Use of Phrasal Verbs by Arab Writers in English - Essay Example

Abstract The term phrasal verb refers to a combination of verbs + adverbs which when combined generate has a specific meaning. Some researchers claimed that that Arab learners of English face problems using phrasal verbs due to the difficulty implies faced by them in comprehending their idiomatic meanings. This research paper seeks to investigate whether native Arabic writers who write journals in English use fewer phrasal verbs than native English writers. This paper It further presents a compares comparison between two writers; a Saudi writer named Mshari Al-Zaydi who writes political news articles in Asharq Alawsat newspaper and an American writer named Peter Hamby who writes political news articles in the CCN. A number total of twenty texts were selected to be analyzed, ten texts from each writer. Some previous studies are also included in this research to support my hypothesis .To come up ensure generation of with reliable results, each text consists is designed to include an approximate of 300 words. I went over these texts counting the phrasal verbs used in these texts. The results findings shows revealed that there are no significant differences exist between either of the two writers. Descriptions of materials and methods Previous researches have shown that Arab learners of English avoid using the phrasal verbs because of the level of difficulty as well as to associated with comprehending the tricky complicated idiomatic meanings of phrasal verbs. Many Several researchers such as Klienmann (1977), Chiang (1980), Dagut and Laufer (1985) supported the claims by made by Schachter that second language learners avoid using phrasal verbs because the difficulty that learners encounter when using the phrasal verbs. Since this paper investigates whether Arab learners of English use fewer phrasal verbs than English writers, I decided to compare to two sets of texts from two different writers. I had difficulty collecting these texts because I wanted to find recent articles. I went over some American and Saudi newspapers such as Saudi Gazette, Arab news, Asharq Alawsat, Yew New York Post, the Daily Time and the CNN. I finally decided to choose two writers from a Saudi newspaper and another one from the CNN. The first writer is a Saudi writer, named Mshari Al-Zaydi who writes political articles in Asharq Alawsat Saudi newspaper and the other writer is an American writer, named Peter Hamby, who also writes political articles in the CNN. I collected 10 articles written by Mshari Al-Zaydi and other 10 written by Peter Hamby. The length of the chosen articles length varied from 400 to 800 words which were later on edited to an approximate 300 words article. To make my research precise, I cut some parts of each text making it 300 words. What I have done is I choose the first 300 hundred words from each text using the Microsoft word. Then, I counted the phrasal verbs manually to ensure that I did not miss any phrasal verbs. When I finished counting the phrasal verbs, I run the data using the SPSS program. The editing was done by eliminating the extra text by deliberately retaining the phrasal verbs used in the articles and then analyzing the data using the SPSS program. Discussion The Arabic language has a is structurally different system from as compared to the English language. It divers differs in the writing style as well as in the structure. As we know that the Arabic language is a non-Germanic language and Arab learners of English may face difficulties either speaking or writing in Germanic languages. One of the major difficulties that Arab learners of English encountered is using the phrasal verbs. What is a phrasal verb? The lexical description for the phrasal verb, according to Greenbaum, Leech, and Svartvik (1985), is that ''the meaning of the combination clearly cannot be guessed from the meaning of the verb [proper] and particle in isolation”. My hypothesis is that the Arab learners of English use fewer phrasal verbs in writing than as compared to the English native writers. As the results shown, However, the findings of the study suggested that the Saudi writer/s does not avoid using phrasal verbs which further suggests that there are no significant differences between the native Arab writers Saudi and the native English American writers. These findings contradict my the above mentioned hypothesis for some reasons. My first explanation for this is that the Saudi native Arab writers is are advanced writer learners of English and he they has have already passed the avoidance behavior of avoiding difficult structures including the phrasal verbs. Another likely explanation for such an outcome is that he they have has enough adequate / considerable / profound experience of writing in English. This explanation is further substantiated with the outcomes of a recent study conducted by Al-Otaibi which shows reveals that the advanced Arab learners of English do not avoid idiomatic (figurative) phrasal verbs. However, his findings He motioned that the finding of his study contradict the outcomes of some previous studies by other researchers such as Dagut and Laufer (1985), Hulstijn and Marchena (1989), Laufer and Eliasson (1993), Liao and Fukuya (2004), and Gaston (2004). When While counting the phrasal verbs in the texts, chosen for this study, I have encountered some minor difficulties. Since I am not a native speaker of English, I found some experienced certain difficultyies in determining whether some compound words are phrasal verbs or not. I had to check to refer to different various dictionaries to determine ensure that the chosen words are were indeed phrasal verbs. Another problem is was that I found it difficult to find a dictionary which lists all the phrasal verbs and therefore I had to go over many online dictionaries to make sure about validate the chosen phrasal verbs. The phrasal verbs phenomenon is a big an emerging field and they are still continue to cause difficulty for the EFL learners. Moreover, since the findings of this study contradicted my hypothesis, I would like to conduct another study pertaining to the usage of deals with the phrasal verbs. I would like to investigate what are the topics related to phrasal verbs such as the most used phrasal verbs and / or the most avoided ones phrasal verbs. I would also want like to know explore the best ways to teach the phrasal verbs and how to implement these ways in the pedagogical approaches. In the future, I aspire to want to work closely with EFL students to figure out the areas of difficulties related to the phrasal verbs. In conclusion, this research paper investigates whether Arab learners of English use fewer phrasal verbs than English writers. A collection of 20 texts, 10 each written by An American and a Saudi writer were collected and examined to come up derive logical explanations with precise findings. However, the results contradicted my hypothesis and shows indicated that there are does not exist no any significant difference between the two writers. Read More