A Corpus-based Study on the use of Phrasal Verbs in Malaysian Secondary School Textbooks

Ainul Azmin Md Zamin,Faizah Abd Majid,Mahmoud Elfeky,Rafidah Kamarudin

doi:10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.8n.6p.76

Abstract

Phrasal verbs (PVs) are one of the most notoriously puzzling aspects of English language instruction. Despite their difficulty and idiosyncrasies, they are of high relevance for ESL/EFL learners because mastery of PVs is often equated with language proficiency. Different from prior researches, this content analysis study seeks to identify the PVs used in the Malaysian upper secondary school textbooks and the frequency count of each PV in each textbook using a corpus linguistic approach. The most frequently PVs in each textbook were compared to the list provided by Biber et al (1999)’s Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English corpus. Findings from this study revealed that the selection and presentation of these combinations in the secondary school textbooks used in Malaysia depended more on authors’ intuition rather than on empirical findings and pedagogical principles. There were no clear explanations of Phrasal Verbs in both textbooks that were analysed. Despite the large number of PVs in the corpus, their presentation in the textbooks was far from satisfactory with some being over-repeated at the expense of some others. This paper makes a few suggestions to further improve the present treatment of PVs in the textbooks used at upper secondary schools in Malaysia. It is suggested that accurate definitions and appropriate selection and presentation of PVs should be considered. Rather than relying on intuition, Malaysian textbook writers must consider integrating the use of corpus into their selection of PVs to be presented to students.

Highlights

By the end of the past century, it has become evident that multi-word items have pedagogical value for ESL/EFL learners
Findings from this study revealed that the selection and presentation of these combinations in the secondary school textbooks used in Malaysia depended more on authors’ intuition rather than on empirical findings and pedagogical principles
Many of the Phrasal verbs (PVs) presented to learners are not carefully defined and clearly explained with good examples of PVs

Summary

Introduction

By the end of the past century, it has become evident that multi-word items (hereafter MWIs) have pedagogical value for ESL/EFL learners. Multi-word items, chunks or prefabs is a sequence of two or more words which semantically (constitute a meaningful, inseparable unit (Moon, 1997). To continue the linguistic research, many ELT materials writers have included a lot of MWIs into their reference materials. Many studies argue that ELT texts writers are adopting a pragmatic approach as they rely on their intuition, experience, and common sense. The selection and presentation of many MWIs is not based on empirical studies. Most coursebook writers do not differentiate between coursebook and syllabus which may be problematic for ESL learners (Sinclair & Renouf, 1988)

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