Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Date of Award

1-1-2021

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

M.A. in Modern Languages

First Advisor

Tamara Warhol

Second Advisor

Larissa Warhol

Third Advisor

Vance Schaefer

Relational Format

dissertation/thesis

Abstract

This comparative analysis, focusing on the 150 highest-frequency phrasal verbs in the phrasal verb pedagogical list (Garnier and Schmitt, 2015), highlights the limited occurrence across English language textbooks for Japanese junior high school. The spoken and written data of Japanese learners of English (i.e., NICT-JLE and NICE) shows considerable differences in the usage patterns of phrasal verbs compared to native English speakers. These results indicated that Japanese learners’ underdeveloped productive knowledge of phrasal verbs could cause intelligibility problems with native speakers especially in oral communication. In order to overcome the semantic and phonological complexity of phrasal verbs, and to break away from one-word verb dependence, the textbook authors should distinguish spoken grammar from written grammar, and focus more on word frequency data based on large-scale corpora. The well-balanced word inputs from the textbooks would fully support the users’ healthy language development without avoiding useful words for real-life English speaking.

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