Investigating Difficulties Facing University EFL Students in Using Phrasal Verbs

Abstract

This study aimed at investigating difficulties facing university EFL students in using English phrasal verbs. At College of Languages. This study aims at identifying the student’s errors in using English phrasal verbs. Because it is difficult area for university EFL students and it tries to find out the reasons behind the difficulty of mastering and acquiring English phrasal verbs by EFL students. The descriptive analytical method was adopted in this study. To collect the data required questionnaire was designed and given to (30) English language teachers and the test was administered and distributed to (50) second year students majoringin English language at Sudan University of Science and Technology, College of language, the data were analyzed by using the statistical package of social science (SPSS). The findings of study revealed that the students have poor knowledge in using and guessing the meaning of phrasal verbs from the context of speech, the findings showed that the nature of phrasal verbs, cause difficulty for EFL university students because most of students are not sufficiently aware of using English phrasal verbs. The findings revealed that the idiomatic phrasal verbs are difficult because the meaning of phrasal verbs cannot inferred from the meaning of individual words. The study recommended that the teachers of English language at Sudanese university should take care of this important linguistic area of phrasalverbs by providing more practices in linguistic for understanding students, through comes effort by English department and Sudanese university curriculum should contain a component of phrasal verbs.