Abstract:
Popularity of the usage of smartphones is widely observed among young undergraduates, who
are increasingly dependent on these devices (Yu, 2012). Although commonly used in written
and oral discourses, phrasal verbs are often omitted if their correct usage poses a hurdle to the
English as a Second Language (ESL) learners. As a substitute for the use of phrasal verbs, ESL
learners tend to use single word units (Imrose, 2013). This negligence of the use of phrasal
verbs is surmised as an issue in the ESL teaching/ learning process. Thus, utilising the
omnipresent smart devices, this research aims at promoting a novel method to determine the
effectiveness of teaching phrasal verbs by the use of one of the popular mobile applications
designed for communication. Thirty undergraduates were selected for this experimental study.
Pre- and post-tests consisting of 40 commonly used phrasal verbs in a study carried by Liu
(2011) based on two corpora – The Corpus of Contemporary American English and The British
National Corpus were conducted. The first test was given without any instructions on the
phrasal verbs and the post test was carried out after instructions. The experimental group
comprising 50 per cent of the selected undergraduates were instructed in phrasal verbs using
the selected mobile application throughout a period of eight days while the controlled group
was given traditional classroom instructions within one hour. A comparative analysis of the
results of both tests revealed that the experimental group outperformed in the post test than the
controlled group highlighting the use of mobile applications in the English Language Teaching
(ELT) process as an effective recourse in the teaching/ learning process of phrasal verbs.
