TeachingEnglish Multi-word verbs: Learner problems Submitted by TE Editor on 28 June 2!!" - #2:!!

Multi-word verbs are comple$ and present problems %or learners both in terms o% their grammatical %orm and their le$ical meaning& ' %ind that learners around the world tend to panic at the mere mention o% their name and to avoid using them %or %ear o% ma(ing mista(es& 'n this article ' shall be loo(ing at why this is and how as teachers we can try to encourage students to use them&

)arious meanings *ollocation +elping students with collocation ,articles ,ronunciation -rammatical %orm *onclusion

)arious meanings Many multi-word verbs carry more than one meaning& Thus learners who are %amiliar with the meaning o% "turn down" as in "He turned down the radio" have problems interpreting the meaning o% "He turned her down" .re/ected her0 &

' have %ound that it is best to deal with the meaning o% the verb that is salient in the te$t& '% the meaning o% the verb in %ocus is to 1re/ect1 then ' teach this meaning without going into the other possible meanings& ' %ind this approach to be clearer and less con%using %or students& 2ichards states that 34nowing a word means (nowing its di%%erent meanings .polysemy0&3 This is certainly our aim in teaching but we must realise that such competence re5uires time& 't is only through reading e$posing learners to te$ts rich in multi-word verbs that learners will become le$ically competent& 3The learner must be allowed to be vague about meaning at %irst6 precision will come later3& .Judd 5uoted in *arter and Mc*arthy0

Many multi-word verbs carry a literal meaning e&g&"sit down" " stand up" though many have a non-literal meaning e&g&"I picked up quite a bit of Spanish on holiday last year."

'% presented through te$ts learners can sometimes interpret their meanings 5uite accurately pic(ing up clues %rom the theme o% the te$t and the co-te$t but isolated or even heard or read at sentence level they can be very con%using %or the learner&

*ollocation Multi-word verbs present problems in terms o% the words with which they collocate& Mc*arthy says that collocation is "a marriage contract between words, and some words are more firmly married to each other than others." Thus "to call off" %or e$ample collocates strongly with 3match3 i&e&"The match was called off due to the rain" and it also collocates strongly with 'engagement' 'wedding' 'meeting'&

Students o%ten understand the meaning i&e& cancel and then attempt to apply it to other nouns with which it in %act has no relationship& 7or e$ample "I called off my English class" sounds strange to L# spea(ers as generally we can only call o%% events which have been speci%ically arranged or that are o% a uni5ue one-o%% nature&

+elping students with collocation ' try to raise students1 awareness o% collocation by as(ing them to underline the nouns which %ollow certain verbs and then later %illing in a collocational grid matching multi-word verbs to their common collocations e&g&'Call off', 'set up', 'put off" = 'a meeting'&

8lternatively ' have %ound that collocation bingo wor(s well as learners have a set o% nouns on a card which they cross o%% according to whether they thin( they collocate with the phrasal verb which ' read out& 9dd one out tas(s are also very use%ul as students are involved in a deeper level o% processing discussing why certain words don1t combine& Most o% all though it is through the language which occurs in the classroom that students can really see how the relationships between words matter provided the teacher draws attention to this&

,articles The meaning o% the particles i&e& 'up', 'on', 'in' can also cause problems as sometimes the particles can share meaning across a large number but not all multi-word verbs& 7or instance the particle 'up' is o%ten said to e$press the idea o% 'increase' as in 'grow up', 'heat up', 'hurry up', 'cheer up' but this idea can not be applied to the verb 1split up1 %or e$ample&

Many e$ercises e$ist which %ocus on particles and sensitise learners to the shared meaning o% a group& ' %ind these to be o% value in increasing students1 con%idence in dealing with phrasal verbs as they %eel as though they have a tool with which to help them unloc( the meaning o% previously incomprehensible items& 8s long as the teacher highlights the %act that the generalised meaning o% the particle in 5uestion is not the same with all multi-word verbs then these e$ercises can be use%ul in %acilitating understanding o% multi-word verbs thus aiding memory and ultimately production&

,ronunciation 2esearch shows that words which are di%%icult to pronounce are more di%%icult to learn& ,hrasal verbs are not too problematic %or learners in terms o% pronunciation though misplaced word stress is a common error& Students are %re5uently reluctant to give stress to particles& 'n the sentence "We did the kitchen up" %or e$ample "kitchen" is stressed though when we substitute the noun %or a pronoun "We did it up" the stress %alls on the adverbial particle& 9ne way o% helping learners is by using graphics such as stress bo$es . a small blac( s5uare0 on the board and getting them to mar( the stress above words or syllables in the whole sentence and to practise reading it aloud& -rammatical %orm 'n terms o% grammatical %orm multi-word verbs present problems %or learners as to whether a0 they are separable or inseparable b0 they are transitive or intransitive c0 they are %ormal or in%ormal 'n responding to these problems o% %orm teachers can either %ocus on the rules i&e& whether they are Type # or 2 etc& or adopt a more incidental learning approach&

The latter consists o% e$posing learners to lots o% e$amples pre%erably in short conte$ts which demonstrate their syntactic behaviour& 2eading is considered a (ey means to vocabulary improvement and research suggests that /ust using a language can be a potent way to learn it even without e$plicit %ocus on linguistic %orms&

*onclusion Multi-word verbs are there%ore 5uite problematic %or learners& +owever simply by anticipating and being prepared %or problems students may have can do much to erase part o% the %ear and

con%usion that surrounds multi-word verbs& 7urther reading Vocabulary by Michael Mc*arthy How to teach Vocabulary by Scott Thornbury Vocabulary in Language eaching by :orbert Schmitt echni!ues in eaching Vocabulary by 7rench 8llen )anessa Steele ;ritish *ouncil ;arcelona
TeachingEnglishMulti-word verbs: Learner problems Submitted by TE Editor on 28 June 2!!" #2:!!