Avoidance of Phrasal Verbs—A Case for Contrastive Analysis

Abstract

Schachter (1974) drew attention to the importance, in error analysis, of examining not only the L2 forms actually produced by the learners of a foreign language in their attempts to express themselves in L2, but also the L2 forms they seem consistently to avoid using. She also noted the close interrelation between such avoidance phenomena and the Contrastive Analysis approach to L2 teaching and learning: avoidance is the reverse side of negative transfer, since learners tend to avoid using in L2 those structures that have no parallel in their LI and therefore provide them with no pattern for transfer.' Of course, as Kleinmann (1977) has pointed out, "avoidance" implies that the structure in question is known to (i.e., can be passively recognized by) the learners, but not freely used by them; 2 failure to use a structure or word that is unknown to the learners is an indication merely of ignorance, not of learning difficulty. Now a prime constructive purpose of error analysis is (or should be) to identify the sources of a learner's difficulties, as a necessary preliminary to helping him or her overcome them. Hence the importance of genuine avoidance phenomena that, when properly identified, can throw light on what would otherwise remain hidden recesses of uncertainty in the learner's mind. Levenston (1971) has convincingly argued, with numerous illustrations, that avoidance ("under-representation" in his terminology) of various English "clause (or group) structures" by Hebrew-speaking learners of English can be explained by the lack of Hebrew "translation-equivalents" for the English structures in question and the learners' consequent choice of less appropriate but more LI-equivalent structures. However, since Levenston was concerned not with avoidance phenomena as such, but rather with the evidence they provide of LI interference with L2 learning and their stylistic effect on the learner's L2, he took the phenomena in question as established facts (on the basis, presumably, of his own teaching experience), without attempting to examine their frequency and extent.But precisely this kind of examination is what is required if the discussion of avoidance phenomena is to be conducted on a factual rather than an impressionistic basis; and that is what we have attempted in this present study of another apparent avoidance phenomenon, also taken from the learning situation of Hebrew as LI and English as L2.

Tracing Developmental Changes in L2 Learners’ Structuring of Phrasal Verbs: A Corpus Study of Native and Non-native Argumentative Essays

“…The same pattern was obtained for transitive PVs: LOCNESS-US had significantly more transitive PVs than YELC-BAS and YELC-INT (all p < .05), but the differences in the proportion of transitive PVs among the three learner groups were not significant (all p > .05). These results suggest that the learners produced PVs much less frequently in their essays than did the native speakers, a pattern reminiscent of previous findings showing that L2 learners generally underuse PVs (Dagut & Laufer 1985). It should be noted as well that, while there was no statistical difference between the learner groups for both intransitive and transitive PVs, the overall proportions of both types increased in concomitance with the learners' proficiency levels.…”

“…Even advanced learners of English have been reported having difficulties in achieving native-like production of PVs (Laufer & Eliasson 1993, Siyanova & Schmitt 2007. These persistent difficulties with English PVs have mostly been accounted for by language-external factors, e.g., L1 influence (Dagut & Laufer 1985) and inefficient instruction (Yasuda 2010) as well as language-internal idiosyncratic features of PVs, for example, semantic opaqueness (Lennon 1996), synonymous one-word verbs (Waibel 2007), and register-or context-appropriateness (Kovács 2014).…”

Creativity and Unnaturalness in the Use of Phrasal Verbs in ESL Learner Language

“…Dagut and Laufer (1985) explored the active use of English phrasal verbs by Hebrew speaking university students majoring in English. The learners" preference for the use of phrasal verbs over their one-word equivalents enabled the researchers to conclude that the absence of phrasal verbs in non-Germanic languages, including Hebrew, made for the subjects" avoidance of them.…”

Avoidance

“…The study was designed along the lines that had been followed by Dagut and Laufer (1985), with essential differences. First, the division of subjects into intermediate and advanced learners figured more systematically and prominently in the design of our study than in the design of Dagut and Laufer's study' Second, different test sentences were used, as it was not possible to obtain the test sentences that had been used in Dagut and Laufer's study.…”