The Effect of Instructing Multi-word Verbs on EAP Learners’ Presentation Skills: A Comparison with Native Academic Presentations

Abstract

This study attempted to examine the effect of instructing multi-word verbs on intermediate EAP learners’ presentations compared to native English speakers’ academic presentations. To fulfill this end, 15 EAP learners were selected and delivered on presentation before and one after seven teaching sessions. Moreover, 15 native academic presentations were downloaded from YouTube. All the presentations were transcribed and then multi-word verbs were classified according to the coding measures presented by Biber at al. (1999) and Quirk et al. (1985) to disambiguate between the three chosen sub-categories of the study (phrasal verbs, prepositional verbs, phrasal prepositional verbs). The results obtained from this investigation reveal that there are significant differences in using multi-word verbs in natives and learners’ presentations after treatment in terms of the preferred order, polysemy usage and the frequency. Although EAP learners were able to improve their use of these verbs in many aspects, they still differed from natives with respect to the preferred types and polysemous meanings of the verbs. The findings of this study have implications for EAP speaking classes, teachers, and learners.