The Effectiveness of Corpus-Based Learning Activities on Phrasal Verbs for EFL Students’ Writing Development

Despite extensive practice and instruction in English writing at the higher education level for EFL students, the use of phrasal verbs found as a problematic for non-native students of English to apply them into their writing. The students’ phrasal verbs [PVs] recognition of the forms, the metaphorical meanings and accurate construction of forms seem ambiguous and cause them mistake when using them to write English.

In this study, the use of corpora in language teaching for EFL students’ writing improvement was utilized to fulfil the promotion of the effective students’ writing ability using PVs in their works accurately and meaningfully. The effectiveness of DDL-vocabulary task implied greater results in learners’ vocabulary learning than those from the textbook learning (Ashkan & Seyyedrzaei, 2016). The concordance using was beneficial for learners’ effective learning strategies especially in the vocabulary learning in which the same line as noted by Barabadi & Khajavi (2017), Chan & Liou (2005), and Chao (2010). Aim of the research was to determine whether 9-hour instruction via corpus-based activities is effective in three ways: helping students recognize and understanding of forms of verbs, the metaphorical meaning of the PV, and construct the correct forms of the verbs in paraphrasing sentences.

Seventy-six students of EFL education department were included in this work and carried out four research instruments: three tests of form recognition, meaning of PVs, and sentence-rewriting. Also, the satisfaction survey was applied to all participants and the semi-structured interview as promoted for five of them for purposively.

The results imparted a significant score on pre-posttests of the writing ability which could be explained into three sections: the low, medium, and high proficiency groups. Those were explained via T-test, mean, SD, and ANOVA analysis. The quantitative data of the survey indicated the EFL students’ positive attitude toward the use of the research tasks. However, the qualitative results derived from students revealed their difficulty for other writing structures occurred during the completion of the tasks. They also highly insisted the teacher’s assistance in writing and correcting their works turned as a key for their learning and confidence in writing development. Also, other relevant barriers on using corpora promoting EFL students’ writing in English class were also revealed as a dilemma for Thai students’ PVs learning.