Phrasal verbs as learning material in Business English courses for students majoring in Linguistics

• Main Authors: Alexander V. Litvinov, Svetlana A. Burikova, Dmitry S. Khramchenko
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia (RUDN University) 2017-12-01
• Series: Training, Language and Culture
• Subjects: phrasal verb; business communication; communication; teaching methods; communicative competence; business rhetoric; business english
• Online Access: https://rudn.tlcjournal.org/archive/1(4)/1(4)-06.pdf

The study highlights the existing views on the nature of English phrasal verbs and their theoretical grounding in Russian and English linguistics. Particular attention is paid to phrasal verbs teaching requirements as part of Business English courses for students majoring in Linguistics. The authors see phrasal verbs as a specific part of business communication that needs thorough consideration due to a disparity in the integrated semantics of a verb combined with its postpositive and the correspondent language components in a student’s mother tongue. The study suggests that mere training of phrasal verbs like is insufficient, and assimilating these language units into students’ communicative competence requires disclosing to them the underlying semantic structure which results in these verbs’ synergistic meanings. The authors provide some classifications to explore the difficulties of learning phrasal verbs by non-native speakers. The paper also examines some aspects of Business English related to the issue and states the conditions for the mastery of phrasal verbs.