DeRosa-Torres, Adam A.

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Phrasal verb and reading comprehension amongst Puerto Rican ESL university students
(2011) DeRosa-Torres, Adam A.; Pratt, Ellen; College of Arts and Sciences - Arts; Blau, Eileen; Morales Caro, Betsy; Carroll, Kevin; Department of English; Papadopoulos, Christopher
Phrasal verbs (PVs) are difficult for English as a Second Language (ESL) learners. In this study, two measures were used to determine the comprehension of different semantic categories of phrasal verbs; a vocabulary test and a reading comprehension test. Puerto Rican ESL university students from the basic, intermediate, and advanced proficiency levels took both tests in order to see how level affects comprehension. There were two major findings: a) ESL students comprehend phrasal verbs better when they were incorporated within a text b) the semantic categories of phrasal verbs do not necessarily determine their difficulty of comprehension. The results of the study led the researcher to consider teacher language awareness (LA) when teaching phrasal verbs. A pedagogy for teaching PVs is proposed using LA.