Abstract
The paper assesses the use of multi-word verbs in written English by students of the Federal
University of Agriculture, Makurdi. For its theoretical emphasis on forms and
functions of grammatical items in communication, the structural grammar model description
of features and meanings of English multi-word verbs provides the basis for
assessment of the student’s use of the items; using the structural model, a
proficiency test, tagged Uses of Multi-word verbs in English, is developed and
administered to randomly selected forty-nine first-year Use of English students.
The results, using frequency, percentage and mean for data analysis, show that
the students are deficient in using multi-word verbs as they cannot provide the
contextual synonyms for these multi-word verbs in the test items: come on,
break down, go off, die away, get back, getting by, catch on, watch out, eat
out, hang on (intransitive phrasal verbs); sort out, knock over, set off, blow
up, put off, throw away, give away, take of, leave out ( transitive phrasal
verbs); look for, look into, fall for, stand for, approve of, do without,
bombard with, break into, come across, look after (prepositional verbs); catch up with, go on with, look forward to, watch out for, fix
up with, put that down to, take out on, looked up to, fob off, comes down to (phrasal
prepositional verbs). The study establishes that some undergraduates cannot use
English multi-word verbs and therefore recommends teaching and drills on multi-multi-word
verbs for effective use of English.
Keywords: multi-word
verbs, meanings, undergraduate students, deficiencies
DOI: www.doi.org/10.36349/tjllc.2024.v03i01.018
author/Adaje, A.O. & Vereshe, I.A.
journal/Tasambo JLLC | 15 February 2024 | Article 18
