The impact of guessing and retrieval strategies for learning phrasal verbs
-
Brian Strong
Abstract
Previous research on phrasal verbs has focused on the effectiveness of exercises requiring learners to provide the missing particle for a given verb. However, this research does not address other common exercise formats, such as those requiring learners to complete entire phrasal verbs. This study aims to bridge this gap by exploring such an exercise format and its two principal implementations. The participants were 134 Japanese EFL learners. Both exercise setups present the definition and initial letter of a phrasal verb as a prompt. In the guessing method, students attempt to fill in the missing phrasal verb based solely on the prompt and then receive corrective feedback. In contrast, in the error-free retrieval method, students study the phrasal verb and its definition before attempting the same gap-fill exercise. Retention of phrasal verbs improved more with the guessing method. Further, across both methods, participants struggled more with recalling particles than verbs.
Target phrasal verbs
| Phrasal verbs | Definitions |
|---|---|
| back down | To decide not to do something |
| boil down | To give the most important information |
| brighten up | To become happier |
| brush up | To improve your skill |
| call off | To decide that something will not take place |
| carry on | To continue to do something |
| catch on | To become very popular quickly |
| chip in | To give money |
| crack on | Continue doing something as quickly as possible |
| dive in | To start to eat food |
| figure out | To understand something |
| get out | A secret becomes known |
| give in | To accept that you cannot win |
| hang out | To spend time with friends |
| head off | To go somewhere |
| hold up | To make something late |
| make up | To create a story |
| open up | To talk about your personal feelings |
| own up | To admit that you have done something wrong |
| pass away | To die |
| pop in | To visit for a short visit |
| rip off | To charge someone too much money |
| run out | To use all of something |
| screw up | To make a serious mistake |
| stick out | To be easy to notice because of being different |
| turn off | To lose interest |
| wrap up | To finish something |
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Research Articles
- Unpacking the positioning of being “disengaged” and “disrespectful” in class through nexus analysis: an international student’s navigation of institutional and interactional university norms
- Assessing English language learners’ collocation knowledge: a systematic review of receptive and productive measurements
- The role of awareness in implicit and explicit knowledge
- Intensity of CLIL exposure and L2 motivation in primary school: evidence from Spanish EFL learners in non-CLIL, low-CLIL and high-CLIL programmes
- Promoting young EFL learners’ oral production through storytelling: coursebook adaptation in the Vietnamese classroom
- Applying embodied meaning of spatial prepositions and the Principled Polysemy model to teaching English as a second language: the case of to and on
- The impact of guessing and retrieval strategies for learning phrasal verbs
- Unraveling the differential effects of task rehearsal and task repetition on L2 task performance: the mediating role of task modality
- Examining L2 studentsʼ development of global cohesion and its relationship with their argumentative essay quality
- The construct of integrated group discussion (IGD) among undergraduate students: to what extent does group discussion performance reflect performance on IGD tasks?
- Discipline-specific attitudinal differences of EMI students towards translanguaging
- Relationship between second language vocabulary knowledge and vocabulary learning strategy use: a meta-analysis of correlational studies
- Evaluative language in undergraduate academic writing: expressions of attitude as sources of text effectiveness in English as a Foreign Language
- Investigating optimal spacing schedules for incidental acquisition of L2 collocations
- The association between socioeconomic status and Chinese secondary students’ English achievement: mediation of self-efficacy and moderation of gender
- Integrated instruction of Appraisal Theory and rhetorical moves in literature reviews: an exploratory study
- Scaffolding in genre-based L2 writing classes: Vietnamese EFL teachers’ beliefs and practices
- Exploring the professional role identities of English for academic purposes practitioners: a qualitative study
- The combined effects of task repetition and post-task teacher-corrected transcribing on complexity, accuracy and fluency of L2 oral performance
- Teacher behaviour and student engagement with L2 writing feedback: a case study
- The effect of an intervention focused on academic language on CAF measures in the multilingual writing of secondary students
- Which approach best promoted low-proficiency learners’ listening performance: metacognitive, bottom-up or a combination of both?
- Enhancing young EFL learners’ written skills: the role of repeated pre-task planning
- The mediating roles of resilience and motivation in the relationship between students’ English learning burnout and engagement: a conservation-of-resources perspective
- Student and teacher beliefs about oral corrective feedback in junior secondary English classrooms
- The effects of context, story-type, and language proficiency on EFL word learning and retention from reading
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Research Articles
- Unpacking the positioning of being “disengaged” and “disrespectful” in class through nexus analysis: an international student’s navigation of institutional and interactional university norms
- Assessing English language learners’ collocation knowledge: a systematic review of receptive and productive measurements
- The role of awareness in implicit and explicit knowledge
- Intensity of CLIL exposure and L2 motivation in primary school: evidence from Spanish EFL learners in non-CLIL, low-CLIL and high-CLIL programmes
- Promoting young EFL learners’ oral production through storytelling: coursebook adaptation in the Vietnamese classroom
- Applying embodied meaning of spatial prepositions and the Principled Polysemy model to teaching English as a second language: the case of to and on
- The impact of guessing and retrieval strategies for learning phrasal verbs
- Unraveling the differential effects of task rehearsal and task repetition on L2 task performance: the mediating role of task modality
- Examining L2 studentsʼ development of global cohesion and its relationship with their argumentative essay quality
- The construct of integrated group discussion (IGD) among undergraduate students: to what extent does group discussion performance reflect performance on IGD tasks?
- Discipline-specific attitudinal differences of EMI students towards translanguaging
- Relationship between second language vocabulary knowledge and vocabulary learning strategy use: a meta-analysis of correlational studies
- Evaluative language in undergraduate academic writing: expressions of attitude as sources of text effectiveness in English as a Foreign Language
- Investigating optimal spacing schedules for incidental acquisition of L2 collocations
- The association between socioeconomic status and Chinese secondary students’ English achievement: mediation of self-efficacy and moderation of gender
- Integrated instruction of Appraisal Theory and rhetorical moves in literature reviews: an exploratory study
- Scaffolding in genre-based L2 writing classes: Vietnamese EFL teachers’ beliefs and practices
- Exploring the professional role identities of English for academic purposes practitioners: a qualitative study
- The combined effects of task repetition and post-task teacher-corrected transcribing on complexity, accuracy and fluency of L2 oral performance
- Teacher behaviour and student engagement with L2 writing feedback: a case study
- The effect of an intervention focused on academic language on CAF measures in the multilingual writing of secondary students
- Which approach best promoted low-proficiency learners’ listening performance: metacognitive, bottom-up or a combination of both?
- Enhancing young EFL learners’ written skills: the role of repeated pre-task planning
- The mediating roles of resilience and motivation in the relationship between students’ English learning burnout and engagement: a conservation-of-resources perspective
- Student and teacher beliefs about oral corrective feedback in junior secondary English classrooms
- The effects of context, story-type, and language proficiency on EFL word learning and retention from reading
