본문 바로가기
  • Home

The effect of Korean college students' English proficiency on their use of multi-word verbs

  • Modern English Education
  • Abbr : MEESO
  • 2014, 15(1), pp.153-172
  • Publisher : The Modern English Education Society
  • Research Area : Humanities > English Language and Literature > English Language Teaching

MiHyang Han 1

1동아대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This paper examines relationship of Korean college students' English proficiency and their use of multi-word verbs. 120 Korean EFL learners at the college level participated in the study. A 20-item multi-word verb test was administered to evaluate their receptive and productive knowledge in the multi-word verbs. The participants' TOEIC scores were used as their English proficiency level. The results of the study revealed that there was a significant relationship between English proficiency and performance on the multi-word verb test. But their multi-word verb performance was very low (mean score 48.57), which probably resulted from the interaction of two factors, semantic transparency and familiarity. Some semantically opaque verbs such as 'look after' were more familiar to the students than others such as 'wait on'. The familiarity led to higher performance. The results from error analysis of multi-word verb sentences produced by the students show that errors were caused by students' lack of knowledge on semantic and grammatical structures of multi-word verbs. It is suggested that explicit instruction on multi-word verbs will improve EFL learners' accurate and appropriate use of multi-word verbs and ultimately enhance their English proficiency.

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.