the common two – word verbs denoting material and mental processes in english and their vietnamese equivalents at cua lo 2 high school

1 NGHE AN MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING CUA LO HIGH SCHOOL  TEACHING EXPERIENCE “THE COMMON TWO – WORD VERBS DENOTING MATERIAL AND MENTAL PROCESSES IN ENGLISH AND THEIR VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS AT CUA LO HIGH SCHOOL.” (CÁC ĐỘNG TỪ HAI THÀNH TỐ PHỔ BIẾN QUY CHIẾU TIẾN TRÌNH VẬT CHẤT VÀ TINH THẦN TRONG TIẾNG ANH VÀ NGHĨA TIẾNG VIỆT TƯƠNG ĐƯƠNG Ở TRƯỜNG THPT CỬA LÒ 2) Teacher : Bui Thi To Hoa Group : English Time : 8/2020 – 12/2020 Cua Lo, 2020 PART A: INTRODUCTION " There is another kind of composition more frequent in our language than perhaps in any other, from which arises to foreigners the greatest difficulty." Samuel Johnson -Preface, Dictionary of the English Language, 1755 Rationale of the study The two-word verbs, including phrasal verbs (PVs) and prepositional verbs (PreVs), are an interesting linguistic phenomenon in the English language Many English teachers have realized the importance of this multiword knowledge in helping their learners use English more fluently and naturally Paradoxically, these structures are never easy for non-native learners to acquire, mostly because the semantic, grammatical and stylistic peculiarities that they possess The meanings of a two-word verb are not always likely guessed from its individuals Many non-native speakers of English must, therefore, memorize them to be able to understand and use them in the right context However, thousands of two-word verbs and many more times of their meanings make the massive learning unfruitful Consequently, pages are spent to find out which PVs to teach and in what sequences For example, Dilin Liu (2003) suggests 302 items to be most frequently used idioms, with 104 of them are PVs Gardner and Davies (2007) propose a smaller number - 100 frequent PVs, which the authors claim to be a manageable number to deal with The problem is two-word verbs are very polysemous, and corresponding with 100 frequent PVs proposed by Gardner and Davies, (2007), it is not 100 but up to 559 potential meanings (5.6 meanings per PV on average) learners have to deal with From this view, the number 100 is getting less manageable What it if I focus on senses that are used.more often than the other? So, the load of learning English two-word verbs would be reduced This is also what this current study is aiming at Biber et al (1999) suggest that we classify multiword verbs according to their core meaning called semantic domains: activity verbs, communication verbs, mental verbs, causative verbs, verbs of simple occurrence, verbs of existence or relationship, and aspectual verbs Halliday (1985; 2004) approaches the matter with different term but the same nature Instead of ‘semantic domains; Halliday has term ‘processes’ (See section 1.2.1 for types of processes); and what Biber (1999) names ‘activity verb’ is labeled ‘material process’ This study uses Halliday’s terms for their clarity and systematic nature; and attends to material and mental processes since they are considered most common by both Halliday (1985; 2004) and Biber (1999) Aims of the study The primary aims of this paper are: to study English two-word verbs, specifically distinguish two kinds of two-word verbs: PVs and PreVs; to study English processes, focusing on material and mental processes; to investigate some common English two-word verbs denoting material and mental processes and find their Vietnamese equivalents; To suggest some recommendations for teaching and learning two- word verbs Research questions What are the characteristics of English two- word verbs and the differences between two kinds of English two word verbs: PVs and PreVs? What are Vietnamese equivalents to common English two- word verbs denoting material and mental processes? What are recommendations to the teachers and pupils of Cua Lo High School for teaching and learning two- word verbs? Scope of the study As far as structural aspects of two-word verbs are concerned, the current study includes both PV (transitive and intransitive) and PreVs ‘Phrasalprepositional verbs’ would be beyond the scope of this paper Two-word verbs are rich in both number and meanings For example, in Oxford Phrasal verbs Dictionary, 6000 common British and American PVs are recorded; the verb ‘go’ solely has 31 two-word verbs with 209 different meanings So, I am not ambitious to cover all of them Although some verbs have no single correct classification or have multiple meanings belonging to different semantic domains, Biber (1999) affirms that activity verbs and mental verbs are of most common Among the 12 most common lexical verbs that all occur over 1000 times per million words in the LSWE Corpus (Biber et al…, 1999: 373), six are activity verbs (get, go, make, come, take, give), five are mental verbs (know, think, see, want, mean) Also by means of corpus, Biber proposes lists of the most common lexical verbs in each semantic domain, including all verbs that occur over 300 times per million words in at least one register (cf Biber et al…, 1999: 367-369) In domain of activity material verbs, we see the notable common of “make, go, give, come, put”, and “take”; while “see, think, know, want, feel, like” are distinguished representatives of mental verbs Therefore, having claimed to be the study of the common two-word verbs denoting material and mental processes in English though, in the frame of a small paper, I only focus on four outstanding representatives of material verbs: COME, GIVE, GO, MAKE (all are in the top 10 most prolific PVs of British National Corpus), and three of mental ones: HEAR, SEE, THINK Moreover, only twoword verbs with idiomatic and semi-idiomatic meanings used in material and mental processes are concentrated on Method of the study The study aims to find out, in the limitation of seven lexical verbs, “how many” and ”how often” two-word verbs belong to material and mental processes are there are, comparing with the other four processes Thus, quantitative research methods, which give much focus on the collection and analysis of numerical data and statistics, appear to be appropriate Design of the study This study is designed in three parts: Introduction, Development, and Conclusion The Introduction gives an overview of the study The Development consists of three chapters: Chapter - Theoretical Background, provides the fundamental concepts used in the paper; Chapter - Methodology, describes thoroughly the methodology acquired in the study; Chapter presents lists of twoword combinations of seven common verbs belonging to material and mental processes with their particles/prepositions and their Vietnamese equivalents Finally, the Conclusion offers the review of the study with its implication and application concerning teaching and learning English two-word verbs in general at Cua Lo school PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND This chapter represents the issues of two-word verbs and Processes of Material and Mental in details Section 1.1 examines some aspects of PVs and PreVs such as their definitions and their semantic and syntactic aspects Particles the vital component of PVs, are also defined and classified Section 1.2 looks into the matter of process types with the focus is on Material and Mental processes, their definition and characteristics 1.1 Two word verbs Quirk and his partner (1972) clarify that multi-word verbs consist of PVs, PreVs, and phrasal- prepositional verbs Biber et al (1999: 403) add other multiword verb constructions like V + noun phrase (+ preposition); V + prepositional phrase or V + V to complete the classification of four major kinds of multi-word combinations that comprise “relatively idiomatic units and function like single verbs” In this study, I focus on multi-word verbs which comprise two elements Though Taka (1960, cited Waibel 2007) and Meyer (1975, cited Waibel 2007) use term “two-word verb” to mean PV, and Celce-Murcia et al (1999) note that PVs are sometimes called two-word verbs, both PVs and PreVs are taken into consideration when we refer to two-word verbs 1.1.1 Definition 1.1.1.1 of PVs and PreVs PVs There is a disputation as to how PVs are defined Following here are some ways of defining PVs: Dixon, R.M.W (1991: 274) says: “Phrasal verb is a combination of verb plus preposition that has a meaning not inferable from the individual meanings of verb and preposition(s)”1 Biber et al., (1999: 403) assert: “PVs are multi-word units consisting of a verb followed by an adverbial particle” which all have spatial or locative meanings and “commonly used with extended meanings” Halliday (1985: 207; 2004: 351) sees PVs as “lexical verbs which consist of more than just the verb word itself’, which can be verb + adverb, verb + preposition, and verb + adverb + preposition David (2002) seems to meet Halliday when this author insists the existence of two definitions of PVs, the broad sense and the narrow sense The broad sense includes both PreVs 1It is noted that the author mentions to prepositions, but particles There is possibility that the so-call PreVs by most of linguists is defined by Dixon as PVs, or he uses the name PVs to refer to both and PVs, spatial or figurative, transitive or intransitive while the narrow sense excludes PreVs This study prefers looking at PV from its narrow sense Before turning to PreVs, it is necessary to clarify that the term ‘phrasal verb’ is not favored by all linguistics Said as Waibel (2007: 15), “the very name for this type of verb is controversial” For example, Fraser (1947) calls it “verbparticle combination”, Zandvoort (1962) talks about it as “verb-adverb combination”, Live (1965) “discontinuous verb”, Lipka (1992) labels them “verb-particle construction”, Francis (1958) “separable verb”, etc However, Mc Arthur (1989: 38, cited Waibel, 2007: 15) notes that “the term ‘phrasal verb’ appears ( ) to be the winning term”, and Rot (1988: 183, cited David, 2002: 112) remarks that the term PV is the most appropriate for verb-particle combinations because “it expresses the linguistic essence of this lexicalgrammar collocation, and it has its terminological parallels in the location ‘phrasal prepositions’ ” And the term familiar with both teachers and students is also used in this study 1.1.1.2 PreVs About PreVs, the matter of term and definition is less controversial than that of PVs Scholars seem to be satisfied with the term ‘PreV’, which refers to the kind of verb that “consists of a verb followed by a preposition” (Biber et al., 1999: 403) and that “forms a semantic and syntactic unit” (Leech, 1992: 264) The problem, if it has, is whether or not to see PreV as a subtype of PV or an independent kind of verb from PV This study would like to look at PreV as an independent item that exists parallel with PV 1.1.1.3 Particles 1.1.1.3.1 Definition and classification The term ‘particle’ refers to a word that has a grammatical function but does not fit into the main parts of speech like noun, verb, or adverb, etc (Longman Dictionary of Applied Linguistics, 1985) The exact status of the particle is still being debated; scholars are being divided on whether it is an adverb, preposition, postpositional prefix, special part of speech, etc Encyclopedia Wikipedia (2010) provides seven types of word serving as particle: ‘Articles’ (the), ‘Infinitival’ (to), ‘Preposition’ (in, on), ‘Adverbial particles’ (off, down), ‘Interjections‘(oh, wow), ‘Sentence connectors’ (so, well), Tags ( , did they?) and ‘Conjunctions’ (and, or, nor) However, dictionaries like Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (2006) or MacMillan Phrasal Verbs Plus (2005) just consider adverbs and prepositions to be particle; and some scholars (e.g Celce-Murcia, 1999; Quirk et al., 1985) even narrow term particles to adverbs2 In this study, particles are also seen in its adverbial nature 2While Celce-Murcia (1999) explains the author’s selection is to show the close association of particle with the verb, and to distinguish it from preposition as well as other adverbs, other scholars who consider solely adverbs to be particles argue, “particles are commonly treated either as adverbs or else assigned to a special class” and some differences between particles and prepositions will be noted in section 1.1.1.3.3 1.1.1.3.2 Characteristics of particles Particles are typically found in PVs where most of them are place adjucts or can function as such (Quirk & Greenbaum, 1973) Particles form cohesive units with verbs and normally cannot be separated from the verb by another adverb Moreover, they play an important role in complementation by completing the meaning of the head-phrase, and creating a dominant conceptual meaning for PVs Particles have pragmatic meaning and obviously have impact on the meaning of the verb they follows even if the meanings of the verb are not necessary destroyed or lost Briton (1988: 4, cited David, 2002: 127) claims that the addition of a particle to a verb produces the following three meanings: perfective meaning (drink up, calm down, wait out, die off, put over), ingressive meaning (doze off, go away, set out), or continuative/iterative meaning (drive on, hammer away) (See aspectual PVs, section 1.1.2.1) 1.1.1.3.3 Particles vs prepositions Particles look like prepositions and actually have some common features with prepositions Both of them are invariable in form, i.e they not change their form in accordance with words they accompany Particles can sometimes be considered a special type of prepositions 3, but they are still distinctive terms Certain syntactic features separate them from each other A great deal of differences is about their position, the sentence constituents they are linked to 4, and their function5, etc Moreover, particles usually affect the meanings of their proceeding verbs while prepositions usually not and even independent of them (See section 1.1.2.3.1) To separate adverbial particles from prepositions, objects might be helpful As Swan (1980: 95, cited David, 2002: 115) points out, prepositions must have objects while adverbs particle need not Celce-Murcia (1999: 429) proposes syntactic tests (adopted from O’Dowd, 1994: 19) to set apart particles and prepositions Accordingly, Only prepositions allow: Adverb insertion (e.g We turned quickly off the road, but not we turned quickly off the light) Phrase fronting (e.g Up the hill John ran, not Up the bill John ran) because of their distinct behaviour, especially their variable position and the lack of an object of their own (Langacker, 1987: 243, cited David, 2002: 125) 3Many words can be used both as adverbs and prepositions except back and away (they are only adverb), while other words like from and during can only be treated as prepositions (David, 2002: 115- 116) 4A preposition denotes a semantic relationship between two entities as to place, time, instrument or cause etc (Quirk et al., 1972) while a particle is part of the verb 5Adverbial particles function as adverbs and modify the preceding verb Wh-fronting (e.g About what does he write?, not Up what does he write?) Only particles in separable PVs allow: Passivization (e.g The light was turned off, not The road was turned out) Verb substitution (e.g The light was extinguished (= turned off)) NP insertion (e.g We turned the light off, not We turned the road off) 1.1.2 Syntactic and semantic characteristics of PVs and PreVs 2.1.2.1 Syntactic and semantic characteristics of PVs Regarding syntactical aspects of PVs, PVs’ subcategories and PVs’ separation need to be dealt with In MacMillan Phrasal Verb Plus by Rundell and Fox (2005), PVs are divided into three types: transitive, intransitive, and those which is both transitive and intransitive But it seems to be simpler to set PVs into intransitive and transitive like the way Quirk and Greenbaum (1973), Biber et al (1999), or Celce-Murcia et al (1999) do; noting that some combinations can have “dual function” (Celce-Murcia et al., 1999: 427), i.e., they can be either transitive or intransitive, with or without a difference of meaning (Quirk & Greenbaum, 1973) Most of the challenge is assumed to fall into transitive PVs because of its peculiar syntactic characteristic, its separability As Celce-Murcia (1999) puts it, in spite of being part of the PV, particle does not have to be adjacent with it Listed here are three subcategories of separation: The largest, most productive category is optional separable PV, where particle can stand either before of after direct object except when the direct object is a pronoun6 E.g put on = wear: Anne put on her coat and went out or Anne put her coat on and went out The smaller category is inseparable phrasal verb In this kind, the particle is forced to follow right after the verb7 E.g I came on (= encounter) this beautiful vase in the attic Sometimes, the separation is obligatory and we will name this obligatory separable PV In this kind, the particles are always separated8 E.g put through = test: We put the machines through a series of tests 6If the direct object is not a pronoun or if it is a long and complicate noun phrase, it would prefer the position after the particle or as (Celce-Murcia, 1999: 435) put it, “the conventional position for new, discourse salient information” The insertion of complex noun phrase between verb and the particle is believed to interrupt the cognitive unity of the verb and particle and make it difficult to understand 7Celce-Murcia (1999) said this phenomenon is because what we are calling a particle is actually a preposition and thus would naturally go before its object 8The obligatory separation is presumed to avoid the ambiguity with the inseparable phrasal verbs, which have the same form but different meaning (Celce-Murcia et al., 1999) From semantic view, we see three important aspects: the polysemy, productivity, and idiomaticity Like single-word verbs, PVs are polysemous in that one form of PVs can have various meaning, and simultaneously, one meaning can also be expressed by more than one form Additionally, English continually generates new PVs as well as new meanings of existed PVs Celce-Murcia (1999: 431) describes PV as “a highly productive lexical category in English” (431), while Bolinger (1974: xi, cited Celce-Murcia, 1999) comments the phenomenon as “an outpouring of lexical creativeness that surpasses anything else in our language” Explaining the popularity of PVs in English, Bolinger (1971: xii, cited Stephens, 2008) said, "They are words The everyday inventor is not required to reach for elements such as roots and affixes that have no reality for him It takes only a rough familiarity with other uses of head and off to make them available for head off, virtually self- suggesting when the occasion for them comes up, which is not true of learned formations like intercept" (xii) Yet it seems impossible to know exactly which verb will join with which particle to form a new PV There usually needs a semantic coordination between verbs and particles In other words, verbs limit their choice of adverbial particle by their semantic content Nevertheless, it does not mean PVs cannot be systematized Supported by the idea that the semantic of PVs is not as “arbitrary” as it is often held to be (Smclair, Moon et al., 1939, cited David, 2002), Celce- Murcia (1999) claims the existence of some systemeticity in how meaning is represented in PVs; and to understand that systematicity, we familiarize ourselves with three semantic categories of PVs: literal, aspectual, and idiomatic (See Quirk et al., 1972, Celce-Murcia et al., 1999) Literal PVs: comprise a verb and a directional preposition, function syntactically like verb-particle constructions, except that particle keeps its prepositional meaning and the result is a PV whose meaning is fully compositional (e.g sit down) Aspectual PVs10: certain particles can add consistent aspectual meaning to the verb without changing the origin meaning of that verb Thus, the meaning of the whole is neither literal nor idiomatic For Celce-Murcia (1999: 432- 433), four main types of aspectual PVs are distinguished: - Inceptive PVs (signal a beginning state): take off, set out, start up 9Mc Arthur and Atkins (1974: 6, cited David, 2002: 128) claim types of verbs that can be phrasalized, including: a/ verbs of movement (go, come); b/ verbs of invitation and ordering (invite, let); c/ the so-called ‘empty verb’, verbs of indefinite meaning (get, make); d/ verbs formed with or without the suffix -en, from simple monosyllabic adjectives (brighten); e/ verbs formed unchanged from simple, usually monosyllabic nouns with such paraphrase patterns as chalk up = mark up with chalk; f/ a random scattering of two-syllable verbs of Latin origin, with which some kind of direction or emphasis is required (measure (up), level (off)) 10Some authors suggest grouping PVs based on the particle instead of the verb element as we usually We think it is applicable for aspectual PVs only Moreover, aspectual particles not go with every verb Certain aspectual particles co-occur with certain verbs That is why we have fade out but not accept fade up 10 - Continuative: (show that the action continues) Activity verbs + on/ along (come along, keep on), away (sleep away), around (mess around), through (think through) - Iterative PVs (activity verbs + over show repetition ): think over - Completive PVs (show complete action with up, out, off and down): wear out, mix up, cut off, check over, etc Idiomatic PVs: are those that we cannot infer their meaning from their components 11 For instance, in the sentence I hope you will get over your operation quickly, the literal meaning of ‘get over’, in sense of ‘to climb over st to get to the other side’ no longer applies to explain the subject’s enduring an operation 2.1.2.2 Syntactic and semantic characteristics of PreVs Syntactically, PreVs always has its preposition followed by a nominal object (Biber et al 1999) They, however, not coincide with inseparable transitive PVs because the object still follows the preposition when it is a pronoun Moreover, the verb can have its own object which usually precedes the preposition Two structural patterns for PreVs are: ■ V + preposition + NP E.g I’ve never ever thought about [it] ■ V + NP + preposition + NP E.g He blames all faults on me Linguists, such as Quirk & Greenbaum (1973), Biber et al (1999), tend to agree that there are two ways to approach PreVs: the first one is that PreVs can be treated as a single lexical verb followed by a prepositional phrase functioning as an adverbial Arguments supporting this view are based on the fact that we can insert another adverbial between the verb and the preposition In the second approach, both the verb and the preposition are seen as a single unit followed by a noun phrase which acts as the object of V+ preposition Supporters of this idea count on the fact that the combination verb plus preposition functions as a single semantic unit that has idiomatic meaning and, therefore, is replaceable by a simple transitive verb Semantically, PreVs are also polysemous, idiomatic and productive 11The meaning of this kind is believed to have relation with underlying logic of the language and cultural traditions Langacker (1991, cited David, 2002) defend that the vast majority PVs rely at least in part on the literal or aspectual meaning of the particle and thus they can help to figure out figurative meaning 39 Activity – (Exercise 2, P 160) 10 minutes -T asks Ss to the exercise in pairs to complete each of the sentences, using the words in the given box -T goes over the answers with the whole class T S S S S -T calls on some Ss to give their right answers -T corrects the answers with the whole class T S Expected answers 10 minutes in up out round on up down away down 10 on Activity – (Exercise 3, P 160-161) -T asks Ss to the exercise individually to replace the words in brackets with a suitable phrasal verb in the box T S S -T goes over the answers with the whole class -T calls on some Ss to give their right answers T S Expected answers turns up look takes got over after after held up try out went off Consolidaton - T asks Ss to make sentences by using the phrasal (5 minutes) verbs they have learned T S -T asks Ss to practise reading aloud the sentences they have made - T gives the feed back and give the compliments S T S Homework -T asks Ss to prepare for the new lesson T  Ss 40 minutes Period: 90 Unit 15 WOMEN IN SOCIETY Lesson: LANGUAGE FOCUS I Objectives 1.Knowledge By the end of this unit, Ss can: - know some phrasal verbs - Understand new words related to the topic - Master phrasal verbs use 2.Skills - To help learners get started with skills in Unit 15 - Reading: Read about the topic Women in society - Speaking: Exchange opinions about women’s work - Listening: Listen to to a conversation with new words - Writing: Write about advantages and disadvantages of women’s work 3.Educational aims - To provide Ss some motivation - Students are more aware of the roles of women in old and modern society II Methods - Integrated, mainly communicative III Teaching aids - Teacher: tape, board, chalk, textbook - Students: textbook, workbook, pen, pencil… IV Procedures: Class organization:12D1 Old lesson checking - Checking new words in writing section New lesson: 41 Stages/Time Warm-up (7 minutes) Teacher’s Activities Game – Noughts and Crosses -T divides the class into two groups A and B -T draws numbered squares -T asks each group to take turns to choose a number, for each number there is a question form them to answer -The winner will be the group who form three successive noughts or crosses Something that you put up when it’s raining (an umbrella) Something you have to when you look after a baby (lull the baby) A reason to call off a wedding (bad health) A type of food you should keep off if you’re on a diet (cake/fat/meat) Something that you can try on when you can go into a shop (shoes) Something that you should give up if you want your health better (cigarette / wine) Something that you should switch off before you leave the room (lights) Something that you should take off when you enter a pagoda (hat / shoes) Something that you take up if you want to get fit (sports) Lead-in: -T asks Ss a question to lead in the new lesson Students’ Activities T  Ss Ss  Ss S T  Ss Grammar Presentation – Phrasal verbs (continued) (10 minutes) -T elicits the formation of the phrasal verbs [Verbs + Particles (preposition / adverb)]  The particle can come before or after the object T  Ss 42  If the object is a pronoun, it must come before the particle  Some phrasal verbs have an object, but the particle cannot move Example + You should turn off the lights + You should turn the lights off + You should turn them off + She looked after her husband while he was ill + She looked after him T  Ss Practise (10 minutes) T  Ss Activity – (Exercise 1, P 170-171) -T asks Ss to work in pairs to the exercise -T asks Ss to compare the answers with others S S -T asks Ss to read the sentences aloud and check if they are right or wrong -T checks the task with the whole class T  Ss Expected answers glanced invited to listen at to throw .at staring speaking wrote at to to point at Activity – Gap fill (Exercise 2, P 170) 17 minutes -T asks Ss to the exercise in pairs to complete each of the sentences with a suitable preposition -T goes over the answers with the whole class -T calls on some Ss to give their right answers -T corrects the answers with the whole class Expected answers for for to for about about for 10 for Homework -T asks Ss to prepare Unit 16 – READING minutes T S S S S T S T  Ss 43 44 PART C: CONCLUSION Conclusions English two-word verbs are advantageous and challenging, even with learners whose language is closed to English (See Waibel, 2007) Having a knowledge of this type of verb may help learner produce a more natural English, help them understand (especially) spoken English and to be understood But the challenge of two-word verbs often lies in grammatical and semantic characteristics they own Together with numerous number and diverse meaning, the combinations of verb plus particle/ preposition usually take on figurative meanings For these reasons, even though the structure of a verb followed by a particle or preposition does exist in Vietnamese (e.g verb+ vào (in)/ra (out)Aên (up)/xuống (down) as in dựng lên (make up), nghĩ (think about) (See Tran H Manh, 2007: 150- 151) English two-word verbs is always a difficult problem for Vietnamese learners To ease the process of learning English two-word verbs’ meanings, in this study, I narrow the meaning to idiomatic and semi-idiomatic, and to group twoword verbs with seven common verbs into two processes or semantic domains Biber et al (1999:408) said it is not unusual for activity verbs (or material processes) to have secondary meanings in some other domain, and an activity verb tends to refer to both physical and mental activities But looking into the tables, we see that most meanings of material verbs are physical activities The ones with meaning in both material and mental domain are not as many as I expect Interestingly, in both material and mental processes, meanings of a two-word verb in one process tend to be related to one another I consider this facilitate learners in remembering the meanings of two-word verbs Moreover, though the number of two-word verb does not seem to reduce much, the number of their meanings does indeed For example, instead of 122- 126 meanings of PVs with ‘Come’, we only have to deal with 69 ones I hope that it will partially answer the “whichmeaning(s)-should-we-remember-first” that is often asked by English language learners Suggestions for teaching and learning two-word verbs Learners should be cleared up about these special type of English verbs, so that they might pay (though little) attention to them when they come across them in reading or listening The polysemy of two-word verbs really make learners confused, therefore, though most studies ever known suggest we teach multiword verbs by putting them in context; we emphasize the importance of providing Vietnamese equivalents for English two-word verbs, before or after the context given Furthermore, the context of dialogue or paragraph will be better than the sentencecontext Learners should memorize two-word verbs that occur much more 45 frequently than others such as two-word verbs with come, go, make, etc Learners should be made aware of, and have sample exposure to, the multiple meanings that are characteristics of high-frequency English two-word verbs The noted multiplicity of PV senses also confirms the need for language learners to be exposed to these structures in multiple and varied contexts Because the literal meanings of two-word verb can be deduced from its components, and material and mental meanings seem to be over the others, we suggest learners focus their learning on semi- and idiomatic meanings that fall into two major processes: material and mental Suggests for further studies The study suffers from several limitations of which, most are of the method Due to Wordnet 3.0 does not work with PreVs, and does not contain all combination with a particle of a verb (e.g see into, give up, come across ), we have to count all of the two-word verbs ourselves Moreover, it would be better to find more sources of dictionary, especially those of idiomatic meanings only Further studies, therefore, are suggested to employ more effective methodologies to study two-word verbs realizing material and mental processes as well as other processes Besides, I find that in some cases like come from or go ahead, material and mental processes are not as common as relational or behaviour processes How to deal with this could be an interesting matter for anyone interested in English multi-word verbs 46 REFERENCES Biber, D., Johanson, S., Leech, G., Conrad, S., Finegan, E., & Quirk, R (1999) Longman 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London: Macmillan ELT 22 Seidl, J., & McMordie, W (1992) Oxford Pocket English idioms New York: Oxford University Press 23 Stephens, A (2008) The English Phrasal Verb Retrieved 20th May, 2010, from http://www.uncp.edu/home/canada/work/caneng/phrasal.htm 24 Từ điển Anh-Việt (1992) Hà Nội: NXB Khoa hoc xã hội Hà Nội 25 Waibel, B (2007) Phrasal Verbs in Learner English: A Corpus Based Study of German and Italian Students Unpublished M.A 26 Weiss, D., & Chamielec, G z (2008) Modeling the Frequency of Phrasal Verbs Paper presented at the Proceedings of the International multiconference on computer science and information technology Electronic sources http://www.towson.edu/ows/prepositions.htm http://www.eflnet.com/pverbs/particles.php http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/WhatIsAParticle.htm http://www.orau.gov/cdcynergy/demo/Content/activeinformation/tools/toolscon tent/quantiati vemethods.htm 48 TABLES OF CONTENTS PART A: INTRODUCTION 1.Rationale of the study 2.Aims of the study 3.Research questions 4.Scope of the study .3 5.Method of the study .4 6.Design of the study 1.1.Two word verbs 1.1.1Definition of PVs and PreVs 49 1.1.1.1PVs .5 1.1.1.2PreVs 1.1.1.3Particles .6 1.1.1.3.1Definition and classification 1.1.1.3.2Characteristics of particles .7 1.1.1.3.3Particles vs prepositions 1.1.2Syntactic and semantic characteristics of PVs and PreVs .8 2.1.2.1Syntactic and semantic characteristics of PVs 2.1.2.2Syntactic and semantic characteristics of PreVs 10 1.1.2.3Comparison of PVs and PreVs 11 50 1.1.2.3.1Similarities 11 1.1.2.3.2Dissimilarities 11 1.2.Process types 12 1.2.1Overview of process types 12 1.2.2Material processes 13 1.2.3Mental processes 16 1.2.4Material vs mental processes 16 CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY .19 2.1Data collection instrument 19 2.2.Corpus choice 19 51 2.3.Data Analyses 20 2.4.The selection and extraction of two-word verbs 22 CHAPTER 3: ENGLISH TWO-WORD VERBS DENOTING MATERIAL AND MENTAL 25 PROCESSES AND VIETNAMSESE EQUIVALENTS 25 3.3 GO 32 3.7 THINK 36 Skills 37 Educational aims 37 II Methods 37 III Teaching aids 37 52 IV Procedures: 38 Class organization:12D1 38 2.Skills 40 3.Educational aims .40 II Methods 40 IV Procedures: 40 PART C: CONCLUSION .44 1.Conclusions .44 2.Suggestions for teaching and learning two-word verbs 44 3.Suggests for further studies .45 53 REFERENCES .46 Electronic sources 47 TABLES OF CONTENTS 48 ... some common English two- word verbs denoting material and mental processes and find their Vietnamese equivalents; To suggest some recommendations for teaching and learning two- word verbs Research... two- word verbs denoting material and mental processes? What are recommendations to the teachers and pupils of Cua Lo High School for teaching and learning two- word verbs? Scope of the study... Thin k — 14 — 10 — 17 Note: 32 —1 52: 32 combinations and 1 52 meanings In which, (24 /8) ( 126 /26 ) 24 PVs (with 126 meanings) and PreVs (with 26 meanings) The three sources differ somewhat in the