Still Thinking It Over: More ways to practice phrasal verbs

Hopefully, some of you were able to try out the Think It Over activity from last week.  When I worked with an advanced private student, we quickly got through Tasks 1 and 2, and then focused on finding one-word equivalents for phrasal verbs, which we did with an article he had read in preparation for our lesson. This made me think it would be useful to list some possible ways teachers can turn an authentic text into a phrasal verb activity.

• Last week, a reader and fellow blogger, Bekah Palmer, suggested that we delete all prepositions from a text and ask students to decide if the verb was the first word of a phrasal verb, and if so, what the particle(s) would be.

• Like  Bekah, I’ve turned existing sentences into controlled exercises. One way is to pull sentences with phrasal verbs from a text after reading it and remove all the particles. Students must fill in the blanks based on what they’re able to recall and their knowledge of particle meanings: “Britain officially slipped ________ recession.”  A second way is to pull sentences with phrasal verbs from a text before reading it and give a choice of particles. For example, “Britain officially slipped (back over/ across/ back into) recession.” (Taken from NPR article One After Another, European Leaders Get the Boot.)

• You can underline a set of phrasal verbs within a text and have students match them to their one-word equivalents on the board. Advanced students should actually be able to provide many of these one-word equivalents. In my last  lesson with  my advanced private student, I decided to give an inline choice of particles and then ask for a one-word equivalent. For instance, ”Authorities could require people [depositors] to take (in/ out/ over) a new form of currency…” (from NPR.org)  > He correctly chose “take out” and then reworded the phrasal verb as “withdraw.”

• I’ve also given communicative practice with phrasal verbs seen in a text by incorporating them into discussion questions. For example, what are some common reasons to take out large amounts of cash from the bank? How often do you withdraw money?

Do you have any preferred way of practicing phrasal verbs with upper level students?

Think It Over: An activity to develop understanding of phrasal verbs

By the request of a student, I’ll be developing some materials to practice phrasal verbs. I’ve decided to focus on the particles and their common meanings. I think such exercises will aid in understanding the more idiomatic phrasal verbs that upper level students students either confuse or have yet to encounter. Do you agree? Please let me know if the Think It Over_handout works well with your students. In this activity, I chose to focus on six particles: up, off, back, down, over, and out. Next week, I’ll try to target other particles.

Note: My definitions are based on those in the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English Online.

Student Stumper 10: Figuring out phrasal verbs

QUESTION: How can we know if a phrasal verb is separable or inseparable?

ANSWER: There isn’t always an easy way to find this out, but a good appendix like those in the upper level books of the Focus on Grammar series will prove to be a useful reference for students. The authors of books 3, 4, and 5 included lists of intransitive and transitive phrasal verbs, noting in the latter which transitive phrasal verbs can or must be separated.

You can explain that three-word verbs are easier to work with than two-word verbs. Three-word verbs end with a preposition. The preposition must be followed by an object. One general rule is not to separate a three-word phrasal verb:

                Come up with something

                Follow through with something

                Get out of something

               Go along with something

               Keep up with someone

There are exceptions to the rule but not many. Consider three-word verbs that take two objects. The first object must separate the verb from the adverb particle:

                Give it up for John! = Let’s applaud John!

                Put it down to inexperience = The cause is/ was inexperience.

Of course, since prepositions are followed by objects, students could be taught to categorize phrasal verbs according to whether the verb is followed by an adverb, a preposition, or both. This practice makes the distinction among phrasal verbs, prepositional verbs, and phrasal prepositional verbs. I’ve come to prefer simplifying my instruction and using the term particle to refer to the short words following the verb.  I think it’s less taxing to simply view the phrasal verb as a unit: a verb plus one or two particles. As each two- or three-word unit is studied, the student must learn three things about it: what it means, if it’s transitive or intransitive, and if it’s transitive whether it can be separated or not.

How do you teach phrasal verbs? What terms do you use with your students when talking about structure?