The effectiveness of multimodal knowledge representation in enhancing metaphoric competence in the case of English phrasal verbs

Takeshi SATO (Tokyo University of Agriculture & Technology, Japan)

Masa‘akiOGURA (Osaka Ohtani University, Japan)

Tyler BURDEN (MeiseiUniversity, Japan)

Presentation for AsiaCALL 2017 on 25th of November @Ho Chi Minh Open City University, Vietnam

Main Points

Difficult to acquire and use English phrasal verbs (PVs)

Developed a computerized material to learn PVs

The software facilitated learners’ successful use of PVs especially with figurative meanings

Overview

1. Literature (Ogura)

2. Software Development (Sato)

3. Research Questions

4. Procedures (Burden)

5. Findings & Discussion

6. Conclusion (Ogura)

Literature

Can you understand the meaning of the sentences?

Professor Burden went off to get a drink.

Professor Burden went off Mr. Sato after an argument.

Phrasal verbs (PVs)

Multiword unit consisting of a verb and a preposition or adverb

Both words are polysemic.

“[O]ne of the most challenging features of the English language” (Garnier & Schmitt 2016, p.30)

Cannot acquire PVs by memorizing as an idiom (Lindstromberg, 2001b)

Not only language teachers but also cognitive linguists are interested in PVs (ex. Dirven, 2001; Rice 2003; Rudzka-Ostyn, 2003)

Complicated semantic network “take over”

Take Over

(Norbig & Lakoff, 1987) (Tyler & Evans, 2003)

“getthrough”

(Pedek, 2010)

“go off”

1. explode

2. start making a noise

3. electricity, etc.: not work

4. leave

5. happen

6. become angry

7. food/drink: not fresh

8. become worse

9. stop liking someone/something

10. begin sleeping

(from Macmillan Dictionary)

Professor Buden went off to get a drink.

(literal meaning)

Professor Burden went off Mr. Sato after an argument.

(figurative meaning)

Drawbacks of the dictionary description “on” (Lindstromberg, 2001)

1. jumbled or fragmented positioning of information

2. lack of attention to metaphor

3. lack of information about paradigmatic semantic contrasts

4. lack of pictorial illustration

5. flawed sense information

6. difficult language

7. omitted usages

Suggestions to overcome the drawbacks (Lindstromberg, 2001)

1. pictorial representation of meaning

2. explicit division between literal and metaphorical uses

3. clear division between a preposition and other related prepositions

4. stop treating uses in order of frequency

5. standardization of the organization of entries according to semantic views such as prominent highlighting of succinct rubrics.

Software Development

What kind of pictorial aids is required?

Take Over

(Norbig & Lakoff, 1987)

(Tyler & Evans, 2003)

Process to understand L2 PVs viaschema

Schema

The fire alarm went off this morningThe meeting went off well.

Prof. Burden went off Mr. Sato after an argument .

Prof. Burden always goes off at a tangent

Prof. Burden went off to get a drink.

Prof. Burden went off with all the money.

Relates the senses with each other

Metaphoric comptence is crucialfor L2 learners (Boers, 2000, Littlemore, 2001)

Examples of schema

Dewell (1994)

Image schemata of go off

How to develop the computer-based material?

Displaying the computerized image schemata of the target PVs

Showing a prototypical sense first

Dividing clearly a verb (particle) into the other related ones

Stand-alone software for the PVs (available only in Windows OS)

1. Matching

2. Combining the images with the prototypical sentences

In the classroom

Exercise to check the comprehension

Research Questions

Our research questions

1. Does the software enhance acquisition of the target PVs?

2. Which sense of the PVs does the software better enhance, literal or figurative meanings?

3. Which PVs are better acquired with the software?

Research Procedures

Procedures

1. 49 college students (technology & economics) participated

2. 1st multiple-choice PV test (20 questions within 10 minutes) with Google Form

3. 1st writing PV test (5 mins)

4. Self-study with the treatments (10 minutes)

5. 2nd multiple-choice/writing PV tests just after the treatment

6. 3rd multiple-choice/writing PV tests after 1 week

7. Analysis (repeated one-way ANOVA & multiple comparison)

10 Target PVs3 verbs (break, bring, come)with5 particles (in, off, on, out, over)

Number of the blanks is the ranking from PHaVE List (Garnier & Schmitt, 2015)

1. break in2. break

off(145)3. break

out(114)4. bring

in(47)5. bring on6. bring

out(81)

7. come in(14)

8. come off(132)

9. come out(7)

10. come over(89)

Questions developed by Google FormAll questions extracted from the corpus of TOEIC questions

10 literal + 10 figurative sentences

Fill-in-the-blank questions

Production task to write as many PV sentences as possible

Sample of writing test

Findings

Total test sores (fill-in-the-blanks)

9.73

12.30 11.99

7.31

9.13 9.87

4.89

5.96

7.75

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

pretest posttest delayedtest

M+SD M M-SD

**

Total test sores with literal meanings (fill-in-the-blanks)

6.05

6.99 7.15

4.37

5.125.53

2.69

3.26

3.91

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

pretest posttest delayedtest

M+SD M M-SD

*

Total test sores with figurative meanings (fill-in-the-blanks)

4.52

5.80 5.64

3.08

4.18 4.33

1.64

2.573.01

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

pretest posttest delayedtest

M+SD M M-SD

*

*

Score of PVs(Literal meanings)

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

breakin

breakoff

breakout

bringin

bringon

bringout

comein

comeoff

comeout

comeover

pretest posttest delayed test

Scores of PVs (figurative meanings)

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

breakin

breakoff

breakout

bringin

bringon

bringout

comein

comeoff

comeout

comeover

pretest posttest delayed test

Results of the writing tests

No significant difference (Kruskal-Wallis test)p = 0.12, > .05

0.76

1.21

1.10

0.00

0.20

0.40

0.60

0.80

1.00

1.20

1.40

pretest posttest delayedtest

Answers of our RQs

RQ1Does the software enhance the acquisition of the

target PVs?:

Yes, significant differences between pre test and the other tests.

RQ2:Which sense of the PVs does the software better enhance, literal or figurative meanings?

It enhanced both meanings, but exerted more positive impact on the figurative meanings

RQ3: Which PVs are better acquired with the software?

PVs with break are better acquired than bring and come

Conclusion and limitations

Multimodal presentation of PVs enhanced their comprehension. Multimodal PV software improved the comprehension and continued the effect longer especially for figurative meanings Large-scale research required.

References

Boers, F., & Lindstromberg, S. (2008). How cognitive linguistics can foster effective vocabulary teaching. In F. Boers, & S. Lindstromberg (Eds.), Cognitive linguistic approaches to teaching vocabulary and phraseology (pp.1-64). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Dewell, R. B. (1994). Over again: Image-schema transformations in semantic analysis. Cognitive Linguistics, 5(4), 351-380.

Garnier, M. & Schmitt, N. (2016). Picking up polysemous phrasal verbs: How many do learners know and what facilitates this knowledge?, System, 59, 29-44.

Lakoff, G.(1987) Woman, fire and dangerous thing. Chicago: Chicago University Press.

Langacker, R, W.(1987) Foundations of Cognitive Grammar, Volume I, Theoretical Prerequisites. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.

Lindstormberg, S. (2001a). Preposition entries in UK monolingual learner’s dictionaries: Problems and possible solutions. Applied Linguistics 22(1), 79-103.

Lindstromberg, S. (2001b). (Sometimes) Against the grain. Humanising Language Teaching Magazine, 3(3). Retrieved 12th of November, 2016 from http://www.hltmag.co.uk/may01/lind.htm

NORVIG P., & LAKOFF G. (1987). Taking: A study in lexical network theory, A. Jon, B. Natasha, M. Laura A. & F. Hana (Eds), Proceedings of the Thirteenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society (pp. 195-206).

Rudzka-Ostyn, B. (2003). Word power phrasal verbs and compounds: A cognitive approach. Berlin, Germany: Walter de Gruyter.

Sato, T., Lai, Y., & Burden, T. (2014). Examining the Impact of Individual Differences of Information Processing Styles in Technology-Enhanced Second Vocabulary Learning. Proceedings of CLaSIC 2014. p. 432-440.

Yoshii,M., & Fraitz, J.(2002). Second Language Incidental Vocabulary Retention: The Effect of Text and Picture Annotation Types. CALICO Journal, 20 (1), 33-58.

Yeh, Y., & Wang, C. (2003). Effects of Multimedia Vocabulary Annotations and learning styles on vocabulary learning. CALICO Journal, 21(1). 131-144.

This work is supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number 26370658

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Thank you for listening

Takeshi SATO ( tsato@cc.tuat.ac.jp )

Masa’aki OGURA (oguramasa@osaka-ohtani.ac.jp )

Tyler BURDEN (burden.tyler@meisei-u.ac.jp )