What Causes Avoidance in L2 Learning

Among the structural and lexical factors claimed to account for avoidance in second language learning are (a) cross-linguistic difference, (b) cross-linguistic similarity, and (c) intrinsic complexity of the second language features avoided. This paper examines patterns of avoidance and preference for phrasal verbs or equivalent single-word verbs among Swedish learners of English. We assumed that if the subjects avoided English phrasal verbs, particularly the figurative ones, even though phrasal verbs exist in Swedish, this would indicate that inherent semantic difficulty of second language forms was the main factor contributing to the avoidance behavior. If, on the other hand, the learners did not show any preference for one-word verb forms in English, or indeed favored the phrasal forms, this would support the assumption that avoidance or nonavoidance depends largely on differences or similarities between the native and the foreign language. A multiple-choice test and a translation test were given to two groups of advanced Swedish-speaking learners of English. Each test consisted of 20 sentences, allowing for the choice of either a phrasal or a synonymous single-word verb. The test answers showed that the Swedish learners avoided neither phrasal verbs in general nor the figurative ones in particular, regardless of whether the verbs were similar to, or different from, their Swedish translation equivalents. Furthermore, the results were compared to the avoidance patterns of a group of advanced Hebrew-speaking learners of English. From the comparison it emerged that the Swedish learners usedsignificantly more phrasal verbs than the Israelis, notably figurative ones. These results suggest that the avoidance is determined more by a systemic incongruence between the first language (L1) and the second language (L2) than by the inherent difficulty of L2 forms.