Abstract

The present study aims at investigating the avoidance of English phrasal verbs (PVs) by Jordanian EFL learners. It builds up on a corollary derived from Hulstijin and Marchena’s (1989) study that Jordanian learners would avoid phrasal verbs not for structural but for semantic causes. A multiple-choice test (MCT) was administrated to seventy-five intermediate and sixty-five advanced EFL learners. The test contained fifteen sentences with the aim of eliciting preference for either a phrasal verb or an equivalent one-word verb. The two groups of students were further divided into two subgroups. One of the subgroups took a cued MTC (an Arabic equivalent of the phrasal verb) to facilitate comprehension and the other was given a non-cued MCT. The results reveal that Jordanian intermediate EFL learners tend to show a preference for one-word verbs over phrasal verbs more than advanced learners, though not in a high proportion. Moreover, they also show that cueing did not significantly affect the performance of the learners. The study is expected to provide pedagogical implications for EFL instructors and material designers.