Linguistics

A PILOT STUDY IN LEARNING ENGLISH PHRASAL VERBS

by Yunseong Cheon B.A., Korea University, 2000 M.A., The Academy of Korean Studies, 2002

Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Linguistics with specialization in Applied Linguistics

University of Pittsburgh 2006

UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH FACULTY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES

This thesis was presented by Yunseong Cheon

It was defended on July 28, 2006 and approved by Alan Juffs, Associate Professor, Department of Linguistics Dawn McCormick, Lecturer, Department of Linguistics Claire B. Siskin, Lecturer, Department of Linguistics Thesis Director: Dr. Alan Juffs, Associate Professor, Department of Linguistics

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Copyright © by Yunseong Cheon 2006

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A PILOT STUDY IN LEARNING ENGLISH PHRASAL VERBS Yunseong Cheon, M.A. University of Pittsburgh, 2006

This paper investigates the effect of learning conditions on phrasal verbs in adult ESL learners. It aims to find more effective learning conditions for phrasal verbs taking into account the influence of proficiency and the learner’s first language. The study, which was designed as an experimental study, includes the following procedures: a pre-test/treatment/post-test. The experiment was conducted using Arabic and Korean learners, and they were divided into two proficiency levels (high and low levels) according to the results of the pre-test. The interaction between the learning condition (translation versus context), the proficiency level, and first language was studied. The semantic properties of phrasal verbs (transparent versus idiomatic phrasal verbs) were also examined. The study suggests that the context learning condition was more beneficial to Arabic participants whereas the translation learning condition was more beneficial to Korean participants.

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