April 24, 2013 16:23 UTC

Taking the Frustration Out of Phrasal

Verbs
AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster -- English
teacher Lida Baker joins us from Los Angeles to talk about phrasal verbs. The first
word is a verb. The second word, sometimes even a third, is usually a preposition.
Phrasal verbs have a reputation for being tough for English learners. So what does
Lida Baker think?

LB: "I think that is a myth."

RS: "Really."

LB: "Phrasal verbs are not hard to learn, as long as you learn them in a context. I think
what has given phrasal verbs a reputation for being difficult is the way they are
traditionally taught, which is that students are given long lists of verbs -- you know, for
instance every phrasal verb connected with the word 'go.' So 'go on,' 'go up,' 'go out,'
'go in,' 'go away,' 'go through,' OK? That's a very tedious way of learning anything."

RS: "Well, give us some of your strategies."

LB: "All right. Well, one thing we should keep in mind about phrasal verbs is that they
are used a lot more in conversational English than they are in formal English. So you
are going to find a lot of phrasal verbs in conversational settings such as ... "

RS: "Come on [laughter]."

LB: " ... television programs, radio interviews, and pop music is a wonderful, wonderful
source for phrasal verbs. I think the best way to learn, or one of the best ways of
learning phrasal verbs is to learn them in everyday contexts. One good one is people's
daily routine. We 'get up' in the morning, we 'wake up,' we 'put on' our clothes in the
morning, we 'take off' our clothes at the end of the day, we 'turn on' the coffee maker
or the television set, and of course we 'turn it off' also. After we eat we 'clean up.' If
we're concerned about our health and our weight, we go to the gym and we ... "
RS: "Work out."

LB: "There you go. You see, so as far as our daily routine is concerned, there are lots
and lots of phrasal verbs. Another wonderful context for phrasal verbs is traveling.
What does an airplane do?"

AA: "It 'takes off.'"

LB: "It 'takes off,' that's right. And lots of phrasal verbs connected with hotels. So when
we get to the hotel we 'check
in,' and you can save a lot of money if you ... "

RS: "Stay -- "

LB: "'Stay over,' right."

AA: "And you just have to make sure you don't get 'ripped off.'"

LB: "That's right! I'm glad that you mentioned 'ripped off,' because a lot of phrasal
verbs are slang, such as ripped off. And most of them do have sort of a formal English
equivalent. So to get ripped off means to be treated unfairly ... "

AA: "To be cheated."

LB: "To be cheated, yeah. And there are lot of other two-word or phrasal verbs that
you might find, for instance, in rap
music. For example, to 'get down' means to, uh -- what does it mean?"

RS: "It means to party, doesn't it?"

LB: "To go to parties."

AA: "Have a good time."

LB: "Right. Another wonderful context is dating and romance. For example, when a
relationship ends two people 'break up.' But when they decide that they've made a
mistake and they really are in love and want to be together, they 'call each other up' ...
"
RS: "And they 'make up.'"

LB: "And they make up. Now, if your boyfriend 'breaks up' with you and it's really,
really over, then it might take you a few months to 'get over it.' But, you know, sooner
or later you're going to find someone else ... "

AA: "To 'hook up' with -- "

LB: "To hook up with."

AA: " -- to use a current idiom."

LB: "Right. Or you might meet someone nice at work to 'go out with.'"

RS: "So what would you recommend for a teacher to do, to build these contexts, so
that the students can learn from them?"

LB: "I think the best thing for a teacher to do, or for a person learning alone, is to learn
the idioms in context. And there are vocabulary books and idiom books that will cluster
the phrasal verbs for the student. There are also so many wonderful Web sites. I
mean, if you go to a search engine and you just type in 'ESL + phrasal verbs,' you're
going to run across -- and there's another one, 'run across' -- you're going to find lots
of Web sites that present phrasal verbs in these contexts that I've been talking about.
And also grammar sites which explain the grammar of phrasal verbs, which I haven't
gotten into because we just don't have the time to discuss it here. But in doing my
research for this segment I found lots of Web sites that do a really great job of
explaining the grammar of phrasal verbs."

AA: Lida Baker writes and edits textbooks for English learners. You can find earlier
segments with Lida at voanews.com/wordmaster. And that's WORDMASTER for this
week. With Rosanne Skirble, I'm Avi Arditti.