many people believe that when writing scholarly articles, writers of academic papers are theoretical articles that express scientific research results after researching academic issues in a certain scientific field The language of academic papers is genuine, which shows that in order to achieve the fundamental purpose of writing, academic papers can only rely on language for presentation Language not only provides effective tools for people's different types of thinking and writing activities, but also provides an effective way for the communication of thinking and writing results Language also acts as a transformation tool in academic papers The mechanism says that 'transformation' is the key to moving from thought to language expression.

The basis of transformation is syntactic rules Without this transformation, thinking cannot be expressed in language (Ferris, 1999) In terms of vocabulary, many writers prefer to use exaggerated beautiful words If the writer overuses complex structures and vocabulary, the academic writing can become confusing and obscure At that time, the ultimate purpose of scholarly writing and articles in general to convey information was not achieved In order to show the authenticity of academic papers in language, the "authenticity" must be as high as possible Academic papers must not only show the truth without ambiguity, but also show the truth precisely, and in the choice of words, it is necessary to choose the "one" that can best reflect the true meaning and essence of things and phenomena Adding a word is too long, and deleting a word is too short (Ädel, and Erman, 2012).

Hence, Biber, and Gray (2010) bring to the main reason for this view which is that many people believe that the complexity of academic writing is directly proportional to the writer's education level By definition, scholarly writing is a way of writing to convey complex content with high and rigorous standards on layout, style, and vocabulary This leads many to think that the more complex academic writing is, the more valuable it is In other words,common, popular words or simple grammatical constructs reflect the writer's limited level of education However, they omitted an important part of the definition of scholarly writing It is scholarly writing aimed at a broad audience,including those who are both specialized and non-subjective Therefore, the style of scholarly writing is formal, but the main message of the essay must be presented clearly and easily to understand so that it is accessible to all readers of various levels (Qin, 2014) To overcome this problem, the writer needs to choose words based on the suitability of words with the context of the article and choose the sentence structure based on the content that the writer wants to emphasize In addition, need to distinguish technical term nouns (technical term) and jargon (Granger, Paquot, & Rayson, 2006).

In academic writing, Alsagoafi (2013) indicates that solemnity or formality is a necessity for two main reasons Firstly, this is the factor that creates the authenticity of the article and the reader's trust in the author The subject matter of academic writing is often highly academic and topical.Therefore, an informal style will be difficult to convince readers because right from the forms related to standard writing rules, and the writer has not done.Second, solemnity also helps the writer to convey information clearly,accurately, and easy to understand There are many informal expressions to be understood in a figurative sense, some even possessing many layers of meanings Readers may become confused when reading these phrases, or they may not even know what those expressions mean Therefore, maintaining a formal tone will reduce the likelihood of the facts in the written text being misunderstood.

Types of phrasal verbs

In language, each unit is the sum of its relationships with other units. According to American linguist Bloomfield (1926), a sentence is an independent form of language, not included by any grammatical construction in a larger linguistic form The sentence is the largest unit of grammatical description The sentence, in terms of structure, is the largest range of legitimate grammatical relationships All possible grammatical relations exist only within the sentence In words or documents consisting of two or more sentences, there can be many relationships between one sentence and another in terms of subject matter and meaning, but there cannot be grammatical relationships Many linguists, when studying grammatical relations, also think that it is the linear relationship between words that create word combinations or the relationship between elements of phrases and relationships between sentence components. The relationship between the affixes and the elements is the relation of dharma words within a word Even in an English word, a main substructure appears, consisting of an element as the main component combined with affixes or particles as auxiliary components And in the main auxiliary phrase with the verb as the main element (verb), we again see the main - auxiliary structure that divides the verb phrase into two distinct components, which are the preceding auxiliary and the main part (the verb) stand behind Therefore, when analyzing the composition of English verb phrases, two structural classes will be encountered One is the structure of the verb phrase, including the preceding auxiliary and the central element (Pullum, 1991) In which, the auxiliary element precedes the verb as the central element Second, the structure of each element in the verb phrase also includes the main element before and the subordinate element after (Greenbaum, & Nelson, 2002).

Because particles as well as prefixes are based on prepositional based on relations, the question arises whether in the case of a phrasal verb the prepositional relation in an equivalent way to the verb meaning is integrated. The point that matters most to me here is to show that argument inheritance in the form illustrated above for separable phrasal verbs is not characteristic The prepositional in the case of the phrasal verbs, meaning is not in the two-digit incorporated form that is typical of prefix verbs, but in 'intransitive' (or 'adverbial') form In particular, it comes with phrasal verbs characteristically not to an argument inheritance as in the sentence, where the complement of the preposition is the direct object of the basic verb displaced This is made possible by the phrasal verbs in clarified.

They are also known as syntactic relations or syntactic relations and are considered to include three types: isometric relations, principal-subordinate relations, and subject-subject relations All the below examples are collected from diverse sources of LOI English (2021), and 7ESL (2021).

Divided into two groups, depending on the position of the object:

- Group 1: can be between the verb and "particle" or go after "particle":

E.g.:I took my shoes off / I took off my shoes(LOI English, 2021) (I take off my shoes.)

E.g.: He admitted he'd made up the whole thing/ He admitted he'd made the whole thing up (LOI English, 2021) (He confessed that he made up everything).

- Group 2: But when the object is words like this, that, it, them, me, her and him, they will be in the middle of verbs and particles:

E.g.: I took them off (LOI English, 2021) (Not I took off them.)

E.g.: He admitted he'd made it up (LOI English, 2021) (Not He admitted he'd made up it.)

For intransitive phrasal verb, there is no object - verbs with the same particle (usually adverbs) always go together:

E.g.:When she was having dinner, the fire broke out (LOI English, 2021).

(She was having dinner when a fire broke out).

E.g.: Our car broke down and had to be towed to a garage(LOI English,2021) (Our car broke down and had to be towed to a repair shop).

However, there are many phrasal verbs that can be either transitive or intransitive The context will tell us the functions along with their meanings:

E.g.:The plane took off at seven o'clock, (intransitive) (7ESL (2021)(The plane took off at 7 o'clock).

E.g.: The man took off the shoes and came into the room, (transitive)(7ESL (2021)(The man takes off his shoes and enters the room).

There is only one object:

+ If the object is a noun, the verb phrase can be separated.

E.g.: She takes off her shirt.(7ESL (2021)

She takes her shirt off.(7ESL (2021)

+ If the object is a pronoun, this verb phrase is inseparable.

E.g.: I tried on them (I tried them on).(7ESL (2021)

Cannot be separated into “I tried them on”.

+ If two objects appear: this verb phrase must be separated.

E.g.: He put a case on the pillow.(7ESL (2021)

Can't put "He put on a case the pillow" sentence.

Given in a sentence that one or two of these objects or types of objects are nouns or pronouns, the phrasal verbs that follow it are inseparable.

E.g.: Jay mentions me that I will not back out of the deal.(7ESL (2021)

E.g.: Maybe I come up with some new creative pranks?(7ESL (2021)

Functions of phrasal verbs

2.5.1 Semantic functions of phrasal verbs

According to Brady (1991), the results of frequency counting, and analyzing of magnetic functions show that these items play a significant role in the technical manual This role is not a "pragmatic sign of official term" as confirmed to phrasal verbs in less exact discourse contexts Analysis of the level of shadow of this study shows that most items consisting of two words in the technical manual, unlike common texts, are non-figurative and neutral in forms. Therefore, in the technical manuals, the role of two-way items is almost semantic: they provide additional orientation and / or accuracy However, between the two sub-categories of the technical manual, the ratio of verbs compared to their vocabulary varies means, with the predominant phrasal verbs in the "Lay 'manual! And the vocabulary that appears more frequently in the

If we think of transformation as a process, then multiple meanings are the result, the product of that process of phrasal verbs In Vietnam, polysemy is described theoretically in several lexical works of Nguyen Van Tu (2014), Alves, M J (2005) However, dealing with a multi-sense phenomenon in reality poses many dilemmas and lacks consensus among researchers This situation is also not incredibly positive for foreign researchers. a Idiomatic meanings

The meaning of the phrasal verb cannot be understood by understanding the meaning of the verb and the separate particle In other words, the basic meaning of a verb completely changes when combined with a particle (Rushdi-Saleh et al., 2011) As a result, a new verb is formed with a completely new meaning.

E.g.: Police arelooking intothe case (to look into=to investigate)(7ESL

E.g.: I ran intomy teacher at the movies yesterday (to run into=to meet)

In these cases, the phrasal verb needs to be learned and practiced regularly. Besides, some verb phrases have many different meanings depending on different contexts (Side, 1990). b Non-idiomatic meanings

The phrasal verb is predictable based on the basic lexical meaning and the particle (Cappelle, Shtyrov, and Pulvermüller, 2010).

E.g.: He blewme a kiss when hewent out.(7ESL (2021)

To go: means to move from one place to another place (meaning: to go) Out: means away from the inside of a place (meaning: to leave)

Sometimes the meaning of some verb phrases is the same as that of the original verb Sub-words only add small meanings to the verb phrase, and to emphasize the verb (Darwin, and Gray, 1999).

2.5.2 Syntactic functions of phrasal verbs

Depending on the presence of phrasal verbs, the usage of the affixes and modifiers surrounding the verb center will also change The double structure of the phrasal verb center is a feature that exists in most languages of the world.Parallel existence of phrasal verbs, in which the preceding verb denotes state(modus) and the verb after the dictum shows that it is impossible to define the secondary main relationship between the verbs and the particles And therefore,this case cannot consider one verb to be a precursor or a posterior to the other words As for the verb center part, when recognizing the relational nature in the syntactic grammar, other than the fixed language or conjugate language, as the secondary main relationship, with the modal-dynamic verb center cluster from the action state without primary and secondary binding Then it must consider this whole verb phrase as the central part with the verb However, this central part does not always appear in its full form It should be noted that when standing independently with the presence of the verb, it must be accompanied by the particle, and some modal verbs such as "put" often cannot stand alone but must exist thanks to the double structure of the phrasal verb, that is to be accompanied by the adverbial particles (Dirven, 2001).

The use of phrasal verbs in academic writing

Stemming from the perception that there is a connection between syntax and semantics, authors such as Fortescue (2010), Goddard (2009), Brems, L. (2010) argue that different syntactic frames (Goddard), different syntactic behavior (syntactic behavior, Fortescue), different textures (construction by Goldberg) or different combinations (combinaterics, Evan and Winlkins) are often the basis for separating polysemy The problem is, all dictionary compilations are based on the grammatical model to separate multiple meanings, but the number of meanings for each case of multiple meanings is still not the same In fact, if students absolutize this criterion, they will not be able to deal with the cases where the polysemy is noticeably clear but share the same grammatical form For example, the phrasal verb see in English is used in two different meanings (1: meet up/meet with, visit to/visit with and 2: consult with/ask about expertise) but they have the same grammatical framework This once again shows that the problem of polysemy has never reached a consensus among researchers The theory of multiple meanings is not yet unified, so the practice of dealing with multiple meanings will inevitably face difficulties and confusion Therefore, in terms of method, writers choose the flexible approach of Traugott (1989) that is acknowledging the role of the syntactic framework as a basis for separating polysemy This concept is defined to be that different structures often go accompanied by different semantic interpretations, but this does not mean that there is only one meaning for each grammatical form This is the basis for us to describe the transformation of the perceptive verb into the domain of the perceptive phrasal verb as well as when considering think as a polysemy.

Highly academic with the goal of providing information and facts that are important to the reader, academic writing places great emphasis on formal style. According to the Cambridge dictionary, formality is the quality of being suitable for serious or official occasions, translated that conformity to serious contexts Thus, it can be simply understood that the solemnity in scholarly articles is a serious style, suitable for the high academic requirements of the article This factor requires writers to comply with standard English writing rules, while maintaining a neutral voice as possible on the topic being discussed. However, formalism does not mean having to use high-level vocabulary or writing long complex sentences Instead, expressions of solemnity in scholarly literature can be encapsulated in three keywords: clear, concise, and objective (Alsagoafi, 2013).

The difficulty in writing academic English as a native is the ambition of all English learners However, to achieve this, it is extremely important for Vietnamese students to understand the similarities and differences in expressions between written or spoken common and academic written English.

In fact, the expression in Vietnamese students' writing is often influenced by the expression of spoken literature Distinguishing these similarities and differences is difficult but can be done by comparing the distinctive features of expressions in common or spoken literature and scholarly literature based on linguistic facts English language of native speakers, from which the typical features of the academic English written language are drawn Learners can use these features to change and improve their writing to meet the international standards of academic English Through this research, the aim is for readers to note the difference between the English expressions in oral and common writing so that they can find out how to learn to write academic English more effectively.

In academic writing, the verb is especially important because it shows the reader how the research is "done." Essay writing is nothing but documenting the process of “doing” research Precise use of verbs is the key to describing research accurately (Trebits, 2009).

In English, actions can be expressed with either verbs or verb phrases Verb phrases are common in everyday life because they are more colloquial Verb phrases are usually composed of two or more words, which can leave the speaker more time to think when they are expressed Verb phrases have adverbs or prepositions, or both, in addition to the main verb After the combination, the meaning of the verb phrase may be very different from the original meaning of the main verb Also, different prepositions can make verb phrases mean completely different things For example, the verb look means

"to see" the action; look into means "to examine", and look down upon means

"to look down upon." It can be seen that the use of verb phrases can be flexible and changeable, which is convenient for daily life (Alsagoafi, 2013).

In academic writing, verb phrases are less formal This is mainly because phrasal verbs often have multiple meanings and are not concise enough To distinguish between formal and informal expressions just pay attention to the following two points First, formal expressions are usually made with exact and specific words with unique meanings Second, formal expressions, especially in scientific research, are usually more concise than informal ones Obviously,verbose expressions will reduce the efficiency of information transmission(Alsagoafi, 2013) Verbs are especially important in academic writing because they show readers how research is "done." Writing a dissertation is simply documenting the "doing" of the research process Accurate use of verbs is the key to accurately describing research.

In English, the expression of an action can be a verb or a verb phrase Verb phrases are common in everyday life because they are more colloquial Verb phrases usually consist of two or more words, which give the speaker more time to think In addition to the main verb, a verb phrase can also contain adverbs or prepositions, or both When combined, the verb phrase can mean very different from the original main verb Also, different prepositions can make verb phrases mean completely different things For example, the verb look means the action of "look"; "to look" means "to look back," and "to look down on" means "to look down upon." It can be seen that verb phrases are flexible and convenient to use in daily life.

Reasons for using phrasal verbs

Phrasal verbs are one of the most frequent multi-word units in English language Phrasal verbs play a particularly important role in everyday communication Accordingly, instead of just using learned words to speak or write, they often replace them with phrasal verbs with similar meanings It is very normal for native speakers to use phrasal verbs because they are familiar with and understand the meaning of those multi-word units (Trebits, 2009).However, for learners of English as a second language, contacting and learning these phrasal verbs is often difficult because of the substantial number of words and sometimes also misleading because it is not always meaningful and expressive verb phrases are the same as the original meaning of the verb.Furthermore, a word can have multiple meanings when it is combined with different words For example: get away (leave, escape, etc.), call off (cancel,same as cancel), have a good relationship with (get along with someone)(Gardner and Davies, 2007).

The study conducted by Gardner and Davies (2007) indicate that phrasal verbs are “very common and highly productive in the English language as a whole” (p 340) In fact, with a small percentage of English verbs is making up over half the phrasal verbs in the whole language They also estimate that

“learners will encounter, on average, one [phrasal verb construction] in every

150 words of English they are exposed to” (p 347) Due to this reason, the ratio of using phrasal verbs in English sentence simply increases with conversational genres and registers, in both oral and written format As ESL learners desire to become competent and proficient in English, phrasal verbs are an essential construction to master (Larsen-Freeman, 2002).

With the use of phrasal verbs, students can use a variety of expressions to express their desires with their diverse linguistic knowledge For example, it can be said that (LOI English, 2021; and 7ESL (2021):

E.g.: He made up this story (He made this up) or He made this story up.

But it cannot be used: He made up it.

E.g.: We always respect our teachers (We always respect our teachers)

Student can use the verb look up to = respect

E.g.: We always look up to our teachers.

Phrasal verbs are phrases consisting of two or three words, including a main verb, followed by prepositions Since so many verbs are used with metaphorical meanings, remembering them is often a challenging task for non- native learners Using these phrases in academic writing can make their reading interrupted, confusing for readers In addition, verbs are often used in more informal contexts Therefore, a formal academic essay will not normally use verbs However, it should be noted that there are certain exceptions, such as

"carry out" or "account for".

Students write different contents, in communication situations, with different socio-cultural contexts as well as with different attitudes, but the common point of utterances is that we often have attitudes and feelings for the facts we express and elicit similar ideas and attitudes in our readers However, our choice of linguistic forms in immediate or prepared utterances sometimes goes against our wishes and what we intend to prepare for ourselves and our interlocutors Not only that, for the utterance, in addition to the requirement of semantic quantity, but the amount of information as also mentioned, the writer always inserts the above expressions as "residuals" (redundancy, Fetzer & Johansson, 2010) This part is thought to be redundant but not redundant because they have positive value, as push and barrier signals to perform the function of organizing, interacting with the conversation, directing listeners to the conversation, community conversation, etc Units are considered as

“residuals” or “push signals” which we call pragmatic markers This is why the precise selection and non-polysemy choice of phrasal verb in academic writing is very critical.

Previous studies

Many researchers have performed studies and literature reviews on phrasal verbs Zubir, Ghazali, & Ridzuan (2011) conducted a study at a high school in Malaysia exploring the two choices of students between phrasal verb and single-word choice in academic writing The study had total of 40 students participating with the age of above 16 The quantitative method is used in the study with the support of survey and questionnaires The results show that students have preferences to use both phrasal verb and single word in academic writing However, students also indicate that they often avoid the use of unfamiliar phrasal verbs as well as polysemy phrasal verbs.

At the same time, study by Jahedi, & Mukundan, (2015) focuses on the analysis of phrasal verbs used by Chinese students concerning different levels of language skills from intermediate levels to advanced levels This study is focusing on the syntactic functions of phrasal verb of being less figurative and literal in comparison to the single-word choice for most students As the result, it shows phrasal verbs is less likely to be preferable by intermediate and advanced Chinese students where they pay more attention to semantic nature of phrasal verbs However, the raising question on the result of this study is on the size of the experiment.

Trebits (2009) implements a scientific study to figure out the most frequent use phrasal verb in academic writing The study is using European Union document for the examination where around 20,000 words are tested in the corpus of EU English This quantitative method is aiming to scrutinize the most common use phrasal verbs in academic and professional writing The result shows the most 25 common uses which occurred in the corpus of EU union document This study has not drawn the necessary conclusion over the offered functionalities of phrasal verbs in regard to its academic usages.

Tran, Huynh and Duong (2015) examined the teaching and using of phrasal verbs with the use of conceptual metaphor at Tra Vinh University The participants were all first-year students with major in English where they were divided into two experiment group One group experienced with the conceptual metaphor, and the other group experience with the traditional method As the result, it is affirmed that the conceptual metaphor is being more effective to teach phrasal verbs in academic context in comparison to the use of traditional method However, this study has not drawn the attention toward the functionality of semantic and syntactic aspects of phrasal verbs in regard to the context of academic writing.

Tran and Tran (2019) conduct a study focusing on the use of phrasal verbs in academic writing by ESL/EFL students The study was examining 19 different writings among Vietnamese B.A students 19 different proposals are including five themes of “Descriptive essay, Argumentative essay, Linguistics, Literature, and Narrative essay” (pg 3) The results indicate students to have more tentative attempt to avoid the use of phrasal verb in their academic writing where they often did not use the most 100 common phrasal verbs listed in BNC by Gardner and Davies (2007) At the same time, students in this study tend to use different subcategories in respect to both semantic functions and syntactic functions At the same time, transitive and inseparable phrasal verbs are more commonly referable in students’ proposal with semi-idiomatic and fully idiomatic meanings.

This paper can generally reflect the content of the article in general and plays a vital role in academic papers With the increasing globalization of scientific research, the international scientific exchange activities are becoming more and more frequent, and the academic journals that play a leading role in the exchange activities are also more standardized More and more domestic publications are accompanied by English titles and abstracts Therefore, the English writing of academic papers is becoming more and more important The focus on the analysis of corpus of English essay by Vietnamese students under the L2 point of view has not been considered in a lot of previous papers This paper is also showing that regarding the English essay writing of international students, if they can use various vocabulary proficiently, then the language of the essay will be more concise and concise, and it can better express the views of the students Next, the editor will explain to you the use of verbs in English essay writing.

Conceptual framework

A conceptual framework of a study is a structure which is used to help researcher to explain the natural progression of the phenomenon to be studied (Wighting et al., 2015) In addition, it presents an integrated way of looking at a problem under study (Gessler, & Siemer, 2020) and describes the relationship between the main concepts of a study Based on above reasons, it is essential to develop a conceptual framework for the present study The conceptual framework for this study is proposed as follows.

Semantic functions of phrasal verb

Idiomatic meanings Non-idiomatic meanings

Ghi thêm các loại của Semantic functions of phrasal verb vào đây va

Syntactic functions of phrasal verbs Saleh, (2011)

Underlying reasons for usage of phrasal verbs in academic writing The importance of Phrasal verbs in written composition The dominance of Phrasal verbs is predominant in written English (Farsani, Moinzadeh, & Tavakoli, 2012)

English Phrasal verbs – Definition Alangari, Jaworska, & Laws,

Because of the purpose of the research to identify the frequency, functions,similarities, and differences of phrasal verbs in academic writing, these combinations of different taxonomies of phrasal verbs from many previous researchers may meet the demand of the present research Therefore, this framework is conducting from the theoretical views of functions of phrasal verbs to analyze the use in academic writing.

METHODOLOGY

Research design

This study employed qualitative and quantitative methods to analyze the use of phrasal verbs in academic writing produced by English-majored students at Thu Dau Mot university The former is for analyzing the frequency of phrasal verbs, while the latter is for scrutinizing the functions of the examined phrasal verbs by English majored students and investigate the reasons underlying the use of phrasal verbs in academic writing.

In the qualitative research is about to examine individual cases in detail and to analyze interpretative Open questions are often dealt with here (Pietkiewicz, & Smith, 2014) Quantitative research, on the other hand, aims to collect as many results as possible in order to evaluate them statistically In quantitative research methods, closed and multiple-choice questions are often used (Queirós, Faria, & Almeida, 2017) In qualitative research, only a few non- representative cases are used as samples to build initial understanding In contrast, quantitative research considers enough representative cases to recommend eventual action Qualitative methods, on the other hand, never work without empiricism (even pure scientific theory in the form of the signifier, i.e., in the form of language, does not really work without empiricism), without the interpretation and comparison of found materials (Kranzbühler et al, 2018).

Qualitative research is a type of research that provides insight and understanding of the problem setting It is an unstructured exploratory research method used to study highly complex phenomena that cannot be elucidated by quantitative research Nonetheless, it provides ideas or hypotheses for future quantitative research Qualitative research is used to gain insight into human behavior, experience, attitudes, intentions and motivations based on observation and interpretation to find out how people think and feel This is a form of research in which the researcher puts more weight on the participant's perspective Case studies, grounded theory, ethnography, history and phenomenology are types of qualitative research (Caoili et al, 2007).

Quantitative research is a form of research that relies on the methods of the natural sciences, producing numerical data and hard facts It aims to establish a causal relationship between two variables by using mathematical,computational and statistical methods This study can also be called an empirical study because it can be accurately measured (Maxwell, 2004) Data collected by researchers can be grouped into categories or arranged in rank, and can also be measured in units of measurement Graphs and tables of raw data can be constructed with the help of quantitative studies, making it easier for researchers to analyze the results (Hosking, 1990).

Research site

Thu Dau Mot University is honored to be a member of the world CDIO organization (since 2015); As an associate member of the Association of Southeast Asian Universities – AUN (since 2017) In November 2017, the school achieved the National Education Accreditation Standard In October

2019, the school conducted an assessment outside of the training program according to the accreditation standards of the Ministry of Education andTraining, the results by April 2021 the school had 11 qualified majors InDecember 2019, the school assessed that in addition to 4 training programs according to AUN-QA standards, the results met 4 disciplines (Thu DauUniversity, 2021).

The teaching method at Thu Dau University present innovative and methodically well thought-out teaching They contain assignments for students, describe teaching processes and student activities, and make suggestions as to how the results of student work can be presented There are a variety of worksheets and materials that you can use directly in the classroom.

In 2015, Thu Dau University launched the second round of college English teaching reform The course developers split the college English writing course into Practical English Expression and Academic English Literacy "Practical English Expression" focuses on descriptive writing, narrative writing and practical writing, while "Academic English Reading and Writing" focuses on expository writing, argumentative writing and summary writing, emphasizing students' output based on the input of a large number of excellent articles. Vietnamese and foreign teachers jointly teach.

There are 4 writing courses focusing on English writing at Thu Dau University:

- Reading and writing strategies – 3 credits

- Essential reading and writing– 3 credits

- Academic reading and writing – 3 credits

- Critical reading and writing – 3 credits

Each issue contains up-to-date, non-didactic material Copy templates with excerpts from novels, short stories, factual texts, comics, pictures, etc are ready-made for direct use in the classroom People can receive audio texts,video clips, songs, radio programs, radio plays, etc for certain issues on CD orDVD.

Innovating teaching methods and introducing new technical methods by Thu Dau University into lessons are the concerns of the education industry in general and of each teacher in particular Currently, many teachers have made great efforts to innovate teaching methods When using this new activity in teaching Phrasal verbs, the author finds that it has brought positive effects in teaching English, the learning atmosphere is vibrant, students actively acquire knowledge, and positive development other necessary skills for academic writing at Thu Dau Mot University.

However, at the current stage, there are still some limitations on the teaching and learning of phrasal verbs at the university, as follows:

- Starting from students: Students' vocabulary is not much In addition, students are not yet able to guess the meaning of words when words are put together Moreover, because the consciousness of some students is not high, self-study or using some secrets to memorize phrasal verbs has not been done.

- In addition, because teachers do not have many opportunities to participate in training sessions on learning innovative topics on teaching methods, so opportunities to approach and apply new techniques and methods in teaching learning is still limited If the teacher innovates, it is also the teacher's own research The resources provided for teachers are not abundant:picture dictionaries, while teaching method books are limited in number.

Research participants

Fifty English majored students from Thu Dau Mot university were conveniently sampled The reason for selecting English-majored students is to ensure that all the participants had a moderately high level of English proficiency based on results of their B.A entrance exams (English language proficiency tests) Furthermore, the corpus consisting of academic writing of

English-majored students in English Applied Linguistics show the relatively equal level of the use of English among English-majored students Furthermore, the choice of academic writing of Bachelor of Arts was to ensure that the writing styles is of academic writing as Hillard and Harris (2003) indicate that

“Academic writing names the kind of intellectual prose students are expected to produce as undergraduates: writing that takes a sustained interest in an issue under consideration and gathers much of its evidence from a careful reading of sources” (p.17) All information about participants is encrypted and maintained to be confidential including their names, ages, and contact information There were 20 students who were invited for interview based on their willingness.

The lack and weakness of teachers, outdated programs and textbooks, and students' lack of practical conditions are the problems that show the weakness of teaching and learning English today Students have to take extra lessons in outside centers to listen, talk more, and play more fun games At school, teachers only focus on grammar, vocabulary and written exams Students almost do not practice listening, speaking, or discussing Students do not have the conditions to practice skills such as listening and speaking because there is no practice room The knowledge in the textbook is old, not edited The curriculum is too heavy on grammar, turning them into a "walking grammar book" With such learning conditions, even language major students have difficulty with listening and pronunciation It is admitted that the students of this faculty are mainly language majors, with very good English entrance exam scores high However, the listening and speaking skills of many freshmen are still poor It is the same style of teaching English in Vietnamese, learning does not go hand in hand with onions, many students humorously say to each other that "studying" a foreign language from grade 11, graduating from university is very good at Vietnamese when speaking English A notable fact is that the form of examination and examination is based only on reading and writing.

Research instruments

Once the essay has been compiled and the formatting has been corrected, the actual analysis follows There are of coursse a wide range of options and for complex questions, standard analyzes which can at most be part of the entire method This method of corpus analysis is used to address the first and second research question.

Corpus linguistics takes corpus as the research object Such corpora must use electronic computers as carriers to store language materials These language materials stored in electronic computers have actually appeared in the actual use of language Therefore, they can faithfully reflect language phenomena and overcome the observation of linguists Due to the subjectivity and one- sidedness of language phenomena, such unprocessed corpus is already very useful for linguistic research; and these real language materials need to be analyzed, processed and processed before they can become more useful language resources Therefore, both unprocessed "raw corpus" or processed

"familiar corpus" are very valuable.

This corpus-based research mainly concentrates on investigating the use of phrasal verbs in 150 different academic essays Moreover, the study is an attempt to find out the functions of the phrasal verbs used in 150 academic essays in terms of syntax and semantics With respect to the syntax functions, the functions of phrasal verbs are explored in terms of the transitivity, intransitivity, separability and inseparability Concerning semantics, non- idiomatic, semi-idiomatic and fully idiomatic meanings of phrasal verbs are focused.

According to Wahab et al (2016), “individuals can complete them without any direct assistance or intervention from the researchers” To focus on answering the third research question: What are the underlying reasons for the use of phrasal verbs in academic writing by English majored students at Thu Dau Mot university? Interview was employed The interview consists of 7 closed questions which were designed based on the theoretical framework (Appendix A).

The interview can give in-depth explanation and details about experience with the new learning methods to the researcher.

Data collection procedure

The collection of corpuses followed the rules:

- The students had completed all of the compulsory subjects in the English-majored courses before writing essays

- The academic essays must be written by English-majored students

- Each essay must contain at least 150 words.

Through the support of the department, the research can collect the writing directly from the database source of the university for the period from 1st June

2020 to 30th December 2020 These database source include all exercise and test writing essay from selected course of Academic Reading and Writing at the university.

This phase of the study aimed at answering the second research question.Twenty students were invited for interviews which were conducted inVietnamese to make sure that students did not have any difficulties in responding the interview questions Each interview lasted 30 minutes All the interviews were recorded with interviewees’ permission for later analysis.

Data analysis procedure

The analysis tool uses AntConc, the basic principle of which is to compare the words in a certain text with a certain vocabulary, by observing which words appear or do not appear in the vocabulary and the words that appear in the vocabulary ratio, researchers can know the wording situation of the text (Anthony, 2004).

AntConc conducts research on lexical features such as word frequency, word chunks, subject words, and part-of-speech distribution AntConc has a number of lexical analysis functions such as new word vocabulary, word block, extraction of subject words and index, and its reliability and validity have been generally recognized by linguistics AntWordProfiler and AntConc are both developed by Professor Antony of Waseda University in Japan, and both are free software.

Akbari (2009) Transparent phrasal verbs send back, sat down, take out

Idiomatic phrasal verbs Carry out, give up, go off

Aspectual phrasal verbs Use up, fill up, play on

Table 3.1 Framework for essay analysis

Generally speaking, the research on the application of corpus focuses on four aspects: vocabulary, syntax, text structure and text type At the lexical level, research is conducted through retrieval to explore the frequency of occurrence of a term, the context in which it appears, and the adjacent collocations From the English corpus, the word frequency table that reflects the actual use of English vocabulary can be retrieved, and the classification information based on a certain syntax, semantics or part of speech in English can also be retrieved Research at the syntactic level refers to the use of quantitative analysis to study the combination patterns of various part-of- speech tags and the use of various sentence patterns in a corpus that has already been grammatically tagged Discourse structure is the linguistic basis for the study of the coherence and cohesion of spoken and written discourses, especially the results of discourse communication The essays were coded as E1, E2 to E100.

The content analysis approach was employed for interview data analysis.

First of all, a transcription is necessary for the evaluation of an interview At the same time, the interviewees were made anonymous There are many evaluation methods with which narrative interviews can be analyzed,such as the evaluation method according to Schütze, which is divided into six work steps: 1 formal text analysis, 2 structural description of the content of the pieces, 3 analytical Abstraction, 4 knowledge analysis, 5 contrastive comparisons of different interview texts, 6 Construction of a theoretical model(cf Küsters, 2009, p.77) Another possibility is the evaluation method according to Rosenthal According to these steps, the result of the interview are analyzed based on the provide context of answers by 20 students All interviewees were coded as S1, S2 to S20.

Validity and reliability

The pilot study was conducted to ensure the intended data was collected and research instrument was valid Ten pieces of essays were chosen for preliminary analysis to make sure that the procedures for data analysis and framework for essay analysis were valid Additionally, the intra-rating was employed to ensure the qualitative data analysis was reliable To put it simply, after one month of the official data analysis, ten pieces of data were randomly chosen for reanalysis The convergent results were set at least 90%.

In this chapter, the writer used qualitative and quantitative method InMethodology chapter, the methods of the study, participants, the description of data collection procedure and instruments as well as data analysis procedures were presented.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Results

4.1.1 Types and frequency of phrasal verbs used in essays by English majored students

As can be seen in Table 4.1, from the analysis of corpus transcript, Descriptive essay accounted for the highest frequency of phrasal verbs with 513 (0.28%), followed by Argumentative essay with 359 occurrences of phrasal verbs (0.24%) and Expository essay with 167 occurrences of phrasal verbs (0.21%) The number of phrasal verbs in Narrative essay was the lowest with

70 (0.21%) Similarly, when it comes to the comparison of the number of phrasal verbs in the 4 categories, Descriptive essay ranked first with 103 phrasal verbs, followed by Argumentative essay (59) and Expository essay (40) The lowest frequency of phrasal verbs was Narrative essay (17) This means that students preferred to use phrasal verbs in the descriptive essays rather than in other types of essays.

Figure 4.1: The number of phrasal verbs from the corpus analysis.

The number of phrasal verbs from the corpus analysis

Descriptive essay Argumentative essay Expository essay Narrative essay

Type Numbers of phrasal verbs

Table 4.1: The number of phrasal verbs from the corpus analysis

Ten most commonly used phrasal verbs were listed as follows As can be seen in Table 4.2, FIND OUT ranked first with 69 times of occurrences, accounting for 17.9 % of phrasal verbs used in 19 writings by Vietnamese English-majored students BASE ON, REFER TO and TURN OUT accounted for 59, 51 and 45 of occurrences, making up to 15.3 %, 13.2% and 11.6 % respectively The next phrasal verbs of the 10 most common phrasal verbs list in the English-majored writings triggered by SET UP and TAKE ON with the same number (34) and percentage (8.8%) CONSIST OF, which accounts for

30 occurrences, signals up to 7.8 % Making up of 5.7 % and 5.4 % respectively, DEPENDING ON and POINT OUT ranked eighth and ninth respectively in the list The least used phrasal verb in the top ten list is CONTRIBUTE TO with

20 occurrences, accounting for only 5.2 % The number of top ten used phrasal verbs was more than half of all phrasal verbs used in English-majored writings,making up of 62.5% In comparison with the most frequent adverbial particles and lexical verbs in phrasal verbs through gathering the data from BNC which were conducted using 100-million-word British National Corpus (BNC) by

Gardner and Davies (2007), the results from this study showed that only 2 phrasal verbs (CARRY OUT and POINT OUT) appeared in the frequency and coverage of top 100 Phrasal Verb Lemmas in BNC by Gardner and Davies (2007).

Table 4.2: Top 10 phrasal verbs in academic writing

When it comes to the comparison of the distribution of phrasal verbs in five major categories, including Methodology, Argumentative essay, Expository essay, Critical essay and Narrative essay, it can be noticed from table 4.2 that the highest distribution of phrasal verbs was in Methodology with

229 times of ten most common phrasal verbs Additionally, the frequency of phrasal verbs distributions in Argumentative essay and Expository essay followed with 72 and 54 respectively The two lowest frequency of phrasal verbs distributions were in Narrative essay and Critical essay with 15 and 7 respectively Furthermore, while some phrasal verbs were in the top list in one category, they seldom appear in the others For example, FIND OUT was the most popular phrasal verb in Methodology; however, in Critical essay English- Majored students did not use it in their writings DEPEND ON only occurred in Methodology and Argumentative essay.

4.1.2 Functions of phrasal verbs used in essays by English majored students

Only CONTRIBUTE TO, which was on the tenth place in the 10 most common phrasal verb list, was distributed in all 5 categories In conclusion, while English-Majored students of this study seemed to utilize phrasal verbs more often in Descriptive essay, they had a tendency to avoid using them in Critical essay and Narrative essay.

Syntax Transitivity Intransitivity Separability Inseparability

Table 4.3: Functions of the phrasal verbs in terms of syntax

As can be seen in Table 4.3, it is noticeable that in terms of syntax, the phrasal verbs function differently in four terms: transitivity, intransitivity, separability and inseparability In terms of transitivity and intransitivity, phrasal verbs seemed to dominate when functioning as transitivity with over 98.4%. Participants avoided using phrasal verbs in intransitivity with only 1.6% For instance, in Argumentative essay, the occurrences of transitive phrasal verbs were more than 354 and 126 respectively while those of intransitive ones were only 4 and 1 Specifically, in Narrative essay and Critical essay they even did not utilize any intransitive phrasal verbs in their writings With respect to the separability and inseparability in phrasal verbs, they expressed strong preference for inseparability with more than 94.9% while separable phrasal verbs were only 5.1%, with 18 and 11 phrasal verbs in Descriptive and Argumentative essay It is evident that the use of inseparable phrasal verbs was

19 times higher than that of separable ones.

As can be drawn from the above table, the transitory phrasal verbs accounted for 57.3%; in the Descriptive and Argumentative essay, this proportion was as high as 82.1% The reasons for this result are: 1) From the classification of phrasal verbs mentioned above, intransitive phrasal verbs are just intransitive verbs + adverbs, so the number of intransitive phrasal verbs itself is less than that of transitive phrasal verbs Transitive phrasal verbs must have objects, and the objects can be nouns, pronouns or clauses, etc Therefore, sentences containing transitive phrasal verbs are slightly more complex in structure and richer in content than sentences containing intransitive phrasal verbs High-level learners prefer to use transitive phrasal verbs to write high- level compositions.

Below are some examples collected from the students essays for analysis. a Transitivity

“It looks like nothing so much as a praying mantis covered in beautiful painted fans As for its behavior, like any good mantis, it is an ambush predator It takes full advantage of its unique appearance, settling amongst the petals of orchids and awaiting visiting insects It favors butterflies and moths for its meals, but will happily take any insect on offer Indeed, it need not even be an insect: particularly voracious orchid mantises have been known to feed on small lizards, frogs, mice and even birds (M1)”.

“First, you have to stand on your own two feet You can hang up your jacket.

As much as our parents love and support us, they can’t go to our school and confess to the principal that we stole a candy bar from Sara We have to do that Neither can they walk into the Condé Nast office and nail a job interview for us At some point, we have to put on our “big girl pants” and be brave, even if we’re not (M5)”.

“Percey Byssche Shelley’s famous sonnet, Ozymandias, was published in 1818, but the themes are still relevant today In the poem, a speaker tells of a ruined statue of a great, forgotten ruler who had the hubris to believe his deeds would make him immortal in the eyes of history Without overtly saying it, the poem asks whether today’s civilization and the deeds of ordinary people will also be forgotten as surely as this ancient emperor Even more than 200 years later, the question is still a haunting and relevant one” (M7). b Intransitivity

“I was looking up when the first clear thunderbolt struck It blazed against the sky and sea; I could see its shape in perfect reverse colors when I blinked More followed The thunder rumbled and stuttered as if it could hardly keep up There were openings in the cloud now, as if the sky were torn, and spots of brilliant blue shone above the shadowed sea” (M7).

Discussion

4.2.1 The use of phrasal verbs used in academic writing by English majored students, including types, frequency and functions.

Finally, the frequencies of phrasal verbs were distinctive in the 5 categories Moreover, participants of this study tended to use more phrasal verbs in Descriptive essay, whose frequency is approximately two-third phrasal verbs of Argumentative essay, ranking second in Table 2 and 23 times higher than Narrative essay and Critical essay.

Phrasal verbs in English usually consist of a main verb plus a preposition or adverb, or a main verb plus a preposition and adverb Phrasal verbs are divided into transitive phrasal verbs and intransitive phrasal verbs Transitive phrasal verbs need to be used with an object, while intransitive phrasal verbs have no object Generally speaking, phrasal verbs with verbs plus adverbs no longer follow the object, and phrasal verbs with verbs plus prepositions need to be followed by an object.

As analyzed above, the structure of an English verb phrase consists of two components, the auxiliary element and the last central element The structure of a Vietnamese verb phrase in its full form always has three components: the preceding sub-element, the central element and the latter sub-element. However, Vietnamese phrasal verbs do not always meet the full form, there are cases where phrasal verbs have only the preceding auxiliary and central element or only the central element and the latter The relationship between the central element and the sub-elements is the main-subordinate relationship In principle,the central element always appears in the verb phrase (except for some exceptions) The emptier the central verb is, the more necessary the auxiliary elements become It is difficult to come up with an ideal phrasal verb structure, which includes almost all auxiliary elements such as nouns, because the auxiliary elements of phrasal verbs are positions of generalization and synthesis The preceding auxiliary elements of phrasal verbs often have a simple appearance, most of which carry a grammatical meaning On the contrary, the following sub-components are often rich, diverse in meaning as well as in organization, with obvious syntactic properties in the combination, making one of the positions of the latter sub-component the position of the latter.

Determining the central verb in a Vietnamese verb phrase is also a problem, because Vietnamese is a morphologically unchanged language The grammatical nature of the central verb subtypes has a far-reaching influence on the reception of auxiliary elements, related to the concept of complements (objects, places, etc.) This sub-element has a categorical value back to the center.

In academic writing, verb phrases are not formal enough This is mainly because phrasal verbs usually have multiple meanings and are not concise enough To distinguish between formal and informal expressions, just pay attention to the following two points First, formal expressions usually use exact and specific words with unique meanings Second, formal expressions, especially in scientific research, are usually more concise than informal ones. Obviously, lengthy expressions will reduce the efficiency of information transmission.

Formal English is mainly used in writing This stylistic format usually has an academic writing tone and is usually found in academic textbooks, university papers, business letters and contracts In terms of oral expression, formal

English is usually only used in official or formal occasions, for example, to formally welcome guests at a university graduation ceremony.

From all the discussions above, there is one conclusion which can be drawn that there is a difference in the use of phrasal verbs in students’ essays by academic writing and non-academic writing English However, this difference is not significant regarding both frequencies and functions of phrasal verbs Besides, academic writing and non-academic writing English students seem to share similar patterns in their use of Phrasal verbs in their essays.This means that both types of writing exhibit similar usage patterns of phrasal verbs.

For instance, let's say that in the academic writing corpus, the researchers found that the most common phrasal verb used was "carry out" which was used mainly to refer to research activities In the non-academic writing corpus, the researchers also found that "carry out" was the most common phrasal verb used, but it was used in a different context, such as to refer to a task or a plan. However, despite these different contexts, the frequency of the use of "carry out" was not significantly different between the two corpora Similarly, the functions of phrasal verbs were found to be similar across the two types of writing.

This result was supported by the claim from the findings of van Lier(2011) He stated that there is a difference in the use of Phrasal verbs between academic writing and non-academic writing, but that difference is not really significant as the use of phrasal verbs is investigated within given context.Taking consideration into the data of this study, it is obvious that “students’ essays” is a given context which she mentioned Besides, it was supported by the previous studies of Tse and Hyland (2008) and Newman et al (2008) who found that the language use of academic writing and non-academic writing are not determined by their characteristics Moreover, from the findings in Results section, there will be few issues that need discussing as follow In academic writing, verbs are particularly important because they show readers how research is “done” Essay writing is nothing more than recording the process of

"doing" research Precise use of verbs is the key to accurately describing research.

In short, regarding the frequencies of phrasal verbs used by Vietnamese students in comparison to results from previous findings, it can be stated that there are some similarities as well as differences The most prominent similarity is the dominant use of elaborative phrasal verbs by academic writing students. Meanwhile, the most considerable difference is the relationship between characteristics and the frequency of phrasal verbs used This research and aforementioned studies of previous researchers were carried out using various sources of data, such as Vietnamese students’ English essays, Iranian EFL learners’ essays, or Indonesian English-majored students’ compositions.

Participants in this study who are all B.A students of English Linguistics seem to avoid using phrasal verbs in their essay writing The results of the study showed that the total number of phrasal verbs used in essay writings was rather low Instead, the students used more one-word verbs, which means they have a tendency to avoid using phrasal verbs in their B.A essay writing Moreover,the academic phrasal verbs used in 150 essay writings were rather low One of the possible explanations is due to the difficulties that they encountered in using phrasal verbs As Folse (2006) indicates that there are two difficulties that non- native students face when using phrasal verbs First, it is not equivalent to know the separating parts of phrasal verbs to comprehend their whole meanings.Thus, students are not very keen on exploring the meanings of the phrasal verbs.Secondly, non-native students are required to understand the meaning of the more frequent phrasal verbs owing to their high level of occurrence.

Therefore, in the same line with Becker (2014) participants with high level of English proficiency also have a tendency to avoid using phrasal verbs As discussed that phrasal verbs play important roles in English teaching and learning acquisition, it is not easy for EFL learners to use and understand English without understanding phrasal verbs In this study, it is found that there is a limited number of academic phrasal verbs used in 150 essay writings It can be concluded that due to the complexity in the semantic and syntactic functions of phrasal verbs, students have a tendency to avoid using phrasal verbs in their essay writing.

4.2.2 The underlying reasons for the use of phrasal verbs in academic writing by English majored students

Almost every scientific researcher cannot do without academic writing in English For non-native English authors, the use of some English phrasal verbs is often difficult There are also some words, due to the similarities in spelling or meaning, they are also prone to confusion when used.

According to lot of studies in academic writing, phrasal verbs should be avoided as much as possible, because they may have different meanings in different contexts and are not concise enough Here we introduce some common phrasal verbs related to academic writing, please use them with caution. However, the use of phrasal verbs are still popular with students due to the following underlying reasons:

(1) Easy structure and syntactic functions to use in writing

(2) Easier to understand the context

(3) More interesting word choice in the essay

In English, the expression of actions can be either verbs or verb phrases.Verb phrase is very common in daily life because it is more colloquial Verb phrases usually consist of two or more words, which can give the speaker more time to think when expressed In addition to the main verb, verb phrases may also contain adverbs or prepositions, or both After the combination, the meaning of the verb phrase may be far from the original meaning of the main verb Moreover, different prepositions can also make the meaning of the verb phrase completely different For example, the verb look means "look"; look into means "review” and look down upon means "look down" It can be seen that verb phrases can be used flexibly, which is convenient for daily life.

CONCLUSION

Summary of the main findings of the thesis

The results of the study have shown that participants in this study seem to avoid using phrasal verbs in their B.A English essays It is noticeable that they do not use common phrasal verbs in the top 100 common phrasal verbs list. Moreover, the distributions of the top ten common phrasal verbs used in five categories including Descriptive essay, Argumentative essay, Expository essay, and Narrative essay are not equal B.A students seem to utilize more phrasal verbs in Descriptive essay and less phrasal verbs in Expository essay, and Narrative essay In terms of syntax, Vietnamese B.A students have a tendency to use more transitive and inseparable phrasal verbs in their English essays. With respect to semantics, they tend to use semi-idiomatic and fully-idiomatic meanings rather than nonidiomatic ones.

Native English speakers often use common English phrases in their conversations, although some of them don't even know the origins of these phrases Learning common English phrases plays an effective role in basic areas of English Therefore, complete mastery of English is impossible without teaching English phrases that are common in ESL classes Furthermore, lack of knowledge of common English phrases constantly creates confusion, ambiguity and misunderstanding in ESL students' use of English in real situations.Additionally, ESL students should be able to distinguish the uses and broad meanings of these phrases Otherwise, they won't have any trouble using the second language For example, if an ESL student fails to distinguish the negative connotation of the phrase "to kick the bucket" and uses it in a formal setting, he will sound very rude and offensive Therefore, students should learn another common English phrase or idiom such as "pass away" in formal situations.

Participants in this study who are all B.A students of English Applied Linguistics seem to avoid using phrasal verbs in their English essays The results of the study showed that the total number of phrasal verbs used in English essays was rather low Instead, the students used more one-word verbs, which means they have a tendency to avoid using phrasal verbs in their B.A. English essays Moreover, the academic phrasal verbs used in 150 English essays were rather low One of the possible explanations is due to the difficulties that they encountered in using phrasal verbs.

The results of the study have shown that participants of this study seem to avoid using phrasal verbs in the B.A English essay They prefer to use one- word verbs in their English essay Such finding is in line with the findings of some previous studies conducted by Dagut and Laufer (1985); Hulstijn and Marchena (1989); Laufer and Eliasson (1993), all of whose research showed that students seemed to avoid using phrasal verbs, instead they preferred to use one-word equivalents Furthermore, in the top ten commonly used phrasal verbs in B.A students’English essay, only two of which appeared in the top 100 Common Phrasal Verbs in BNC by Gardner and Davies (2007) In the top least common phrasal verbs used in B.A English essay, there appeared only 6 phrasal verbs listed in the top 100 Phrasal Verb Lemmas in BNC by Gardner and Davies (2007) Moreover, the findings of the study were different from that of Tran & Tran (2019) While the students in Malaysia preferred both using phrasal verbs and one-word counterparts and avoided unfamiliar phrasal verbs,B.A students in Vietnam appeared to concentrate more on using one-word verbs and used some unfamiliar phrasal verbs in writing their English essay In comparison with Jahedi, & Mukundan’s research (2015), both Vietnamese andChinese advanced learners expressed not much preference in using phrasal verbs Moreover, whereas Chinese learners drew their attention of semantic functions of phrasal verbs into translation, Vietnamese students’attention was different as they used various type of semantic nature of phrasal verbs in TESOL Methodology (Chen, 2013 and Hasher et al., 1985).

As discussed that phrasal verbs play important roles in English teaching and learning acquisition, it is not easy for EFL learners to use and understand English without understanding phrasal verbs In this study, it is found that there is a limited number of academic phrasal verbs used in 150 English essays It can be concluded that due to the complexity in the semantic and syntactic functions of phrasal verbs, students have a tendency to avoid using phrasal verbs in their English essays.

Although many researchers such as Chen (2013) and Hasher et al (1985) agree that phrasal verbs play an important role in linguistics, students seem to avoid using them regularly It is hoped that the findings of this study may partly contribute to enhancing Vietnamese students’ using more phrasal verbs in their writing.

Implications

Overall, the results of this study showed that the frequencies of phrasal verbs and their functions may not be influenced by the gender factor Besides, English majored students seemed to share similar patterns in the use of Phrasal verbs in their essays In addition, due to the context of use, some Phrasal verbs can serve more than one function Furthermore, Vietnamese students preferred developing their essays by adding details, instances, and explanations as well as providing contrastive ideas rather than offering causal relationships On the basics of these findings, some implications may be suggested for VietnameseEFL teachers, learners, and students.

Culture shapes a language It is an important element to well represent historical and social changes and events High cultural knowledge enhances and accelerates the second language, English, acquisition process.

As mentioned earlier, common English phrases are used a lot in society. People use such phrases on many occasions to convey their negative or positive meaning Therefore, learning such phrases provides ESL learners with a tremendous amount of knowledge about the salient features and ideas of English-speaking society.

While there are some common English phrases that are driven by human experience and behavior, such as "under the collar," "breathing fire," and

"feeling under the weather/blue," most common English phrases stem from culture The imagery that learning these phrases carries not only makes memorizing phrases easier, but also immerses ESL learners in English culture more than ever before It also increases cultural sensitivity and English comprehension and production for ESL learners.

Common English phrases often denote cultural images Every English phrase is due to some cultural phenomenon Take, for example, the phrase "beat around the bush", which refers to the British custom of "hunting." (Hunters used to draw birds around the corner before hunting) Common English phrases denote the traditions, customs, lifestyles and beliefs of British society They are in the midst of constant cultural and social change; for example, common English phrases used in Anglo-Saxon writings are not the same as those used in modern English literature Long common English phrases are often shortened or abbreviated in English communication today.

For reasons of English pragmatics, common English phrases usually do not contain fixed meanings or concepts, and the differences in meaning of these phrases are rooted in cultural context For example, the phrase "the proof is in the pudding" can convey three meanings, including "there is evidence to support a claim in question.", "as long as the end goal is good, it doesn't matter to get a small achievement.", and "success is only measured by test achievement." Depends on the occasion and situation in which it is used. Learning common English phrases in context helps ESL students learn more deeply about the usage and meaning of these phrases.

In the pedagogical context, teachers ought to raise awareness of learners about how to use Phrasal verbs adequately in appropriate context With the fact that there is not a significant in the use of Phrasal verbs between men and women, teachers can ignore the gender factor when teaching essay-related academic points Besides, teachers can design suitable lessons about distinct variant forms of Phrasal verbs and integrate them into writing teaching From this, learners can have an insight into characteristics and functions of Phrasal verbs so that they can improve their writing performance Furthermore, teachers should help learners understand that besides coherence and cohesion of texts, Phrasal verbs also help form the reader-writer interaction via interpersonal Phrasal verbs Hence, the proper use of Phrasal verbs can help writers not only have quality writing in terms of textual features but also convey their ideas to texts Therefore, in writing teaching, in addition to the focus on learning and applying rules, both teachers and learners should pay more attention to the role of interpersonal strategies Moreover, there should be a need for both teachers and learners to cross over the thought of writing as a textual practice from which successful texts are produced based on grammatical patterns (Hyland, 2005).

For students, it is essential for them to have an awareness of how to take all advantages of forms and functions of Phrasal verbs From this, more quality articles might be produced with the more appropriate use of Phrasal verbs The findings of this study revealed that articles written by Vietnamese students seemed to be blunt and there was the lack of reader-writer solidarity inside.Besides, students shared a type of similar patterns in their writing, both in academic and non-academic context This may originate from the fact that they were both educated in an educational environment in which text strategies are rarely taught to EFL learners (Mauranen, 1993) Hence, it is necessary for them to research into how to use classes of Phrasal verbs suitably so that well- functioned texts can be created Especially, it is very important for them to express elaboration, clarification, guidance and interaction in business news articles which belong to the most interested press genres Besides, some findings from research of previous scholars should be paid attention byVietnamese students because thay might help improve writing quality For example, Swales (1990, p 213) proposed rhetorical consciousness raising approach which helps produce better writers applying some language skills and strategies in academic writing.

Limitations of the study

A limitation of this study is that the quite small size of the data used for analysis With the number of 150 essays, the data is, obviously, not large enough A small-scale study may signify that the findings are not conclusive and may lead to the restriction of quantitative analysis Another limitation is that this study only focuses on investigating frequencies, sentence position, syntactic categories, and functions of Phrasal verbs in order to explore the differences between the Phrasal verbs usage of Vietnamese students Other important aspects, such as procedural meaning or cohesive effect, were not mentioned.

One of the keys to mastering and fluency in basic English skills is learning common English phrases ESL students should regularly learn and practice these phrases according to their English proficiency and language learning ability For example, beginner students should memorize ten common English phrases each week; this way, their chances of reaching the highest level ofEnglish in a short period of time increase Therefore, the overall collected data is significantly contributing toward the objectives of the study but cannot give a comprehensive view for the use of phrasal verbs for ESL students Especially,given the consideration of the fact that there are many other literature and context to review with respect to the choice of students and how they can enhance their writing.

Recommendations for further research

Common English phrases are also used with great frequency in all fields For example, common English phrases "neck and neck", "win hands down" and "go off the rails" are derived from "horse racing" If an ESL translator does not know common English phrases in the field he is translating, he will be in serious trouble in his career and he will have to constantly search for the meaning of these phrases Additionally, ESL students will face many problems such as reading scientific articles, getting an education at a university in an English-speaking country, and listening to English-speaking scientists or professors if they do not know common phrases in their field of study The meanings of these phrases are not found in English dictionaries, they can only be found in some websites and dictionaries of common English phrases The use of such phrases is so common that it is basic, rational, and useful to include teaching common English phrases in educational courses.

No one likes to read or listen to long and complex ambiguous sentences Understanding such sentences is tedious and time-consuming. Today, English is getting shorter and shorter with the help of abbreviations, symbols, and especially common English phrases People often use common English phrases to communicate their meanings, feelings and messages more effectively, faster and more clearly For example, an English-speaker might say,

"She has turned a blind eye to the available evidence." Instead of saying, "She refuses to admit the available evidence, even if she is convinced of its veracity and accuracy." Thus, common English phrases can contain more than A complex concept, idea and meaning People sometimes have to bring many examples and descriptions in order for their audience to understand or be persuaded They sometimes use many words to explain complex concepts clearly Using common English phrases allows English speakers to communicate all their explanations and illustrations more effectively.

In addition, ESL students sometimes learn and memorize a large number of common and complex English words in order to make clear, effective comprehensive English statements Instead, they can easily learn such phrases to convey their meanings shorter and better In this way, they continue their English speaking skills and their audience will follow and understand them better.The use of common English phrases makes speech or text more vivid, tangible, engaging and detailed Learning these phrases helps ESL students quickly visualize and imagine the figurative meanings these phrases contain It also helps students make deep connections with English writing or speaking Overall, learning common English phrases enables ESL students to learn how to be clear and effective in short writing and speech It also helps them learn more about modern English, which is now getting shorter and shorter Overall, common English phrases are used frequently in many ways, from formal speeches at school to spoken conversations with native English speakers They are part of English knowledge, so they play a huge role in English fluency Therefore, ESL students should study common English phrases as hard as possible so that they can write, speak, and read in English well.

Therefore, further work needs to be done in order to achieve more explorations of phrasal verbs in the context of Vietnam In fact, research into phrasal verbs has not been popular in Vietnam From this, there might be a hope that phrasal verbs will be continuously studied with the application of other theoretical framework, such as Phrasal verbs and discourse, phrasal verbs as cohesive devices, or phrasal verbs and relevance theory In addition, more research is needed to achieve a more insight into how phrasal verbs have been used by Vietnamese students in various genres of discourse Accordingly, there is a hope that findings from such kinds of research might contribute to literature of English linguistics in general and the sub-field of language and gender in particular.

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APPENDIX A INTERVIEW PROTOCOL Guideline for Group Interview

Time to start: _ Time to finish: _

Thank you for volunteering and for signing the consent form to take part in this interview that is expected to last between twenty-five and thirty minutes. You will answer some questions during the interview, and you may wish to stop the interview at any time.

The purpose of this interview is to understand students’ attitudes towards using phrasal verbs in academic writing in the context of Vietnam.

This interview does not aim to evaluate your knowledge or English level of proficiency.

With your permission, the interview will be audio-recorded All information you share with me is treated confidentially and anonymously. Before we start the interview, do you have any question? If no, we are about to start.

How long have you been using phrasal verbs in academic writing?

B Questions for Focus Group Discussion

1 Students’ attitudes towards using phrasal verbs in academic writing:

1 Do you think that using phrasal verbs in academic writing is important for English-majored students?

2 In what ways using phrasal verbs in academic writing help you to improve your writing?

3 Can you do English writing better after using phrasal verbs in academic writing? If yes, in what ways?

2 Self-regulated learning strategies used in using phrasal verbs in academic writing:

1 Do you follow all the learning strategies mentioned above such as goal setting, planning, self-monitoring, attention control, flexible use of strategies, self- motivating and self-evaluating when using phrasal verbs in academic writing?

2 Which tips do you think is/are the most important when using phrasal verbs in academic writing? Why?

3 Which strategy or strategies should you be trained more before using phrasal verbs in academic writing?

4 Do you pay any other notices or tips when using phrasal verbs in academic writing?

APPENDIX B SAMPLE OF INTERVIEW DATA ANALYSIS

CODE Do you think that using phrasal verbs in academic writing is important for English- majored students?

In what ways using phrasal verbs in academic writing help you to improve your writing?

Do you pay any other notices or tips when using phrasal verbs in academic writing?

S1 Yes, because the trick is that every phrasal verb has a distinct meaning, similar to idioms - it’s a combination that has a particular meaning, one that you have to learn

If there is a single verb that is shorter than a phrasal verb, it is better to use a single verb I don't think that using multiple phrasal verbs in the academic writing test will make the essay less formal

Yes, I will choose the common phrasal verbs

S2 Yes, sometimes, it is difficult to understand the meaning of phrasal verbs Before looking them up in a dictionary, it would be helpful to use the context to understand them

My writing will have the rich vocabulary includes the use of formal verb phrases

Yes, of course, it’s difficult to use so I have to find out the suitable phrasal verbs in writing

S3 Yes, I think it’s not easy to use so we should choose carfully

The language is natural and smooth, and the vocabulary is rich

I rarely use phrasal verbs in writing so I don’t have any tips

THE SOCIALIST REPUBLIC OF VIET NAM Independence - Freedom - Happiness M.A THESIS COMMENTS AND EVALUATION

Research title: THE USE OF PHRASAL VERBS IN ACADEMIC WRITING BY ENGLISH

MAJORED STUDENTS AT THU DAU MOT UNIVERSITY

Candidate: Do Thi Thanh Thuy

Supervisor: Tran Quoc Thao, PhD

Examiner: Le Thi Thanh, PhD Role: Second Examiner

1 Study significance, scientific and practical implications