engleski

Strategic Construal of Particle Verbs (PVs) in Croatian Secondary-School Learners of English

Many English-language learners face difficulties in acquiring idiomatic expressions and particle-verb constructions with their multiple meanings are no exception. There is a number of factors that influence the acquisition of particle verbs. First of all, many particle verbs are polysemous and their meanings range from quite literal to highly idiomatic. Secondly, new PV constructions constantly emerge in spoken English. Thirdly, not all English-language learners have similar or equivalent constructions in their L1. Furthermore, traditional teaching approaches do not seem to have facilitated the process of learning, mostly due to the fact that they relied on linguistic theories that do not view language as a cognitively motivated system. Hence, particle verbs were traditionally taught and learned as lists or groups of linguistic units, largely grouped either thematically or according to their lexical components. However, the rise of cognitive linguistics has provided us with new insights that are relevant and applicable to investigating as well as teaching L2. It has offered evidence that language is a cognitively motivated system, reflects our experience of the world, and is tightly related to general cognitive processes. The present study adopts the basic postulates of cognitive linguistics in its exploration of meaning construal of English PVs. In the section that follows we briefly outline previous research on the topic as well as the theoretical framework within which the study was conducted.

particle verbs ; strategic construal ; English ; L2

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