| Phrasal verbs are ubiquitously used in the English language which have been one of the major issues in the field of linguistics as well as second language acquisition studies. EFL learners need the ability to understand and produce English phrasal verbs, which is a requisite for an adequate master of the English language. However, English phrasal verbs are generally considered as a difficult linguistic item for EFL learners. The avoidance of English phrasal verbs by EFL learners is pervasive in their second language acquisition. Although many previous studies on the avoidance of English phrasal verbs have provided us with much enlightenment, few of them focus on the Chinese EFL learners in junior middle school. Thus, the present study aims to explore whether Chinese junior middle school students avoid using English phrasal verbs. And efforts are made to probe into the factors and possible innate reasons that might affect junior middle school students’avoidance behavior. Consequently, some constructive pedagogical suggestions on English phrasal verb teaching are presented for English instructors.The empirical based study is proposed from two perspectives:the cross linguistic influence theory and the conceptual metaphor theory. The participants are 90 people, divided into three groups:the advanced group, the intermediate group and English native speaker group. The advanced group and the intermediate group are each 40 students in grade eight from four randomly selected parallel classes in Weinan Junior Middle School in Weinan city, Shaanxi. Also,10 English native speakers serve as controls of the study, who are graduate students in their first year from Monash university majoring in journalism and communication in Australia.The research procedure includes a pilot study and a main study. The pilot study is conducted to investigate the validity of the two tests involved in the main study. The instruments in the main study are two elicitation tests (a multiple choice test and a translation test) and a questionnaire. The two tests are the same 15 items of the literal and figurative phrasal verbs based on the Junior Middle School English Syllabus and native-speakers’preference in the context of small dialogues borrowed from Liao and Fukuya’s study (2004). The questionnaire is a supplement involving 11 items to further investigate the avoidance of English phrasal verbs by junior middle school students. For the advanced group,20 take the multiple choice test and 20 the translation test. Similarly for the intermediate group. The 10 native speakers only take the multiple choice test for the limited Chinese proficiency level and the possible effect on the further data-collecting procedure. Data are analyzed with SPSS 16.0. The present study focuses on the following aspects:the existence of English phrasal verb avoidance by junior middle school students; the three factors on their avoidance behaviors (proficiency level variation, phrasal verb types and test types); analysis of possible innate causes on the avoidance behavior.Based on the data analysis, the results of the study indicate the presence of avoidance of English phrasal verbs by junior middle school students compared with the English native speakers and show that there is a negative correlation between students’ English proficiency level and their avoidance behaviors. Besides, different phrasal verb types (literal phrasal verbs and figurative phrasal verbs) and different test types (the multiple-choice test and the translation test) have significantly different influence on their avoidance of English phrasal verbs and possible innate causes for their avoidance of English phrasal verbs, including the structural differences between English and Chinese, the semantic difficulty of phrasal verbs and the lack of exposure to positive input, are also proposed. Based on the above findings, the author presents the following pedagogical implications:teach phrasal verbs in context; instill the sense of metaphor in students; improve students’ knowledge of phrasal verbs and provide sufficient input and opportunities of output. |
