The adquisition of English phrasal verbs by Spanish advanced learners of English

Abstract

the aim of this paper is to compare the use of PVs by Spanish nonnative speakers (NNS) and native speakers (NS). The first section will provide a review of the literature on the acquisition of English PVs by NNS paying special attention to the difficulties this area presents for them (such as mistakes). The next section consists of an overview of the different corpus-based studies on questions like avoidance, overuse and underuse of PVs. In the third section, the dissertation will include a brief corpus-based study comparing the frequency of use of ten PVs (selected from the list of the 100 most frequent PVs in the BNC provided by Gardner and Davies (2007)) by L1-Spanish learners of English and NS in written and oral media. This empirical study tries to answer 3 research questions focusing on the frequency of use and avoidance of PVs by Spanish students, their semantic component and the differences found between written and oral media. It includes a methodology section in which the corpora used and the process followed to complete it are presented and finally discusses not only quantitative results, but also qualitative ones, by analysing the multiple meanings of the PVs and highlighting differences of usage by both NNS and NS. The last section includes the conclusions and suggestions for further research