A Study On The Effects Of Concept-based Instruction On Junior High School Students’ Learning Of English Phrasal Verbs

Due to the polysemy and obscure semantics of phrasal verbs(verbs + praticle words),they are one of the barriers for English learners to reach the target language level.English phrasal verb instruction has been under much attention.The teaching of phrasal verbs has always been based on rote learning,which leads to low learning efficiency,students’ lack of interest and inability to truly understand the meaning of phrasal verbs.Researchers have carried out different teaching experiments in English classroom teaching in the hope of improving the effectiveness of teaching English phrasal verbs.In addition,previous studies on Concept-Based Instruction have been conducted basically for college students,and few studies have been conducted for middle school students.Therefore,this study examines the effects of Concept-Based Instruction on junior high school students’ phrasal verbs learning,which will also provide some teaching experiences for secondary school English teachers.Based on the Concept-Based Instruction,in this study,phrasal verbs associated with the particle up,down,in,and out were taught to junior high school students.The study aimed to answer the following two questions.(1)Does Concept-Based Instruction have an effect on students’ learning of phrasal verbs? If so,in what specific ways?(2)Which student levels(i.e.,high,middle and low,according to students’ phrasal verb proficiency)can exert the effect of Concept-Based Instruction on the students’ learning of phrasal verbs?This study was conducted with two junior high parallel classes of students in X Middle School in Pu’er,Yunnan Province,in which the experimental class was taught by the Concept-Based Instruction and the control class was taught by the traditional presentation-practice-production(PPP)teaching model.The research process was divided into three parts.In the pre-experimental stage,students’ pre-test scores of phrasal verbs were collected,and students’ English learning conditions were collected through personal profile questionnaire.After four weeks of instruction,the author administered a post-test to all participants,and nine participants from the experimental group were selected for semi-structured interviews.SPSS 25.0 was the main tool for analyzing the data.The results of this study showed that: 1)the Concept-Based Instruction had a positive effect on junior high school students’ English phrasal verb ability;in terms of specific dimensions,the Concept-Based Instruction significantly improved students’ memory and comprehension of phrasal verbs.2)Regarding the effect of the Concept-Based Instruction on students with different phrasal verb levels,overall,students in the low level group had the most significant improvement effect,followed by the high level group,and the effect was not significant in the middle level group.Accordingly,this study makes suggestions for the instruction of the Concept-Based Instruction to English phrasal verbs in junior high school,and offers prospects for future research.