ISSN 1799-2591 Theory and Practice in Language Studies, Vol. 2, No. 3, pp. 498-509, March 2012 © 2012 ACADEMY PUBLISHER Manufactured in Finland. doi:10.4304/tpls.2.3.498-509 © 2012 ACADEMY PUBLISHER Mnemonic Effectiveness of CL-motivated Picture-elucidation Tasks in Foreign Learners‘ Acquisition of English Phrasal Verbs  Hussein Muhammadi Farsani Department of English, Faculty of Foreign Languages, University of Isfahan, Iran Email: hmfarsani@gmail.com Ahmad Moinzadeh Department of English, Faculty of Foreign Languages, University of Isfahan, Iran Email: moin@fgn.ui.ac.ir Mansoor Tavakoli Department of English, Faculty of Foreign Languages, University of Isfahan, Iran Email: tavakoli@fgn.ui.ac.ir Abstract —Learning the behavior/meaning of English phrasal verbs can prove challenging to the foreign language learner. This is mainly because such verbs, in their combinations with various prepositional/adverbial particles, often exhibit figurative senses not readily transparent to the learner. The absence of a culturally/socially rich experiential language setting giving rise to image-schematic patterns, as conceived in Cognitive Linguistic theory, might be an inhibiting factor in this regard. The present study takes this issue as its point of departure and examines whether pedagogical, picture-cued tasks revealing image- schematic concepts behind phrasal verbs would facilitate learners' inferences from their concrete to more abstract senses. It also aims to find out if such tasks would help enhance participants' acquisition and use of such verbs in the long run. For this purpose, 56 intermediate-level students aged 12-18 were randomly selected to go through the process of learning 42 phrasal verbs in an experimental or a control group each comprising 28 learners. Comparison of the results from the tests reveal a positive effect for picture-elucidation tasks – in contrast to more traditional use of discrete dictionary definitions – raising learners’ awareness toward image- schematic concepts behind English phrasal verbs. The study also carries implications for foreign language pedagogy as the tasks designed for the purposes of this study could be effectively used and further explored within the framework of Task-Based Language Teaching. Index Terms—Cognitive Linguistics (CL), image schemas, image-schematic picture-cued tasks, English phrasal verbs (EPVs), task-based language teaching (TBLT) I. INTRODUCTION English Phrasal verbs (henceforth EPVs) constitute a class of verbs that provides particular difficulty for the foreign language learner (Condon, 2002; Rudzka-Ostyn, 2003) as they are made up of a main verb element and a prepositional/adverbial particle which more often than not extends the literal meaning of the verb into figurative significance (Dirven, 2001). Such configurations and the senses they embody create less of an obstacle for native speakers as they come across abundant evidence of their use from an early age (Mandler, 2004; Tomasello, 2003). This early, gradually expanding experience undoubtedly aids the native speaker in forming the necessary "image schemas" whose properties would then scaffold the construction of abstract concepts signifying in turn relevant linguistic expressions which embody abstraction in meaning (see Geeraerts & Cuyckens 2007 for various articles; see also Lakoff & Johnson 1980, 1999). Such image schemas, in the words of Johnson (1987), "emerge as meaningful structures for us chiefly at the level of our bodily movements through space, our manipulations of objects, and our perceptual interactions" (p. 29). In this sense, an image schema is the product of human perceptual interaction with real-world events and processes, "a recurrent pattern, shape, or regularity in, or of, our actions, perceptions, and conceptions" (Rohrer 2007, p. 35). In fact, image schemas act as "buffer" between bodily percepts and more abstract conceptual domains, mapping real world structure onto conceptual structure (Fauconnier & Turner, 2002). Cognitive linguists have invariably stressed and successfully demonstrated the fundamental role image schemas play in the construction and  The authors would like to thank anonymous TPLS reviewers for their invaluable comments on an earlier draft of this article. All shortcomings remain solely ours.