COMMON STUDENTS’ ERRORS WITH PHRASAL VERBS – A CASE STUDY WITH UNDERGRADUATE ENGLISH STUDENTS AT THE
Suzana Ejupi, Lindita Skenderi
Abstract
Phrasal verbs represent and have always represented an aspect of the English grammar that is considered ‘difficult’ in language acquisition and ‘problematic’ in a spoken use by non-native learners of English. One of the reasons that phrasal verbs appear to be challenging to non-native speakers is that there are so many definitions and categories discussed by many authors and it creates confusion among them. Another reason is that this linguistic category has a great deal of polysemy as well as idiomaticity, which further complicates their analysis at syntactical and semantical level. For the purposes of our research, we will analyze phrasal verbs that are traditionally classified in English grammars as such.
This research is a qualitative research that is realized among undergraduate students of English department that study English as a foreign language at different academic years at University of Tetova. Qualitative research data were collected through an essay that was given to 54 students, with a recommendation to use phrasal verbs in greater numbers. The collected data contain number of participants, most common phrasal verbs, frequency of the verb use in essays with a focus on common students' errors in the use of phrasal verbs. Data analysis shows that certain phrasal verbs are used more often than others and that certain phrasal verbs are used incorrectly by all students.
Pages: 181 - 190