Филологические науки / 3.Теоретические и методологические проблемы  исследования языка

Latanova R.U., Vodzinskaya M.

L.N.Gumilyov Eurasian National University, Astana, Kazakhstan

Some difficulties in learning phrasal verbs

Phrasal verbs are considered to be a very important and frequently occurring feature of the English language. First of all, they are so common in every- day conversation, and non-native speakers who wish to sound natural when speaking this language need to learn their grammar in order to know how to produce them correctly. Secondly, the habit of inventing phrasal verbs has been the source of great enrichment of the language. By means of phrasal verbs it is described the greatest variety of human actions and relations. So people can be taken up, taken down, taken off, taken in or one can keep in with people, one can set people up or down, or hit people off. So there is hardly any action or attitude of one human being to another which cannot be expressed by means of these phrasal verbs [3.16].

Most English language learners find phrasal verbs quite difficult. There are various reasons for this from the fact that they don't exist in their language to the myriad of meanings that one phrasal verb can appear to have. And what makes it worse is that many phrasal verbs have a metaphorical meaning that makes them hard to decipher, hard to remember and very difficult to produce when needed. Many learners tend to avoid them, and we all know that they are quite prevalent in the language, especially in speech. In surveys of what students feel they need to be more proficient in the language, phrasal verbs usually rank quite high [4.2].

It is often said that phrasal verbs tend to be rather colloquial or informal and more appropriate to spoken English than written, and even that it is better to avoid them and choose single - word equivalents or synonyms instead. Yet in many cases phrasal verbs and their synonyms have different ranges of use, meaning, or collocation, so that a single - word synonym cannot be substituted appropriately for a phrasal verb. Single - word synonyms are often much more formal in style than phrasal verbs, so that they seem out of place in many contexts, and students using them run the risk of sounding pompous or just unnatural.

Phrasal verbs make up one-third of the English verb vocabulary. There are approximately 12 000 phrasal verbs in English language. But there is no universal definition of phrasal verb. Longman Dictionary (1991) of phrasal verbs defines phrasals as "idiomatic combination of a verb and adverb, or a verb and preposition (or verb with both adverb and preposition)" [1.15].

According to the definition provided by Heaton (1985) "phrasal verbs are compound verbs that result from combining a verb with an adverb or a preposition, the resulting compound verb being idiomatic" [5.155].

By “phrasal verb” Jane Povey (1990) means a combination of an “ordinary” (one-word) verb (e.g. come, give, put) and an adverbial or prepositional particle (e.g. in, off, up), or sometimes both, which constitutes a single semantic and syntactic unit. Examples: come in = enter and give up = stop doing, where the particle is adverbial; come across = find by chance and look after = take care of, where the particle is prepositional; and put up with = tolerate, where the first is adverbial and the second is prepositional [6.16].

According to Longman grammar of spoken and written English (2003) phrasal verbs are multi-word units consisting of a verb followed by an adverbial particle (e.g. carry out, find out, or pick up). These adverbial particles all have core spatial or locative meanings (e.g. out, in, up, down, on), however, they are commonly used with extended meanings. In contrast, prepositional verbs consist of a verb followed by a preposition, such as look at, talk about, listen to. Phrasal - prepositional verbs contain both an adverbial particle and a preposition, as in get away with [7.214].

Learners of English perceive phrasal verbs as a difficult feature of the English language. The following is a list of the most commonly occurring errors which learners of English appear to make in the use of phrasal verbs.

- choosing the wrong verb (e.g. being hung up by the traffic instead of held up by the traffic)

- choosing the wrong particle (e.g. hand out instead of hand over)

- the use of incorrect grammar (e.g. the electricity cut off, instead of the electricity was cut off)

- the overuse of less frequent forms (e.g. hang up the phone is used more by learners than hang up, even though the opposite would appear to be true for native speakers)

- incorrect collocating grammar (e.g. give up with smoking instead of give up smoking, or give up the idea to have children instead of give up the idea of having children)

- restricted use, showing a general lack of confidence in the use of phrasal verbs (e.g. a reluctance to split the verb from its particle -hang up your coat is preferred to hang your coat up, even though the latter is perfectly acceptable and appears to be more usual) [2.698-699].

This area of English phrasal verbs teaching was always difficult for both: teachers and students. It is necessary to avoid studying of phrasal verbs in the form of long lists of phrasal verbs (in general, the simple list of words doesn't cause imagination to work and is a bad method of studying of any dictionary unit).

Despite a number of the mistakes made in the process of studying these lexical units, there are many different ways of their successful acquisition. Sometimes it is possible to guess the meaning of a phrasal verb easily (for example: to sit down). But in the most cases its meaning strongly differs from the meaning of a verb from which it is formed. Therefore modern teachers search for the new methods to facilitate the process of assimilation of these verbs. We can use different activities to remember these verbs as the following game. Teacher divides the class into two groups and prepares a lot of cards with verbs and particles for every group and then mixes the cards. The task for students is to use correct collocations of phrasal verbs, and after that explain the meaning. Obviously, it's crucial to add some playful notes in the teaching process and try to teach this difficult material creatively.

References:

1. Longman Dictionary of Phrasal Verbs: Longman Publishing House, 1991. – p.15

2. Glennis Pye, Don't Give up, Look it up! Defining Phrasal Verbs for the Learner of English. Cambridge University Press, 2011. – p.1

3. Andreea-Rosalia Olteanu. A holistic approach to phrasal verbs, Editura Sfântul Ierarh Nicolae, 2012. - p. 16

4. Ken Lackman. Teaching Phrasal Verbs Activities Promoting a Strategic Approach, 2012. - p. 2

5. Heaton, J. B. Prepositions and Adverbial Particles. Hong Kong: Peninsula Press, 1985- p. 155

6. Povey, J. М. Phrasal Verbs and How To Use Them: Высшая школа, Москва.1990. - p. 16

7. Douglas Biber, Susan Conrad, Geoffrey Leech. Longman Student Grammar of Spoken and Written English. – 2003. - p. 214