A Study On The Effects Of Input Frequency On Senior High School Students’ Acquisition Of English Phrasal Verbs

Since N. Ellis‘s(2002a) reinstatement of the importance of input frequency in language processing, researches have been emerging on this topic. On the basis of input frequency theories and previous empir ical studies, this paper aimed to investigate the effects of input frequency on senior high school students‘ acquisition of phrasal verbs, a large and important class of English verbs in which a single verb-word works in close association with one or more other words. This study looked into the effects of input frequency on senior high school students‘ acquisition of phrasal verbs. Furthermore, it analyzed the effects of two different types of input frequency which are verbatim repetition and varied repetition.Based on the theoretical foundations of the input theory, frequency theory and usage-based linguistic theory, the thesis intended to answer the following questions :1. Does input frequency have effect on senior high school students‘ acquisition of phrasal verbs? If so, how does it affect senior high school students‘ acquisition of phrasal verbs?2. Do learners under different types of input frequency show differences in their acquisition of phrasal verbs? If so, what are the differences?Two classes of 80 second year senior high school students from Binxian high school in Xianyang, Shaanxi province took part in the study, one class receiving verbatim repetition as group one and the other receiving varied repetition as group two. Specifically, group one read the same list of sentences for six times. They were exposed to fourteen different sentences including ten sentences, each containing a target phrasal verb, and four distractors. Group two read six different lists composing 84 different sentences. Both groups received tests after every two exposures, including filling in blanks and English-Chinese translation, testing the target phrasal verbs knowledge they mastered. Items in each test were the same but reorganized. Their scores were submitted to SPSS for analysis.Data analys is yielded the following results. First, input frequency had effects on the acquisition of phrasal verbs. Participants‘ scores kept increasing from the first test to the third test. Second, two types of input frequency including verbatim repet ition and varied repetition had different effects on senior high school students‘ acquisition of phrasal verbs. Varied repetition helped learners more than verbatim repetition in terms of the acquisition of phrasal verbs.These findings have both theoretical and pedagogical implications. Theoretically, the results supported N. Ellis‘s(2002a) proposal that input frequency had effects on the acquisition of formulaic sequences. It further proved the importance of the effects of input frequency. Based on these findings, it is hoped that this study can provide practical implications for language teachers to appropriately integrate the effects of input frequency into the teaching of phrasal verbs.