Multi-word verbs in student academic presentations

• Prepositional verbs are the most frequent, followed by phrasal, and phrasal-prepositional.
• No significant correlation between presenters' free combinations and multi-word verbs.
• Students used repetitively between 17% and 32% of the verb combinations.
• There were no strong correlations between lexical diversity and multi-word verbs.
• Most phrasal verbs have multiple meanings, yet they were used primarily with a single meaning.

The study examined three categories of multi-word verbs (phrasal, prepositional, and phrasal-prepositional verbs) in comparison to free combinations. It explored four aspects of their usage in student presentations—their frequency, the preferred order and meanings the presenters favored, their choices of unique vs. repeated uses of verb combinations, and the relationship between the lexical diversity of the presentations and students' use of multi-word verbs. The research is based on the individual presentations of English native-speaking college students (n = 30).The analysis revealed that students used multi-word verbs as frequently as they did free combinations. It also showed that prepositional verbs were twice more prominent than phrasal verbs, followed by the relatively infrequent use of phrasal prepositional verbs. The students tended to use the multi-word verb structures repetitively and the lack of strong correlations between the lexical diversity of the presentations and the three multi-word verb subcategories pointed to the relative independence of the variables. The semantic analysis of the phrasal verbs revealed that, even though the majority of them had multiple meanings, they were predominantly used with a single meaning in the presentations. The findings have implications for ESL teaching and material design purposes.