A Corpus-based Study On Chinese EFL Learners’ Acquisition Of English Phrasal Verbs

Phrasal verbs (abbreviated as PV), generally defined as combinations of verbswith adverbial or prepositional particles, have drawn considerable attention and beenone of the major concerns in the field of linguistics and second language acquisitionstudies. Since the complexity and popularity of phrasal verbs as well as the negativetransfer of the mother tongue, phrasal verbs have posed great difficulties for ChineseEFL learners. Therefore, it is necessary for researchers to study the acquisition ofphrasal verbs by Chinese EFL learners. Although previous studies on phrasal verbshave provided us with much enlightenment, most of them lack sufficient authenticdata from Chinese learners and native speakers. Therefore, the present study aims toexplore how Chinese EFL learners use phrasal verbs based on the learner corpora(CLEC, SWECCL and COLSEC). The L2corpus (COCA) and L1corpus (CCL) arealso used for reference purpose.The study firstly finds out the ten most frequently used phrasal verbs in thelearner corpora. Focusing on the ten phrasal verbs, the author thoroughly investigatesthe colligational and collocational patterns in Chinese EFL learners’ use of phrasalverbs. It is found that Chinese EFL learners use phrasal verbs much differently fromnative speakers in terms of colligational and collocational patterns. The incompetenceof Chinese learners’ use of phrasal verbs is identified and factors contributing to theincompetence are explored. The learners’ colligational incompetence, mainly reflectedin colligational deficiency, colligational gap and colligational mistakes, and thelearners’ collocational inappropriateness, mainly manifested in collocational deviation,collocational confusion, and collocational mistakes are fully illustrated.On the basis of the findings, the present study presents the following pedagogicalimplications: firstly, corpus resources can be used for reference in PV teaching andlearning; secondly, PV entries of English teaching materials should be listed incontext; thirdly, the colligational and collocational awareness of both teachers andstudents should be raised; finally, English teachers should provide their students withadequate phrasal verb input and opportunities of output.