A Study On Avoidance Of English Phrasal Verbs By Chinese Learners Of English In College

English phrasal verbs have been an indispensable part of modern English and meanwhile a more difficult item for Chinese EFL learners for their great power to express meanings. However, the English teachers always felt puzzled that it is very common for the Chinese learners to avoid these phrasal verbs. It is of great significance to find out the reasons of avoidance so as to make the teaching practice easier. Therefore this paper wants to investigate the exact factors behind the avoidance behavior through empirical study with the hope that the findings can provide tips for the teaching of phrasal verbs.In this research,45 students from the Hubei Normal University, who were divided into three groups:advanced, intermediate, poor, and 15 native speakers have been carefully selected to participate in the test. All the subjects have taken the comprehension and multiple-choice tests and the data collected reveal the following findings:1) compared with the native speakers, the Chinese do have the tendency to avoid phrasal verbs; 2) different groups of students show different tendencies to avoid phrasal verb:the poor and intermediate groups tend to avoid phrasal verbs more frequently and there is less or even non avoidance behavior in the advanced group; 3) all the students tend to avoid extended figurative phrasal verb more frequently, then figurative phrasal verbs and finally the literal phrasal verbs.Seen from the research, the conclusions can be drawn that Chinese college EFL learners bear avoidance behavior due to various reasons:1) Structural discrepancies between learners'L1 and L2; 2) inter-language development; 3) the semantic complexities of phrasal verbs.Suggestion can be made for the teaching practice:1) teachers should pay more attention to analysis of the semantic nature of phrasal verbs and apply to classroom presentation stated in this paper rather than the mechanical memorization; 2) positive and frequent input should be encouraged; vivid and varied output should also supported because phrasal verbs are oral-rather than written-orientated; 3) all the teachers would better cultivate positive understanding of the avoidance behavior which bears positive and negative aspects so as to improve the communication ability.