Study on Avoidance Behaviour among Persian EFL Learners: Phrasal Verbs in Focus

This survey was an attempt to study the avoidance behaviour of Persian learners of English in using phrasal verbs and its relationship, if any, with learners' proficiency level (advanced, intermediate), test types (multiple-choice, translation) and phrasal verb types (literal, figurative). Seventy participants, either at intermediate or advanced level, took one of the two test types. In addition to that, to identify native speakers' choices and preferences over each item of the test fifteen native speakers of English took the multiple-choice test via internet. The ANOVA results showed the existence of phrasal verb avoidance among Iranian learners of English at both advanced and intermediate levels and the results demonstrated that less proficient Iranian students avoided using phrasal verbs more frequently than proficient Iranian learners of English. In addition, the results revealed that the semantic complexity of phrasal verbs played an important role in the avoidance behaviour of learners as they avoided using figurative phrasal verbs more than literal ones. Finally, the outcome of this research showed that there is no relationship between avoidance behaviour of participants and the test types (translation, multiple-choice)