Promoting Vietnamese Learners’ Knowledge of English Phrasal Verbs: An Action Research Study

Abstract

This study aims to promote the learning of phrasal verbs (PVs) of Vietnamese low-intermediate adult English-as-a-foreign language (EFL) learners. Thirty-one students were involved in the study over an eleven-week span. In this study we adopted an action research design with a four-stage procedure, including planning, acting, observing and reflecting. The planning stage starts with exploring how PVs are introduced in the textbooks through document analysis and investigating the students’ current knowledge of PVs thorough diagnose text. The acting stage goes with implementing some measures to raise the students’ awareness of the syntactic and semantic features of this lexico-grammatical area and to increase their uptake of PVs through both incidental and intentional learning. The observing phase works on systematically and continually evaluating the effectiveness of the action taken through regular, progressive tests and in-class discussion. The effectiveness of the treatment was measured with pre-, immediate post-, and delayed post-tests in a form of gap filling multiple choice individual sentences. The final stage is reflecting - mirroring the gains and limitations of the teaching and testing techniques implemented. The results of this study reveal a constrained depiction of the PVs in certain aspects, echoing concerns highlighted in prior research. The findings propose that the integration of PV instruction into the comprehensive enhancement of language proficiency for A1-B1 proficiency levels, coupled with a targeted cognitive approach to PVs at the A2-B1 levels, can result in enhanced, enduring retention of PV knowledge. This study deliberates on pragmatic implications for the efficacious advancement of EFL learners' comprehension and utilization of PVs.