THE PROBLEM OF UNDERSTANDING AND USING ENGLISH PHRASAL VERBS AMONG FINAL-YEAR UNDERGRADUATES IN SELECTED NIGERIAN UNIVERSITIES AND COLLEGES OF EDUCATION

THE PROBLEM OF UNDERSTANDING AND USING ENGLISH PHRASAL VERBS AMONG FINAL-YEAR UNDERGRADUATES IN SELECTED NIGERIAN UNIVERSITIES AND COLLEGES OF EDUCATION

ABSTRACT

Several studies have been conducted to investigate and describe the phenomenon called “Nigerian English.” These have been in the areas of phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics. Unfortunately, however, scholarly papers or any rigorous studies aimed mainly at elaborating the complex nature of English idioms and phrasal verbs as it applies to the Nigerian local context have been very few and far between. On the face of such an orientation, the present researcher felt very strongly that some aspects of idiomaticity require more indepth investigation than being treated superficially. This study, therefore, sought to complement what other researchers have done. It aimed primarily at describing as adequately and objectively as possible how final-year undergraduates in selected Nigerian higher institutions of learning interpreted and used English phrasal verbs. It isolated only one of the six levels of idiomaticity (the fourth level) postulated by Fraser in order to call the attention of Nigerians to this indispensable but under-rated and neglected aspect of English. This (fourth) level entailed the extraction of some constituent of an idiom to some extraidiom position in a sentence. This is indicated by a number of transformations such as the particle movement transformation where the particle is extracted from the idiom. A total of 849 subjects were drawn randomly from three selected Nigerian universities and two Federal Colleges of Education and subjected to a one-shot test designed by the researcher. Some of the items required the subjects to construct pairs of sentences to distinguish the use of such phrasal verbs as, go under, kick off or cook up used first literally and then idiomatically. Both criterion referenced and norm referenced forms of testing were employed in this study. The subjects’ scores in the test constituted the primary data for the present study. Descriptive statistics was used in presenting the data in the form of frequency tables, polygons and histograms. Some statistics such as the means and standard deviations were also employed for computing the findings. A group or sector analysis was done so as to establish a typology of how final-year Nigerian undergraduates interpreted and used English phrasal verbs. An abstraction of a grammatical model was therefore provided for the Nigerian users of English as regards phrasal verbs. It was discovered that the general performance in each school was rather poor as seen from their mean scores. Out of a total sample size of 849 subjects that were drawn for the study, only 245 (28.85%) passed. The inability to use and understand English phrasal verbs appropriately certainly hinders effective communication in both formal and informal situations. Our study therefore has important implications for students, teachers, authors, educational planners and course designers. Two major avenues (the direct channel and the incipient avenue) have been recommended for Nigerian users of English to improve their general proficiency especially the mastery of phrasal verbs

THE PROBLEM OF UNDERSTANDING AND USING ENGLISH PHRASAL VERBS AMONG FINAL-YEAR UNDERGRADUATES IN SELECTED NIGERIAN UNIVERSITIES AND COLLEGES OF EDUCATION