Learn phrasal verb!

soni   Wednesday, October 06, 2004, 07:06 GMT
Attention please to all English learners in this forum. Please read this short article about phrasal verb:

"As you know, native speakers of English tend to use a lot of phrasal verbs (sometimes called prepositional, multi-word verb, verbs) in everyday spoken English. In fact, this is quite frustrating for students who often have learned one-word verbs during their English studies and then are confronted with an English speaking world where people usually favor phrasal verbs in daily discourse."

So, let's learn phrasal verb!

A more complete information can be found here: http://esl.about.com/library/weekly/aa022098.htm
Jim   Wednesday, October 06, 2004, 07:12 GMT
Yes, learn them by all means ... but not before you've mastered the more fundamental aspects of the language like, for example, distinction between the singular and plural forms of nouns.
Jim   Wednesday, October 06, 2004, 07:16 GMT
... yes, and articles.
any   Wednesday, October 06, 2004, 08:49 GMT
I hate phrasal verbs! I don't understand them
soni   Wednesday, October 06, 2004, 09:12 GMT
Hi Jim!

Please correct me if I have made mistakes with my previous sentence.

Thanks a lot.
soni   Wednesday, October 06, 2004, 09:18 GMT
I also hate phrasal verbs. There are so many of them. But, I hope that I will be able to master phrasal verbs someday. Learning English without learning phrasal verbs is not possible my friend. In one way or another, you must know it.
Boy   Wednesday, October 06, 2004, 12:25 GMT
I don't qualify myself to correct one's mistakes but I want to share a lesson that I was taught by an American teacher over the net. She told me that when I mention something, I should not repeat it again as it is but rather use a pronoun in order to refer it. Otherwise my writing will have a monotonous feeling.



"I also hate phrasal verbs. There are so many of them. But, I hope that I will be able to master them someday. Learning English without learning them is not possible my friend. In one way or another, you must know them."


BTW, how you do learn them? which technique do you use? Do you learn them in context? or from a list?


I also feel that they are frequently used in movies and talk shows by native speakers. They are also used alot in novels and news articles. Some of them have more than one meaning but it is not like that they are a tough nut to crack. If we try to learn them in context, we won't have much difficulty learning them. Memorizing them direct from a list is just waste of time, imho.
Damian   Wednesday, October 06, 2004, 12:55 GMT
It's impossible to carry out a normal everyday conversation without the use of phrasal verbs. Without them speech would sound really weird and stilted. I'm not looking at this from the point of view of a learner, so I must be understanding of all the comments in here and simply put up with it (or exit stage left) ;-)
Steve K   Wednesday, October 06, 2004, 14:38 GMT
Let me explain how we deal with phrasal verbs in the Linguist. It may provide some more general help. When the learner encounters the phrasal verb he saves it to his database to be learned like any other new word. This will collect sentences that contain this phrasal verb to his database for later regular review.

When reviewing his phrases he can sort by verb, by preposition, or by any component of these phrases.He can also print these phrasal verbs selected by these or other criteria to use in his writing.

He also needs to test himself 7 times using sentences that he has accumulated and continues to accumulate in his library.

Most of all he continues to listen and read to his selected content items over and over. In so doing he starts to notice the phrasal verbs.
soni   Thursday, October 07, 2004, 03:16 GMT
"BTW, how you do learn them? which technique do you use? Do you learn them in context? or from a list?"


I am not sure about the method I am going to use. But, I will follow the advice given in this forum, by reading and listening a lot. First, of course, I will start with reading. As a source of my reading, I always read news online at www.bbc.co.uk, except on Saturday and Monday. Because on those days, I will not come to the office for work :-).

Usually, I will skip phrasal verbs when reading, but now I must know exactly what they mean. I don't realize how important it is before reading the article that I posted in this forum.
Jim   Thursday, October 07, 2004, 04:35 GMT
Soni,

Well, there you go: stop skipping them and look them up. It may slow your reading down but it will speed your learning up. I'm sure you know this already though & I know that I aught to be taking this very advice.

You've guessed correctly that I'd spotted a mistake in your post. You should have made "phrasal verb" plural i.e. "Please read this short article about phrasal verbs: ... So, let's learn phrasal verbs."
Tremmert   Thursday, October 07, 2004, 10:52 GMT
Does any other language rely so heavily on phrasal verbs? Maybe German?
Tom   Thursday, October 07, 2004, 11:30 GMT
German and Polish have compound verbs which are like phrasal verbs except they are written as one word.

robic = to make
nadrobic = to make up
przerobic = to make over
zarobic = to earn