Teaching ESL - Phrasal verbs

TEACHING PHRASAL VERBS:

THE WHY, WHAT, HOW AND WHEN

By Stephanie Hirschman

LinguaHouse

Jul. 30, 2024

There are thousands of phrasal verbs, and this in itself is discouraging news for students who often struggle to get their heads around these lexical items. They can be a bit of a headache for teachers too, but as they are used very widely in all sorts of communication, there’s no getting away from them. Unpicking some of the issues around this language area can be helpful for both students and teachers, and that’s what I’m aiming to do in this post.

Form and meaning
As with any vocabulary item, students will need to understand the form (spelling and pronunciation) and the meaning. When a phrasal verb is included in the target language for a lesson, we need to call attention to both parts: the verb and the particle that go together. So, to begin with, students need to notice the two words in bold in this sentence:

• Example 1: I’ll pick you up at 8 o’clock tonight.

Then students need to understand the meaning: I’ll come to your house at this time, probably in my car, and we’ll go together to the same place. They also need to understand that other similar pairings will not have the same meaning (e.g. pick out or take up) or may not even exist in ENGLISH (e.g. pick above). The problem with lots of phrasal verbs is that the same form, or combination of verb and particle can have different meanings. Compare these examples:

• Example 2: I picked up quite a bit of French while I was on holiday. (learn a language or skill without formal instruction)
• Example 3: I tried to call him, but he’s just not picking up. He might be in the shower. (answer a phone call in person)
• Example 4: Did you pick up on whether they seemed angry or just sad? I couldn’t really tell. (notice something that others may not have noticed)

This means that even the dictionary may not help students understand the meaning because they may be mistakenly looking at the wrong entry. They need more information.

Collocations and grammar
Collocations are two or more words that we often see together. In one sense, phrasal verbs themselves are collocations, although we might also think of them as polywords, or lexical items which function as one word, but are written as two. And then, phrasal verbs themselves have collocations. We very often see a time or place in sentences like I’ll pick you up at 8 o’clock tonight. But the main collocation to call attention to here is exemplified by ‘you’ – we usually pick a person up.
What’s more, notice the word order. For this example, the phrasal verb opens up, or separates, so that the object ‘you’ goes in the middle. And this is how this item is recorded in many dictionaries: pick someone up. The dictionary also tells us that we can pick something up with either the same meaning or with the meaning intended in example 2. However, in example 3, the phrasal verb does not separate to allow an object to be inserted because it doesn’t have an object – this usage is intransitive. So, collocations and grammar patterns distinguish these usages.

Level and studentship
I believe that starting at A2 level we should be making these structures explicit for students, at the very least recording whether new phrasal verbs are separable or not by using the same format as the dictionary: pick someone/something up or pick on someone. Even at lower levels, students can handle the terms phrasal verb, separable and inseparable. They should also be able to appreciate that some verbs require an object (transitive) and some cannot have an object (intransitive).
This is basic stuff that relates to other common mistakes that low level students make, like using the verb ‘enjoy’ without an object. I seem to be forever correcting sentences that state:

• ‘We enjoyed at the beach.’

It’s worth teaching students some meta-language as you go along, not for its own sake, but to clarify teaching points and corrections.
Of course, we should provide information at a level students can handle, and this can vary a great deal. Some A2/B1 groups or individuals enjoy a grammatical explanation, and some will just get a headache. However, when they’re ready, everyone will benefit from knowing that there are different types of phrasal verbs and, what’s more, separable ones must separate when the object is a pronoun (‘pick up you’ at 8 o’clock is wrong, while ‘pick up your friend at 8 o’clock’ is fine).
If your class is going to react badly to this type of grammar point, then maybe you don’t have to teach it in detail – focus primarily on form and meaning for the phrasal verbs. You could refer to the grammar point briefly as a road map for what they’ll encounter in a higher-level course. For example, in the LinguaHouse lesson Food for Thought, you can do the first half of the language point and then skip the more detailed grammar explanation. You may find that student questions about the answers in the practice exercises lead organically into a brief account of the grammar points anyway.

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If you do decide to go into the grammar more thoroughly, this is a great occasion to use the all/most/some phrasing for lesson aims, as in:

• all students will understand the meaning of the phrasal verbs
• most students will be able to identify the objects of transitive phrasal verbs
• some students will be able to categorize the phrasal verbs as separable or inseparable.

Review and mastery
The best way for students to encounter phrasal verbs is one by one, like any other lexical item, in clear contexts (see the LinguaHouse lesson Jack-o-Lanterns).

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Students should be recording these in their notes in the dictionary format described above, perhaps on a topical page like holidays or sports.
At around B2 level, they should have a good repertoire of phrasal verbs and at this point they’d benefit from reviewing them by focusing on form. How many phrasal verbs do they know that use the verb ‘pick’? Or ‘take’? Or ‘put’? Can they use these correctly in sentences? Are they able to recognize multiple meanings for some forms (see the LinguaHouse lesson Elvis Presley)?

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Alternatively, you might focus on the particles. And here’s where phrasal verbs start to make more sense because the particles often have meanings. For example, ‘up’ often refers to one of these situations:

• an upward movement: the sun comes up in the morning
• increase in quantity or quality: prices go up
• completion or ending: use up all the milk
• coming closer: a taxi pulled up outside the house

Students will definitely benefit from exploring this aspect of phrasal verbs, collecting examples and recording those with the same particles together.

Conclusion
Apart from being widely used in all types of communication, phrasal verbs offer opportunities to reinforce quite a few key concepts in language learning. To begin with, many of them feature intrusive sounds, like the /w/ in go up, or linking between final consonant and initial vowel sounds (see LinguaHouse’s Mad about Marbles).

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Recognizing and producing these features improves students’ listening and speaking skills. In addition, encountering phrasal verbs in a well-defined context allows students to practice guessing the meaning of unfamiliar items – this is an important skill for language learning. Confirming their ideas about meaning or grammar by consulting an English-English dictionary (and identifying the correct entry!) promotes student independence.
Finally, phrasal verbs open up productive conversations about translation, as students start to recognize the limits of word-for-word translation and build up confidence to translate a whole idea instead.
As teachers we need to model positivity about all aspects of phrasal verbs to help students recognize their importance and activate them in their productive output.

Tags: Teaching ESL; Learner training

Adapted from: https://www.linguahouse.com/blog/post/teaching-phrasal-verbs-the-why-what-how-and-when. Accessed on September 20, 2024. © 2008–2024 LinguaHouse.com. All rights reserved.