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PHRASAL VERBS IN TED TALKS: A CORPUS ANALYSIS
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- Author(s) / Creator(s)
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Researchers have been exploring phrasal verbs (PV) for a few decades now; the complex nature of PVs, their high frequency and productivity in conversation and fiction, and the challenges they pose to learners and teachers account for linguists‟ interest in this type of verb. One area in which PV researchers have made considerable progress is in creating frequency lists based on corpus analyses. The latest is a register-specific PV frequency list developed by Liu and Myers (2018), referred to as the Spoken and Academic Writing Phrasal Verb Pedagogical (S&A W PHaVE) List. To date, there has been no investigation into the representation of PV frequency lists in authentic teaching materials used in English for academic purposes (EAP) classrooms. The present study examined a TED Talks corpus (adapted from Coxhead and Walls, 2012) with respect to (1) PV frequency and (2) PV coverage using the Liu and Myer's list. The findings revealed that on average, there is one PV in every 124 words in the corpus and that more than half of the PVs (62.73%) correspond to those in the S&A W PHaVE List. This PV frequency list representation suggests EAP instructors should utilize such lists when selecting authentic aural materials.
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- Date created
- 2020-04-06
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- Type of Item
- Research Material