A Comparison on the Effectiveness of Using Visual Aids and Corpus Program to Teach English Phrasal Verbs to Korean High School Students.
Narae Shin
Major in English Language Education
Graduate School of Education, Korea University
(Advisor: Prof. Shi...
A Comparison on the Effectiveness of Using Visual Aids and Corpus Program to Teach English Phrasal Verbs to Korean High School Students.
Narae Shin
Major in English Language Education
Graduate School of Education, Korea University
(Advisor: Prof. Shinsook Lee)
In English, several elements of vocabulary and grammar are extremely difficult for learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) to comprehend. Phrasal verbs are one of the elements that may greatly impede learners' understanding of English texts. As their meanings are polysemous and considered idiomatic, rote memorization is widely used to teach English phrasal verbs. A number of researchers have investigated effective and useful methods in teaching phrasal verbs. Among these methods, visual aids and corpus programs are most widely used. In this regard, this study aims to compare the effects of using visual aids and corpus data in teaching phrasal verbs to 60 Korean high school second grade students. In the selection of phrasal verbs, this research adopted Cowan's (2008) categorization of phrasal verbs and used the Korean high school English textbook. In the pre-test results, the participants recorded an average level of phrasal verb comprehension. Over a period of four weeks, they received 15 English phrasal verbslessons. Post-tests on English phrasal verbs' comprehension were conducted to identify the effects of visual aids and the corpus program on learning English phrasal verbs and to compare the effectiveness of both methods.
There are three important findings. First, the two experimental groups showed an improvement on English phrasal verbs comprehension than did the control group, and the differences of the three groups are statistically significant.: This result is consistent with previous studies. However, an important finding from the results revealed that the group that used visual aids achieved a higher score than did the corpus group. The results indicate that although the use of visual aids and corpus data is effective in teaching phrasal verbs to Korean students, the use of visual aids is more effective than that of corpus data.
Second, in understanding the three particles (up, off, and out), two experimental groups showed higher comprehension in both particles up and out than did the control group. However, the group that used visual aids achieved a higher score than did the group that used corpus data and the control group. Furthermore, the group that used corpus data achieved a relatively lower score than the group that used visual aids in understanding the particle out, with the scores 96.25 and 92.00 respectively. It resulted in the miscomprehension of the phrasal verbs find out and figure out in the group that used corpus data.
Lastly, by comparing the phrasal verbs find out and figure out, it was revealed that the group that used corpus data had difficulty understanding the abstract meaning of the two phrasal verbs while the group that used visual aids could understand easily the meaning.
The pedagogical implication based on the research findings suggests that using visual aids rather than a corpus program is more effective in teaching phrasal verbs to Korean EFL learners especially those with average comprehension level. Hence, this finding can be a useful guide for the teaching of English phrasal verbs.