CC BY
8Ядронова А.А.
Студентка ИИЯ (Институт иностранных языков) РУДН (Российский университет дружбы народов).
Нагорнова Е.В.
Кандидат филологических наук, доцент кафедры теории и практики иностранных языков ИИЯ (Институт иностранных языков) РУДН (Российский университет дружбы народов).
Эффективность усвоения фразовых глаголов выпускниками общеобразовательных учреждений*
Yadronova A.A.
Student, Institute of Foreign Languages, Peoples' Friendship University of Russia.
Nagornova E.V.
Candidate of Philology, Associate Professor of the Department of Theory and Practice of Foreign Languages, IFL (Institute of Foreign Languages), Peoples' Friendship University of Russia.
Effectiveness of mastering phrasal verbs by general educational institution graduates
Публикация выполнена при поддержке Программы стратегического академического лидерства РУДН.
Introduction
Phrasal verbs are an important part of the English language. Being concise and expressive, they make speech more accurate, explain many everyday concepts most clearly and concisely, and provide a kind of language economy. (N.V. Avdevich) Different exams that test knowledge of English as a foreign language include the tasks with phrasal verbs. Their effective usage confirms a
© Ядронова А.А., Нагорнова Е.В., 2023.
high level of knowledge of the language. The substitution of phrasal verbs by other units in those contexts where they are required by the communicative situation makes speech sparse and less expressive. Native speakers of English often use phrasal verbs in everyday speech, that fact makes the study of these units necessary even for the learners of the pre-intermediate and elementary level of language proficiency. The first acquaintance with phrasal verbs takes place at the elementary stage of language learning; phrasal verbs are included in the program of many English textbooks. The American scientist R. Dixon says that the speech of a foreigner who does not use phrasal verbs will be "awkward and ordinary", even if all the rules of grammar are followed. (Robert J Dixson) This fact, as well as the fact that the study of phrasal verbs is a mandatory part of all English language programs, prompted us to conduct the following study.
Today, the problem is clearly visible in English language teaching: the study of phrasal verbs is given less and less attention. The textbooks do not pay enough attention to the study of these language units. When graduating from the secondary educational institutions, students do not have confident knowledge of this language phenomenon. At the same time, the study of phrasal verbs is always connected with increased complexity of tasks, especially at the beginning of language learning. As G. V. Nevzorova notes, "The use of these phraseological units presents a certain difficulty, but after a while, students begin to speak as native speakers and speech readiness increases." (G.V. Nevzorova)
According to a group of researchers A.S. Ignatieva, V.V. Kalinina, Zh.G. Songolova, the reluctance or inability to use phrasal verbs in speech can be psychologically explained by the influence of the native language. So, for example, Russian-speaking students, whose native language does not have a phenomenon similar to English phrasal verbs, almost always strive to find in English a one-word equivalent to a Russian verb. (A.S. Ignatieva)
Research objectives
This study is conducted to determine the most successful strategy for mastering and using phrasal verbs in speech. As a hypothesis of the study, it was assumed that a selective survey of linguistic department students where open-ended questions are used would help to most accurately determine what causes difficulties in mastering phrasal verbs; subsequently a successful methodology for the phrasal verbs learning and mastering can be offered.
Methodology
In the course of the study, 38 first-year students of the linguistic department of Peoples' Friendship University of Russia were offered a text in the format of a phone dialogue. First-year students with an average level of knowledge of English B1 were selected as respondents, and the study was conducted at the beginning of the academic year, so that respondents could rely only on their knowledge gained during their studies in general educational institutions (schools, gymnasiums,
lyceums). The communicative situation implied the use of phrasal verbs. The students had to choose one of three options for translating a phrase from Russian into English. Three phrases were given as answer options: one containing a phrasal verb used correctly; one containing a phrasal verb used incorrectly; one containing a literal translation or a synonymous construction, without the use of a phrasal verb. The task to choose a phrasal verb was not set, the purpose of the study was not announced to the respondents in order to make the survey as close as possible to the real communicative situation. The question was: "How would you translate?" It allowed students to choose any option from the offered ones. The aim of the study was to find out with what frequency students independently make a choice about the need to use a phrasal verb.
The sample from the activity offered to the students:
9. Как-то раз я встретился с ней на улице, мы хорошо поговорили.
a) I met her once in the street, we had a good conversation.
b) I ran across her once in the street, we had a good conversation.
c) I ran on her once in the street, we had a good conversation.
Next, the respondents were asked to complete a questionnaire in which their educational background was determined. Subsequently, the obtained data were subjected to statistical analysis.
Results and Findings
As a result of the survey, it turned out that students chose the use of a phrasal verb and used it correctly only in 31.64% of cases. In other cases, an incorrect variant was chosen, or a synonymous construction without the use of a phrasal verb.
The study found that those students who studied English in small groups (10-15 people, or only individually with a tutor) are 10% more likely to use phrasal verbs. (Students who noted that they studied English in small groups used the phrasal verb correctly in 36% of the tasks, while students who studied the language in a class of 30 people chose the correct phrasal verb only in 26.36% of cases).
The issue of individual lessons was also investigated. 74% of respondents noted that they studied English individually with a tutor. However, there was no positive relation between individual lessons and the use of phrasal verbs when translating the sentences into English. On the contrary, students who noted that they did not study English individually chose phrasal verbs 10% more often. It can be assumed that individual classes had another goal - the successful results in the Unified State Examination or the Basic State Examination in English. During the preparation, the emphasis was placed on the implementation of a certain format of tasks. Phrasal verbs are actively involved in few tasks in these exams, which do not give many points. Their study and training, on the contrary, is extremely time-consuming and requires serious concentration and constant practice, as well as improving of knowledge after some time. In any case, it is impossible to draw a conclusion about the direct connection between individual
lessons and the use of phrasal verbs when translating into English.
The respondents were also asked the question:
"Did the place (institution) where you studied English pay special attention to the topic of phrasal verbs?"
38 participants were asked this question. 14 respondents answered "yes", 15 answered "no", and 9 could not decide exactly, giving answers "sometimes", "not really", "almost", etc. Here, it was not possible to establish any links between the choice of a phrasal verb and the answer to this question either. The respondents who ticked "yes" on average chose correct phrasal verbs in 28.93% of the cases, and students who answered "no" chose phrasal verbs on average in 39% of the cases. The contradictory results can be explained by the fact that the students who answered "no" somehow encountered phrasal verbs and learned them at the level of passive possession. Students who studied phrasal verbs mastered them insufficiently.
Any course series contains a minimum number of exercises for phrasal verbs, which is not enough for high-quality mastering and usage of these units as active lexical units. For this reason, as it can be seen, the topic "phrasal verbs" requires more detailed study in all teaching materials; it is one of the most complex and poorly developed. In the reviewed teaching materials, the topic "phrasal verbs" is placed in a separate grammatical reference book with exercises, which is often not used as a component of the teaching materials.
The following figures were a direct confirmation of the need for further methodological study of this topic - out of 38 respondents 24 did not receive a complete understanding of how to use phrasal verbs during their studies at school, since, according to them, no special attention was paid to this topic.
As for the types of activities to study phrasal verbs at school, the respondents were asked to mark those that were used in their educational institution. The most popular answer was the option "lists were learnt by heart", it was noted by 22 people, which is 58% of respondents. The following is a comparative table on various activities of studying phrasal verbs.
Table 1.
Type of learning activity Number of respondents Percentage of phrasal verbs correct usage
Read examples with phrasal verbs, translated, wrote out 5 30,6
Performed various exercises for practicing phrasal verbs (filling in the gaps, replacing a verb with a phrasal verb, etc.) 6 31,5
Only learnt lists by heart 7 33,43
Performed various learning activities 15 29,4
Nothing 5 43,2
From the table, we can conclude that 5 people who noted that they "did not" study phrasal verbs at school showed the highest percentage of using phrasal verbs. We can explain this by some extra activities after school, watching films in English, communicating with foreigners in social networks, listening to music etc. Another important point that we would like to emphasize is that the highest percentage of the use of phrasal verbs, excluding the option "no activities", was shown by those who noted that they only learnt lists of phrasal verbs by heart. As a result, we can say that learning lists of different units by heart, drilling them are the most effective methods of working with phrasal verbs because they do not require any special preparation from teachers, can be organized spontaneously.
The influence of school textbooks on the percentage of correct use of phrasal verbs was also investigated. The results of this study are shown in the table 2.
Table 2.
Course series Number of respondents Percent of phrasal verbs correct usage
Series "English" (O.V. Afanasyeva, I.V. Miheeva) 3 24
Series "English" (I.N. Vereschagina, L.F. Bondarenko, T. A. Pritikina) 5 27
Series "Starlight" (K.V. Baranova, J. Dooley, V.V. Kopi-lova, V. Evans, R. Milrood) 9 28
Series "Enjoy English" (M.Z. Biboletova, O.A. Denisenko, N.N. Trubaneva) 7 32,14
Series "Rainbow English" (O.V. Afanasyeva, I.V. Miheeva) 5 34,2
Series "Spotlight" (N.I. Bikova, J. Dooley, M.D. Pospelova) 20 34,2
Series "FORWARD" (Ed. M.V. Verbitskaya) 4 36
The highest percentage of phrasal verbs usage was shown by those students whose curriculum was based on series FORWARD, series Spotlight, series Rainbow English. At the same time, series Spotlight proved to be the most popular in secondary educational institutions in Russia.
Conclusion
According to the results of this study, it becomes clear that today the issue of studying phrasal verbs is one of the weakest points in the school curriculum concerning English as the school subject. The respondents on average answered 4 of the questions requiring the phrasal verbs usage out of 11 correctly; it is an extremely low figure. From the results of the survey, it becomes clear that in comprehensive schools with national curriculum in teaching English, the topic of phrasal verbs is not paid enough attention, and this is one of the most difficult
topics which is essential for good knowledge of a foreign language. We believe that learning phrasal verbs is a productive endeavor for any language learner, as it will directly contribute to their communicative competence in English.
It can be assumed that memorizing lists of phrasal verbs at the moment is indeed the most effective way to study them, since often the semantic load of a preposition that is a part of a phrasal verb is not clear to a Russian-speaking student, and sometimes a literal translation of a phrasal verb can be "a false friend" of a translator and leads to false conclusions.
In conclusion, we would like to note that at the moment there is no ideal methodology for studying phrasal verbs. A scrupulous approach to this topic and the development of new methods for studying this linguistic phenomenon are needed. The assumption is that explicit vocabulary teaching in teaching multiword units is beneficial.
The recommendations which could be offered and developed further are:
- a teacher should start by introducing phrasal verbs slowly, defining their construction and giving examples of phrasal verbs for the students to memorize (J. Soller, D. Thom);
- then it is necessary to teach the students how to use context clues to pick out phrasal verbs for themselves; the class can be tested with a variety of activities to see how well they are learning the concept;
- since there are so many phrasal verbs, grouping similar ones together can helps students learn better. People learn better with patterns than with random selections. Picking out groups of phrasal verbs that begin with the same word, for example, is a good way to organize the phrases;
- the best way to work with phrasal verbs is not just to give a list of them to remember but to involve students in games, use realia from their lives (C. Pesce);
- it is right to start from the very beginning and teach plenty of phrasal verbs at the elementary level, in the context of general vocabulary teaching. It is a mistake to try to start teaching hundreds of them all together at higher levels.
Библиографический список / Reference
[1] Avdevich N.V. Teaching students to use English phrasal verbs in the language of professional communication.
Bulletin of the Moscow State Linguistic University. Education and pedagogical sciences. 2020. № 1 (834). // URL:https://cyberleninka.ru/article/n/obuchenie-studentov-ispolzovaniyu-angliyskih-frazovyh-glagolov-v-yazyke-professionalnogo-obscheniya (12.18.2022).
[2] Dixson R.J. Essential Idioms in English. - N.Y.: Regents, 1951.
[3] Nevzorova G.V. Some aspects of teaching and using phraseological units, idioms and phrasal verbs in English //
Education and Law. 2020. № 1. // URL: https://cyberleninka.ru/article/n/nekotorye-aspekty-prepodavaniya-i-ispolzovaniya-frazeologizmov-idiom-i-frazovyh-glagolov-v-angliyskom-yazyke (12.18.2022).
[4] Ignatieva A. S., Kalinina V.V., Songolova Zh.G. Typical mistakes when using English phrasal verbs // Philo-
logical Sciences. Questions of theory and practice. 2017. №3-3 (69). // URL: https://cyberleninka.ru/article/n/ tipichnye-oshibki-pri-ispolzovanii-angliyskih-frazovyh-glagolov (12.18.2022).
[5] Soller J. Learn Phrasal Verbs. June 10, 2014 // URL: http://jimmyesl.com/esl-teaching-methods/phrasal-verbs/ (05.09.2022)
[6] Thom D. A Cognitive Linguistic Approach to Phrasal Verbs: A Teacher's Guide (2017). Honors Senior Theses/
Projects. 139. // URL: https://digitalcommons.wou.edu/honors_theses/139
[7] Pesce C. How to Teach Phrasal Verbs // URL: http://busyteacher.org/8138-how-to-teach-phrasal-verbs.html (11.11.2022)
Ядронова А.А.
Студентка ИИЯ (Институт иностранных языков) РУДН (Российский университет дружбы народов).
Нагорнова Е.В.
Кандидат филологических наук, доцент кафедры теории и практики иностранных языков ИИЯ (Институт иностранных языков) РУДН (Российский университет дружбы народов).
Эффективность усвоения фразовых глаголов выпускниками общеобразовательных учреждений Аннотация. Исследование посвящено проблеме изучения фразовых глаголов в учебных программах общеобразовательных учреждений. За последние сорок-пятьдесят лет было проведено множество исследований, направленных на анализ идиоматических форм, таких как фразовые глаголы. Однако эти новые теории не проникли в педагогическую практику. На сегодняшний день не произошло существенных изменений в подходах к обучению идиоматическим выражениям, таким как фразовые глаголы. Полученные данные показывают, насколько часто студенты первого курса лингвистического факультета используют фразовые глаголы при переводе контекстов, требующих употребления фразовых глаголов, с русского языка на английский. Подчеркивается необходимость уделять больше внимания наиболее частотным единицам английского языка, то есть фразовым глаголам, а также внимание сфокусировано на необходимости нахождения новых способов работы с фразовыми глаголами.
Ключевые слова: английские фразовые глаголы, учебный процесс, трудности освоения, обучение английскому языку.
Yadronova A.A.
Student, Institute of Foreign Languages, Peoples' Friendship University of Russia.
Nagornova E.V.
Candidate of Philology, Associate Professor of the Department of Theory and Practice of Foreign Languages, IFL (Institute of Foreign Languages), Peoples' Friendship University of Russia.
Effectiveness of mastering phrasal verbs by general educational institution graduates Abstract. The research is devoted to the problem of studying phrasal verbs in the curriculum of educational institutions. Over the last forty-fifty years, there has been an amount of research aimed at analyzing idiomatic forms like phrasal verbs. Yet, these new theories have failed to penetrate the pedagogical practices. To this day, there has been no significant change in teaching approaches to idiomatic expressions like phrasal verbs. The obtained data show how often first-year students of a linguistic department use phrasal verbs when translating the contexts which require phrasal verb usage from Russian into English. The necessity to pay more attention to the most frequent multi-word units in English that is the phrasal verb is underlined as well as the importance to unpack new ways of approaching phrasal verbs.
Key words: English phrasal verbs, educational process, learning difficulties, teaching English.
