Study On Effect Of Input Frequency And Semantic Transparency On Chunk-based Phrasal Verb Learning For Chinese Non-English Majors

Phrasal verbs are also multi-words verbs. A phrasal verb is a verb followed by an adverb or a preposition or both of them, and then forms the whole meaning which is mostly different from the respective meaning of its components. They function as a single lexical unit, the meaning of the combinations manifestly cannot be predicted from the meaning of the verb and the particle in isolation. As a result of the nature of phrasal verbs, it is difficult for Chinese college students to learn and use. So it is necessary to investigate the lexical aspects and semantic properties of phrasal verbs in order to provide theoretical reference for the reformation and development of English teaching. The present study focuses on the mode of phrasal verb learning, and the considerably important factors such as frequency and semantic transparence, which significantly influence phrasal verb learning.Based on theories of chunk and the lexical approach proposed by Peter (1983), Nattinger& DeCarrico (1992), and Lewis (1993), combining with the linguistic nature of phrasal verbs, the author proposed the first hypothesis that phrasal verbs could be acquired as formulaic language. Meanwhile, with the theory proposed by Schmidt (1990) and Zwitserlood (1994) that frequency and transparence affect the learning of input materials, the second hypothesis was proposed that frequency and transparence could contribute to the phrasal verb learning.In order to support and verify two hypotheses, the research was conducted both quantitatively and qualitatively. The research was carried out at two stages: the first one was translation items, and the second part consisted of the self-report and one questionnaire. The subjects were at two levels of proficiency: high level and low level, at each of which there were 40 sophomore students respectively. The materials used in the test were designed in accordance with frequency and semantic transparence of phrasal verbs, and the total number of phrasal verbs was 48 which were divided into four types: high frequent transparent (HFT), high frequent opaque (HFO), low frequent transparent (LFT), and low frequent opaque (LFO). The results of the experiment showed that students preferred to learn HFT phrasal verbs holistically, but for the LFO phrasal verbs, students learned them separately by the meaning of the verbs and the particles. In contrast to the prior researches, this study found that parts of phrasal verbs were not learned as chunks. In addition, frequency and semantic transparence showed their effects on phrasal verb learning respectively and there was no significant interactive efficiency between them. So, that frequency and semantic transparence could act on phrasal verb learning together without interaction supports the hypothesis 2. The present study is the attempt in terms of the research about the effect of frequency and semantic transparence on phrasal verb learning under the foreign language environment, and also can contribute to the phrasal verb learning and teaching practically and theoretically. It is no doubt that influence of frequency and semantic transparence on phrasal verb learning and teaching should be emphasized, the practice of phrasal verbs should be enhanced, and the problems resulted from semantic opacity should be solved. In the process of teaching and material editing, frequency of phrasal verbs should be increased.The thesis consists of seven parts. It begins with a general introduction about the background, objective and rationale of the study. And the second part reviews the related literature both home and abroad, introducing the essential viewpoints of researchers as well as their theoretical and practical weakness. Then the third part illustrates the conceptual framework for the study with reference to the achievements in the field of psycholinguistics, cognitive linguistics research. The experimental research constructs the fourth part. The fifth part is the process of data analysis. The discussion of the present research is presented in the sixth part. And the thesis ends with the seventh part, introducing the conclusion and limitations of the present research and the further study.