Iranian Learner English: a Corpus- Based Study of Phrasal Verb Usage
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In His Name This dissertation is dedicated to my beloved father, mother and brother. Iranian Learner English: A Corpus- Based Study of Phrasal Verb Usage Inaugural-Dissertation Zur Erlangung der Doktorwürde der Philologischen Fakultät der Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg i. Br. Vorgelegt von Hamzeh Mazaherylaghab aus Hamedan SS 2013 Erstgutachter: Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Christian Mair Zweitgutachterin: Prof. Dr. Brigitte Halford Vorsitzender des Promotionsausschusses der Gemeinsamen Kommission der Philologischen, Philosophischen und Wirtschafts- und Verhaltenswissenschaftlichen Fakultät: Prof. Dr. Bernd Kortmann Datum der Fachprüfung im Promotionsfach: 24.10.2013 Abbreviations List of tables and figures Acknowledgements 1. Introduction .............................................................................................................1 1.1. Language learners, phrasal verbs, and corpus study ......................................1 1.2. Aims and scope of the study ..........................................................................7 1.3. Limitations of the study .................................................................................9 2. Review of relevant literature .................................................................................15 2.1. Phrasal verbs in descriptive and theoretically motivated studies ................15 2.2. Phrasal-verb avoidance by the learner .........................................................15 2.3. Learner knowledge of the phrasal verbs ......................................................20 3. English in Iran ......................................................................................................28 3.1. English language teaching (ELT) in Iran ....................................................29 3.1.1. English in the school curriculum in Iran ............................................30 3.2. High school EFL text books in Iran .............................................................34 3.2.1. English Book 1 ...................................................................................37 3.2.1.1. Year one exam analysis .........................................................39 3.2.2. English Book 2 ...................................................................................42 3.2.2.1. Year two exam analysis ..........................................................47 3.2.3. English Book 3 ...................................................................................50 3.2.3.1. Year three exam analysis ........................................................61 3.2.4. A preparatory English course: Book one & two ................................63 3.2.4.1. Book 1 ....................................................................................63 3.2.4.2. Book 2 ....................................................................................66 3.2.4.3. Pre-University exam analysis .................................................73 3.3. Overall results ..............................................................................................75 4. The grammar of the verb in Persian and English – a contrastive analysis...........78 4.1. Verb in Persian ............................................................................................78 4.1.1. Persian simple verbs ...........................................................................79 4.1.2. Verbs with a particle ..........................................................................80 4.1.3. Other verbal phrases ...........................................................................81 4.1.4. Auxiliary verbs ...................................................................................82 4.2. English phrasal verbs versus Persian ...........................................................82 4.2.1. English phrasal verbs and their Persian counterparts .........................82 4.2.1.1. Persian light verb constructions ..............................................83 4.2.1.2. Persian prepositional verbs (verbs with a particle) .................91 4.3. Expected interference ..................................................................................95 4.3.1. Separable transitive English phrasal verbs and their Persian equivalents ..........................................................................................96 4.3.2. Intransitive English phrasal verbs and their Persian equivalents .......98 4.3.3. English phrasal verbs (verb-preposition sequences) and their Persian equivalents ..........................................................................................98 4.4. Summary ......................................................................................................99 5. Data and Methodology .......................................................................................101 5.1. Introduction ................................................................................................101 5.2. Tools ..........................................................................................................105 5.2.1. Concordancing and retrieval software ..............................................105 5.2.2. Reference works and materials.........................................................106 5.2.3. Corpora .............................................................................................107 5.3. Data ............................................................................................................108 5.3.1. Subjects ............................................................................................108 5.3.2. The essays ........................................................................................109 5.4. Phrasal verbs ..............................................................................................112 5.5. Research questions .....................................................................................116 5.6. Points to consider .......................................................................................118 6. Phrasal verbs in Iranian learner English in comparison with native speaker usage ..................................................................................................................119 6.1. Introduction ................................................................................................119 6.2. The 25 most frequent phrasal verbs in LOCNESS ....................................121 6.3. Overall findings .........................................................................................136 7. Phrasal verbs used by Iranian learners: an analytic study of errors ...................139 7.1. Introduction ................................................................................................139 7.2. Mother tongue influence ............................................................................142 7.3. Creative language use ................................................................................149 7.4. Iranian learner language ............................................................................162 7.5. Summary ....................................................................................................163 8. Conclusion .........................................................................................................167 8.1. Major findings ...........................................................................................167 8.2. Comparison of the major findings .............................................................171 8.3. Practical implications .................................................................................174 8.4. Recommendations for future studies .........................................................181 9. References .........................................................................................................182 10. Appendices ........................................................................................................190 Appendix 1: Prefaces of all high school EFL text books ………...……………190 Appendix 2: Review Exercises ………………………………………………..192 Appendix 3: Examination papers of high school EFL courses ………………..198 Appendix 4: Sample year two supplementary vocabulary material for English Book 2 ………………………………………………………………..241 Appendix 5: List of Iranian learner essays ……………………………………244 Appendix 6: Proposed ICLE essay titles ……………………………...………253 Appendix 7: ICLE learner profile template ……………………………….…….254 Appendix 8: List of all the phrasal verbs found in the Iranian learner corpus and LOCNESS ………………………………………………………………...255 Appendix 9: Phrasal verbs found in COCA ……………………………..…….266 Appendix 10: Phrasal verbs in all high school EFL text books in Iran ……….280 Appendix 11: Essay samples from Iranian learner corpus ………………….…283 Appendix 12: Essay samples from LOCNESS ………………………………..287 11. Zusammenfassung in deutscher Sprache ..........................................................296 Abbreviations Corpora and Dictionaries BNC British National Corpus COCA Corpus of Contemporary American English G-ICLE German component of the International Corpus of Learner English ICLE International Corpus of Learner English I-ICLE Italian component of the International Corpus of Learner English LGSWE Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English LOCNESS Louvain Corpus of Native English Essays Others CA Contrastive Analysis CIA Contrastive Iterlanguage Analysis CLC Computer learner corpora EA Error Analysis EFL English