Conceptual motivation as a tool for raising language awareness in the English as a foreign language classroom – Does it enhance learning outcomes? Insights from an empirical study

Abstract

Abstract This paper presents the results of an empirical study on phrasal verbs with to come, to give, to go, to get, and to take and up, down, out as complements. Presuming that in many instances the overall meaning of PVs cannot be adequately inferred from the senses of their constituent parts (e.g., to make up for ⇒ to compensate), it is hypothesized that raising awareness for the underlying conceptual motivation of the verbs and the particles helps learners study PVs more efficiently. A quasi-experimental field study including a pre-/post-test design with both an experimental group (EG) and a control group (CG) was conducted in an authentic secondary school context in Germany. The participants were higher track ninth graders with L1 German. The corpus of PVs, the time of instruction (3 × 45 minutes) and the text material the students worked with were identical over both groups. Yet, only in the EG the students worked on the conceptual motivations of PVs. Different theoretical strands were used as a resource to develop CL-inspired teaching material (Mahpeykar and Tyler 2014; Rudzka-Ostyn 2003; Tyler and Evans 2003). The studies investigated a) the effect of CL-methods on retention and b) the transfer of CL insights to novel PVs. With regard to retention, the study could not statistically prove an advantage for the EG. However, statistical evidence was found that the EG outperformed the CG significantly on transfer ( p < .05).