A Study On Factors Affecting The Acquisition Of Highly Frequent L2polysemous Phrasal Verbs

As the carrier of ideas and expressions,vocabulary plays an important role in language learning.Vocabulary learning is the most basic way of improving language learners' language skills as well as an effective way of improving language learners' overall language proficiency.English phrasal verbs are usually defined as idiomatic combinations of a verb and adverb,or a verb and preposition(or verb with both an adverb and a preposition)(Longman Dictionary of Phrasal Verbs).They are the most prolific source of new words,hence they constitute an essential part of acquisition for English learners.However,phrasal verbs have strong combination ability and rich vocabulary connotations leading to diverse types and complicated senses.For they are numerous,flexible,polysemous as well as figurative,phrasal verbs have always been recognized as one of the hardest and focal language items in the learning process of Chinese learners.Moreover,English language learners,especially those with a lower and intermediate level of proficiency,tend to avoid using English phrasal verbs during the learning process of English.Although many previous studies on the second language learners' acquisition of phrasal verbs have provided us with many hints,their research objects are less involved in Chinese second language learners.There are also many studies which attempt to explore factors that influence the acquisition of phrasal verbs,but few studies have taken the polysemy into account and have not assessed the effect of these factors in combination when studying second language learners' knowledge of phrasal verbs.Based on this,this study selected 40 highly frequent polysemous phrasal verbs from the Corpus of Contemporary American English to edit an off-line pencil-and-paper form recall test in the form of gap-fill sentences(based on 100 meaning senses).This study also considered the factors that affect the acquisition of phrasal verbs,including year of English study,previous immersion in second language country,hours spent reading per week,hours spent watching films per week,hours spent listening to music per week and hours spent social networking per week,then edit a biodata questionnaire.In addition,130 sophomores from a university in Nanjing were selected to complete the controlled productive test paper and biodata questionnaire.Then the statistical software SPSS is usedto analyze the effects of linguistic factors and exposure factors on the acquisition of highly frequent polysemous phrasal verbs respectively.Accordingly,this study mainly aims to answer the following three questions:(1)Do linguistic factors,such as frequency and semantic opacity,have a significant effect on phrasal verb knowledge?(2)Do exposure factors,such as L2 instruction,L2 immersion and L2 engagement in leisure activities,have a significant effect on phrasal verb knowledge?(3)What factors can be identified as the best predictors of phrasal verb knowledge?According to the quantitative research findings:(1)Among the linguistic factors,corpus frequency was found to be significantly related to the learners' acquisition of phrasal verbs.It seems that the more frequent appear a word in a second language,the easier it is to be known by learners.The effect of semantic opacity on acquisition was not statistically significant.(2)Among the exposure factors,year of English study,hours spent reading per week and hours spent watching films per week were found to predict knowledge.However,no relationship was found between phrasal verb knowledge and previous immersion in second language country,hours spent listening to music per week and hours spent social networking per week.(3)Corpus frequency,year of English study,hours spent reading per week and hours spent watching films per week were identified as the best predictors of phrasal verb knowledge.Based on former studies of learners' acquisition of phrasal verbs,this study analyzes the effects of various factors on phrasal verb knowledge,as well as analyzes the learners' acquisition from the perspective of polysemous phrasal verbs,trying to apply these findings to second language learning and teaching,and to provide some instructive implications for second language learners to learn as well as phrasal verb teaching.