Wae-arina Waehayi1 and Waraporn Sripetpun2 1. M.A. in Teaching English as an International Language, Department of Languages and Linguistics, Faculty of Liberal Arts, Prince of Songkla University. 2. Ph. D. (Applied Linguistics), Assistant Professor, Department of Languages and Linguistics, Faculty of Liberal Arts, Prince of Songkla University
Abstract Phrasal verbs are one of the most difficult types of vocabulary to learn a language for ESL/EFL learners whose L1 is a non-Germanic language due to its multiple meaning and word construction. Traditionally, students were taught to learn meanings of phrasal verbs by heart and these would be kept in short term memory and difficult to remember in a longer period. Conceptual metaphor is a method emphasizing on cognitive performance to stimulate students to guess the meaning of phrasal verbs and this will also help to have them kept in the learners’ long term memory. The present study aimed to investigate the effectiveness the conceptual metaphor technique in teaching phrasal verbs to a class of 31 twelfth graders studying at a secondary school under the Secondary Educational Area Office 15 in Southern Thailand. These students were purposively selected as the research subject. They had a generally low English proficiency according to the Ordinary National Educational Test (O-NET) results. The research is a one-group pre and post-test design. Two hundred and ten phrasal verbs were intensively taught to students within 8 weeks to examine the influences of the technique on students’ knowledge and retention of these phrasal verbs. Results showed that students learned more phrasal verbs and they could retain the knowledge of phrasal verbs under investigation at a significant level of 0.01. Results from questionnaires on students’
awareness of the conceptual metaphor technique and learning attitudes revealed that the students
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