Challenges in learning phrasal verbs facing the first year english students of foreign languages faculty at hanoi pedagogical university n0 2 and suggested solutions

HANOI PEDAGOGICAL UNIVERSITY N0.2 FOREIGN LANGUAGES FACULTY ====== DANG MINH HANH CHALLENGES IN LEARNING PHRASAL VERBS FACING THE FIRST-YEAR STUDENTS OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES FACULTY AT HANOI PEDAGOGICAL UNIVERSITY N0.2 AND SOME SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS (SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS OF THE DEGREE OF BACHELOR OF PEDAGOGY IN ENGLISH) SUPERVISOR: NGUYEN THI HA ANH, M.A Hanoi, May 2016 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my sincere thanks to many people who helped me to complete this thesis First of all, I would like to send my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Mrs Nguyen Thi Ha Anh, M.A., who gave me guidance, advice, and encouragement during my process of studying Without her help, I am not able to complete my research Secondly, I would like to thank all of the lecturers of Foreign Languages Faculty who have given me a lot of knowledge of English for fours year Thirdly, my thanks are also sent to the students of class K41A English Pedagogy and K41B English Pedagogy at Hanoi Pedagogical University N0.2 for their help to accomplish all the survey Last but not least, my special thank is for my family, my friends for their comments and warm encouragement during my study i ABSTRACT This research investigated challenges that first year English-major students of Foreign Languages Faculty at Hanoi Pedagogical University N0.2 are facing in learning phrasal verbs A survey questionnaires and interviews were employed to investigate the subject ideas and opinions on the issue The primary focus of research is to find the first-year students’ attitudes towards learning phrasal verbs More importantly, the study figure out challenges that the firstyear students often encounter in learning phrasal verbs From that, some possible solutions were suggested to help learners to overcome the obstacles while learning and using phrasal verbs ii STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP Title: CHALLENGES IN LEARNING PHRASAL VERBS FACING THE FIRST-YEAR STUDENTS OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES FACULTY AT HANOI PEDAGOGICAL UNIVERSITY N0.2 AND SOME SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS I certify that all materials in this study which are not my own work have been identified and acknowledged and the study is originally written by me under the guidance of my supervisor Date submitted: May 2016 Student Dang Minh Hanh Supervisor Nguyen Thi Ha Anh, M.A iii ABBREVIATIONS E.g: Example Oin: Indirect object Od: Direct object p.: Page FLF: Foreign Languages Faculty HPU2: Hanoi Pedagogical University N0.2 iv LISTS OF FIGURES AND TABLES FIGURE The student's trend in using phrasal verbs 19 FIGURE Sources in which students use to learn phrasal verbs 20 FIGURE Students' judgment of the importance of phrasal verbs 22 FIGURE The level of enjoyment in learning phrasal verbs 23 FIGURE Challenges in learning phrasal verbs 24 FIGURE Students’ reaction when encountering unknown phrasal verbs 27 FIGURE Solutions for better learning phrasal verbs 28 TABLE The number of students who have correct answers for question number 10 25 TABLE The number of students who have correct answers for question 11 26 v TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS i STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP iii ABBREVIATIONS iv LISTS OF FIGURES AND TABLES v PART ONE INTRODUCTION I RATIONALES II RESEARCH PRESUPPOSITION III RESEARCH OBJECTIVES IV RESEARCH SCOPE V RESEARCH TASKS VI RESEARCH METHODS VII SIGNIFICANCE OF THE RESEARCH VIII DESIGN OF THE RESEARCH WORK PART TWO DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER ONE: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND I.1 LITERATURE REVIEW IN BRIEF I.2 OVERVIEW OF PHRASAL VERBS I.2.1 Definition of phrasal verbs I.2.2 Structures of phrasal verbs I.2.2.1 Definition of particles I.2.2.2 Meaning of the particles in phrasal verbs vi I.2.2.3 Positions of particles in phrasal verbs I.2.3 Features of phrasal verbs I.2.3.1 Phonological feature I.2.3.2 Semantic features I.2.3.3 Syntactic features 10 I.2.4 Types of phrasal verbs 11 I.2.4.1 Verbs with two particles 11 I.2.4.2 Verbs with one particle: transitive and inseparable 12 I.2.4.3 Verbs with one particle: transitive and separable 12 I.2.4.4 Verbs with one particle: intransitive 13 I.2.5 Comparison between phrasal verbs and preposition verbs 13 I.2.5.1 Similarities 13 I.2.5.2 Differences 14 CHAPTER TWO METHODOLOGY II.1 Participants 16 II.2 Survey questionnaire (Appendix A) 16 II.2.1 Reasons of using survey questionnaire 16 II.2.2 Construction of survey questionnaire 17 II.3 Interview (APPENDIX B) 17 II.3.1 Reasons of using interview 17 II.3.2 Construction of interview 18 II.4 Data collection procedures 18 II.5 Data analysis procedures 18 CHAPTER THREE THE RESULTS vii III.1 The first-year students’ attitude towards learning phrasal verbs 19 III.1.1 The current situation of the students in learning phrasal verbs 19 III.1.1.1 Students’ trend in using phrasal verbs 19 III.1.1.2 Sources students use to learn phrasal verbs 20 III.1.2 The first-year students’ judgment of the importance of phrasal verbs 21 III.1.3 The level of enjoyment in learning phrasal verbs 23 III.2 Challenges the students facing in learning phrasal 24 III.3 Some suggested solutions for better learning phrasal verbs 27 III.3.1 Students’ reaction when meeting unknown phrasal verbs 27 III.3.2 Some suggested solutions for better learning phrasal verbs 28 PART THREE CONCLUSION I Conclusion 31 II Limitations 32 III Recommendations 32 REFERENCES 33 APPENDIX A: SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRE 34 SUGGESTED ANSWERS FOR EXERCISE QUESTIONS 37 APPENDIX B: INTERVIEW 38 viii PART ONE INTRODUCTION I RATIONALES Nowadays, it cannot be denied that English is the language of globalization It is spoken as the first language by around 400 million people around the world More than one billion people decide to study English as a second language Moreover, English plays an important role in the development of nearly all aspects of life, such as education, politics, business, commerce, etc Because of its importance, having a good English competency is very necessary For Vietnam, a developing country, English becomes a bridge among our country with others; brings many opportunities to develop business, politics, culture and so on Therefore, English is being taught in Vietnam at every education levels to help students communicate with people all over the world In order to get a good communication, student can use not only single words but also combine words like noun phrase, phrasal verbs, etc to express their opinions As we know that, a phrasal verb is a combination of a standard verb with one or more particles For examples: get on, drive off, come back, turn round, look out, break down, etc (according to Murphy, 2004, p.274) In some cases the particle is an adverb as out, down, off, ect.; in others it is a preposition as over, on, in, Phrasal verbs are very important because phrasal verbs are especially essential to comprehend and communicative with native speakers since they are commonly used in spoken and informal written language In addition, learning phrasal verbs is the good way for students to talk and communicate closer, more friendly and natural However, using phrasal verbs sometimes makes us land in an embarrassing situation and cannot understand what the native speakers mean when talking with them Because phrasal verbs have different, multiform and numerous meanings, instead of using these kinds of verbs, the learners often use single verbs or synonyms Learning phrasal verbs why many students dislike learning phrasal verbs To sum up, basing on the statistics and analysis, we can conclude that phrasal verbs play an important role but students’ attitude towards learning phrasal verb is not very positive III.2 Challenges the students facing in learning phrasal verbs FIGURE Challenges in learning phrasal verbs 60 52 50 46 Guess meaning of phrasal verb 40 30 Remember which particles go with a paticular verb 31 Distinguish phrasal verbs and preposotional verbs 20 Others 10 The bar chart describes the challenges in learning phrasal verbs given by the first year students of FLF at HPU2 It can be seen from the graph, 46 students in the total number of 95 students (approximately 48.4% ) get troubles in guessing meaning of phrasal verbs This is a common thing because a phrasal verb can have more than one meaning as literal meaning, non-literal meaning, semi-literal meaning They could hardly predict the meaning of phrasal verbs based on the meaning of individual element To find out more in depth, a table of data on survey results from question number 10 in questionnaire was formed 24 TABLE The number of students who have correct answers for question number 10 The number of correct The number of students who have correct answers answers 0 21 15 30 12 10 From the table, it can be said that, there was no one who did not have any correct answer and the number of students who had one correct answers appropriate a very small percentage (about 4.2%) Learners who answered exactly two, three or four questions accounted for higher percentage than learners had five or six correct answers There were very few students who answered all questions exactly In general, students know about the meaning of phrasal verbs but only at medium level It is one of the obstacles in learning phrasal verbs The other challenge is remembering which particles go with a particular verb 32.6% of students struggled with this problem In fact that one verb can go with many particles and get different meanings For example, the verb “come” can combines with “across”, “along”, “around/round”, “back to”, ect One of the interviewees said that she could not distinguish when that verb came with that particles or others The students were also interfered by this thing However, the biggest challenge in learning phrasal verbs is distinguishing phrasal verbs and prepositional verbs with 52 votes By interviewing, a lot of students lamented that in many cases, they did not know whether the 25 combinations were phrasal verbs or prepositional verbs Some of them could not indicate the features of each types, even though they knew there were differences between those kinds of verbs More detail, the results from question number 11 in the questionnaire are presented in Table TABLE The number of students who have correct answers for question 11 The number of correct answers The number of students who have correct answers 0 28 30 21 16 It can be seen from Table 2, students often answered one, two or three questions correctly Some of them had 80% true answers but there was no person could reach 100% On the other hand, as mentioned before, students’ laziness prevented them from learning phrasal verbs effectively, too Most of them rarely learned and used phrasal verbs In short, it can be said that, the first year students of FLF at HPU2 are encountering many challenges These problems create a big hedge deterring learners from learning phrasal verbs 26 III.3 Some suggested solutions for better learning phrasal verbs III.3.1 Students’ reaction when meeting unknown phrasal verbs FIGURE Students’ reaction when encountering unknown phrasal verbs 45 41 40 35 Skip them 32 30 Guess meaning based on the contexts Use dictionaries 25 20 Others 15 10 13 (The numbers on the vertical axis and the number on the top of each bar stand for the number of students who choose that option) The Figure indicates the ways that students can to overcome new phrasal verbs which they not know It is easy to see that guessing meaning based on the contexts and using dictionaries were two of the most popular solutions for unknown phrasal verbs In details, 41 students’ choices were basing the contexts to guess the meaning of phrasal verbs and 32 students used dictionaries There were only students wanted to ignore them, it took up a small number of students Some students liked asking their teachers or their friends instead of using three methods above 27 III.3.2 Some suggested solutions for better learning phrasal verbs FIGURE Solutions for better learning phrasal verbs 70 60 50 Learning by heart Doing exercise 40 Reading and note taking 30 20 10 Making clear comparisons between phrasal verbs and prepositional verbs Others The bar chart mentions some solutions to solve the problems in learning phrasal verbs As can be seen easily from the chart, the choices for doing exercise, reading and note-taking to learn phrasal verbs was the most popular (over 60%) When being asked to explain in the interviews, the students believe that they were the good ways to learn because doing exercise, reading and note-taking could help them remember longer and review when they needed The students wanted to practice as much as possible In fact, practicing was one effective way of studying Rank the third was learning by heart with 39 students This choice was fewer than doing exercise, reading and note taking because it required the studiousness of students On the other hand, although confusing between phrasal verbs and 28 prepositional verbs was the biggest trouble for learners, there exist 34.7% thought that it was essential to make a clear distinction between phrasal verbs and prepositional verbs Being interviewed, the students expressed that they just only need to know the meaning of phrasal verbs Making clear distinction between phrasal verbs from prepositional verbs is really hard and waste of time In addition, students had other solutions They stated that learning phrasal verb by song and films was also interesting way It not only helps them to remember easily, but also to entertain Sometimes, they call for help from the teachers and friends when getting stuck in finding correct answer They said that it was the fastest way As presented above, there many effective solutions for solving the problems in learning phrasal verbs Firstly, students should different types of exercises about phrasal verbs Studying must be accompanied by practicing, to understand and remember better For examples, learners can exercise as filling in the blanks with given particles to complete the sentences or another type is filling suitable particles in the blanks By doing that exercises, the students are able to know meaning of some phrasal verbs and bring to mind which particles go with a particular verb Secondly, with confusion in using phrasal verbs and prepositional verbs, students had better make a clear distinction between these kinds of verbs and consult other people, especially teachers if they cannot acknowledge by themselves And doing exercises to improve this weakness is also good idea The exercises will help learners distinguish phrasal verbs and prepositional verbs more exactly Thirdly, if students struggle with the numerous meaning of phrasal verbs, in my point of view, the good way is guessing meaning of phrasal verbs based on the contexts first then students can use dictionaries or ask other people to check the their answers By this way, students can memorize the phrasal verbs quickly and keep them in mind longer Forthly, learning by heart is an important element, too It helps the students to recall the use and meaning of several phrasal verbs without looking up the dictionaries Learners should spend a little time each day on 29 learning phrasal verbs Besides, learners are able to learn phrasal verbs through English films, songs and other communicative resources Because these are interesting ways and they make students keep in mind easier In conclusion, there are many ways to overcome the challenges in learning phrasal verbs The students should combine the methods to learn phrasal verbs effectively 30 PART THREE CONCLUSION I Conclusion Phrasal verbs play an important role in English grammar However, many students are still not interested in learning phrasal verbs as the research mention before, consider that learning phrasal verbs is difficult and the students remain lazy Therefore, it can be said that the students’ attitude in learning phrasal verbs is not very positive Phrasal verbs are used more often in speaking than in writing It is more reasonable if using phrasal verbs in informal speaking and writing Using these kind of verbs can help us to enlarge our knowledge of English We can speak more fluently and naturally like native speaker, avoid repetition Understanding phrasal verbs help to overcome the difficulties in reading and listening Or in other words, learning phrasal verbs helps to develop your English skills Moreover, the students can learn phrasal verbs from many different sources like dictionaries, books, songs, films, other people And dictionaries are the first choice of many learners However, when learning phrasal verbs, students have to face many challenges Of main challenges, many students may not know the meaning of phrasal verbs and they cannot guess, not remember which particles go with a particular verbs or they meet trouble when distinguish phrasal verbs and prepositional verbs because two kinds of verbs look quite similar in form In addition, it is learners’ laziness prevents them from good learning In my opinion, the students should apply the suitable methods to be better in learning phrasal verbs To solve the problems, some solutions are mentioned Firstly, the students need to choose suitable ways for themselves, they can combine two or more methods Some suggestions are learning by heart to understand clearly about common phrasal verbs, doing exercise usually to know how phrasal are used, reading and taking note to remember longer and review easily And the learners 31 need to make a clear comparisons between phrasal verbs and prepositional verbs to avoid confusion Moreover, the teachers’ role is very important in helping students to overcome the challenges II Limitations As is true for all research, there still exists some limitations in this study First limitation in this study is the number of participants , the researcher only collected data of students of K41 English Bachelor Pedagogy and interviewed 12 students due to the limited time And the researcher did not conduct interviews for all students Moreover, the major purpose of the study is to investigate students’ attitude in learning phrasal verbs, the importance of phrasal verbs and find out the challenges that student are facing as well as give some suggested solutions for better learning phrasal verbs However, it would be better if teachers were involved in the study, because they could give their assessment of students’ learning and suggest some effective ways of learning In addition, this study would be better and more useful if the researcher could make more exercises ralated to phrasal verbs for the participants From that, the researcher could go into detailed information In conclusion, because of the limitations of this study, it is hoped that the findings can used as a reference to study further and more profound III Recommendations After completing this study, researcher would like to give some recommendations As the researcher mentioned above, one of the limitations is number of respondents Therefore, further studies should be conducted with students at other level of education, with more questionnaires and more interviewees to get more reliable results The future researchers should use more methods to collect higher valuable data and information The other reseachers might spend long time on recording the actual learning process rather tham selfreported answers When the issue is investigate in a new way, it has a deeper look into the result Overall, the researcher hope that this study be a useful reference for future studies 32 REFERENCES Duong, T.L.H (1999) A Comparative study on Phrasal Verbs and Prepositional Verbs in English Unpublished BA thesis, College of Foreign Languages, VNU Flower, J (1993) Phrasal-verb Organiser Language Teaching Publications Heaton, J.B (1985) Prepositions and adverbial particles Hongkong: Peninsula Press Longman Dictionary of Phrasal Verb (1991) Longman: Longman Publishing House McCarthy, M & O’Dell, F (2004) English Phrasal Verbs in Use Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Murphy, R (2004) English Grammar in Use Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Oppenhaim, A.N (1992) Questionnaire design, interviewing and attitude measurement Printer Publishers London and New York Oxford Phrasal Verb Dictionary (2001) Oxford: Oxford University Press Thomson, A.J and Martinet, A.V (1986) Practical English Grammar New York: Oxford University Press Vince, M (2010) Intermediate Language Practice Oxford: Macmillan Vu, T.T (2012) A Study on Techniques to Improve Learning Phrasal Verbs for the First Year English Major Student of HPU Unpublished BA thesis Haiphong Private University Workman, G (1993) Phrasal verbs and Idioms Oxford: Oxford University Press Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Questionnaire Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interview Wyatt, R (2006) Phrasal Verbs and Idioms Great Britain: A & C Black Publisher 33 APPENDIX A: SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRE Questionnaire for the first-year English major students, Foreign Language Faculty, Hanoi Pedagogical University No.2 My name is Dang Minh Hanh I am carrying out a research named “Challenges in learning phrasal verbs made by the first-year students of Foreign Languages Faculty at Hanoi Pedagogical University No.2.” The purpose of this study is to find out the information about students’ attitudes towards learning phrasal verbs, the challenges they often meet Your answers will be kept in secret Please write your class and give honest opinions for the following questions Please circle the best statements for you: How are phrasal verbs important for you in learning English? A Very important B Important C Neutral D Unimportant Do you like learning phrasal verbs? A Yes B No C Not sure How often you use phrasal verbs in writings? A Often B Sometimes C Rarely D Never How often you use phrasal verbs in oral conversations? A Often B Sometimes C Rarely D Never 34 When learning phrasal verbs, you like to use them in A Writing more than speaking B Speaking more than writing C Equal between speaking and writing How often you spend your time on learning and practicing phrasal verbs out of classes? A Every day B Often C Sometimes D Rarely E Never While reading you encounter unknown phrasal verbs, how you overcome? A Skip them and continue reading B Try to guess the meanings based on the contexts C Look up their meanings in dictionary D Others (please specify) You usually learn phrasal verbs from A Dictionaries B Books written about phrasal verbs C Textbooks D Other sources (please specify) When compared with other verbs, how difficult is learning to use phrasal verbs? A More difficult B The same C Easier 10 Decide which phrasal verbs in sentences below are literal or non-literal 35 or semi-literal meaning: literal meaning is the primary or basic meaning of word(s) Non-literal is not using or taking words in their usual or most basic sense Semi-literal meaning is the one which uses basic meaning of the verb and particular meaning of the particle He ran out of the building to escape the fire We have ran out of coffee Would you like tea instead? The police are looking into the cause of accident She looked into the room but couldn’t see him Can you go over your explanation once more, please? The car went over the cliff and crashed into the sea I want to drive on 11 Point out which italic words in the sentences below are phrasal verbs or prepositional verbs: They switched it off A neighbor looked after them Scientists are trying to find out the reason why She paid for the meal Before the test, he looked over his notes carefully 12 Which challenges you often meet? (you can choose more than one) A Cannot guess meaning of phrasal verbs B Cannot remember which particles go with a particular verb C Cannot distinguish the phrasal verbs and prepositional verbs D Others (please specify) 13 What you to overcome the challenges in learning phrasal verbs? (you can choose more than one) A Learning by heart B Doing exercise C Reading and note-taking D Others (please specify) 36 SUGGESTED ANSWERS FOR EXERCISE QUESTIONS 10 Key: He ran out of the building to escape the fire (Literal meaning) We have ran out of coffee Would you like tea instead? (Non-literal meaning: to have no more of something) The police are looking into the cause of accident (Non-literal meaning: to investigate something) She looked into the room but couldn’t see him (Literal meaning) Can you go over your explanation once more, please? (Non-literal meaning: to repeat something in order to teach or learn it) The car went over the cliff and crashed into the sea (Literal meaning) I want to drive on (Semi-literal meaning) 11 Key: They switched it off (Phrasal verb) A neighbor looked after them (Prepositional verb) Scientists are trying to find out the reason why (Phrasal verb) She paid for the meal (Prepositional verb) Before the test, he looked over his notes carefully (Phrasal verb) 37 APPENDIX B: INTERVIEW What you think about the importance of phrasal verbs? Can you indicate some features of phrasal verbs? Can you indicate some features of prepositional verbs? Do you think there are any differences between them? What challenges you face when learning phrasal verb? How you overcome? 38