A cognitive approach to the teaching of phrasal verbs to EFL adult learners in blended courses

Abstract

The present action-research case study addressed the issue of phrasal verb learning in an EFL context. It aimed to evaluate the impact of a Cognitive Linguistics (CL) teaching methodology on students' retention of novel phrasal verbs with the preposition up. It also intended to assess the suitability of using metaphorical extensions of up to understand new phrasal verbs and to examine students’ perception of a CL teaching methodology for phrasal verbs learning. To do so, an AR cycle was developed, first implementing a pre-test to collect information about the students' previous knowledge on the subject, then implementing a pedagogical intervention and finally evaluating the results of the proposed methodology. This cycle was developed twice with two different groups of EFL learners enrolled in English blended courses and two different strategies were taken: representation and identification of metaphorical extensions of the preposition up. The results of this study showed that the proposed CL methodology seemed to have a positive effect on participants’ retention of novel phrasal verbs. These results are directly related to participants’ perception of this approach, which was also positive. Moreover, findings do not suggest a direct relationship between identification or representation of metaphorical extensions of up and understanding of novel phrasal verbs.