The Ultimate Verbal Phrase Book

TO THE TEACHER

The inspiration for The Ultimate Phrasal Verb Book came about when a student asked me for a textbook to help her learn the meanings of common phrasal verbs. I had nothing to offer. The only textbook focusing on common verbs that I could give her contains not one phrasal verb — it teaches arise but not get up, awake but not wake up, seek but not look for.

Phrasal verbs are verbs, not idiomatic curiosities. There is no logic to classify­ing take over with take the bull by the horns. Phrasal verbs are an essential part of spoken and written English at all levels, and no student who hopes to master the language can afford to overlook them.

Although this textbook is intended primarily for high-intermediate to advanced students, ambitious students at lower levels will benefit from it as well. Only some FOCUS sections may prove to be a little beyond them; otherwise, there is nothing to prevent any student from studying the definitions and examples and attempting the exercises.

A vocabulary textbook should provide mechanics as well as meaning. Students want to know more than what a word means — they want to know how to use it correctly.

The importance of mechanics is the reason for the emphasis on the preposi­tions required when some phrasal verbs are used transitively and for the inclusion of reviews of points of grammar not specific to phrasal verbs. Prepositions are the glue that holds English together, but many students falter when using newly learned verbs because they do not know that a preposition is also required, or if they do, which one. This aspect of English is not given the attention it deserves because it is difficult to teach — there are no rules that govern when a preposi­tion, or which preposition, is required, and no teacher likes to say "You just have to remember."

The hope of the latter feature, the discussion of points of grammar not spe­cific to phrasal verbs, is that combining practice with phrasal verbs and practice with a variety of grammatical structures will increase not only the student's confi­dence in the knowledge of phrasal verbs but also his or her willingness and ability to use them in a wider range of situations.

There is inevitably a degree of oversimplification. That phrasal verb particles are sometimes prepositions and sometimes adverbs is mentioned only once. No purpose is served by differentiating between them, and the overlap between the two is confusing to the student. Phrasal verbs are not identified as transitive or intransitive because this is dictated by logic. Less common meanings of some phrasal verbs have not been included. Adverb placement is presented and illus­trated in simplified form without discussion of the different types of adverbs — doing so would have gone beyond the scope of this textbook.

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                         Student

And no differentiation is made between recognized adjectives derived from past participles and past participles with adjectival meaning. The adjectival use of past participles (both phrasal and nonphrasal) is an extremely important aspect of spoken English — something every student of English should be familiar with — yet the dividing line between true adjectives derived from past participles and passive sentences employing past participles with adjectival meanings is ill-defined and problematic. Native speakers of English regularly use past participles in superficially passive sentences with purely adjectival meaning. Whether the past participles are verbs or actually adjectives is of no concern to the native speaker and is entirely irrelevant to the student of English. Rather than distract the student with an unnecessary element of confusion, both are referred to as participle adjectives throughout this textbook.

The exercises in this textbook are intended to reinforce meaning and mechanics. A cloze exercise always comes first, followed by exercises focusing on sentence structure and the FOCUS discussion. Last are exercises that ask the stu­dent to answer questions or write original sentences.

There is a good deal of review built into this textbook. Every section contains two or more exercises requiring the student to refer back to a previous section in order to review a phrasal verb, participle adjective, or noun. When a phrasal verb has two or more meanings, it is intentional that no help is provided to the student in determining which meaning applies; students have to review them all and fig­ure it out for themselves.

I have tried in this textbook to imitate the form and content of everyday English. If occasionally the register and subject matter of some examples and exercises seem not quite right for formal discourse, that is deliberate. Students need to learn formal English, of course, but since most people speak informally most of the time, students need to gain familiarity with the syntax, usage, and content of the informal English they read and hear every day at work, at school, at home, and on television.

TO THE STUDENT

Phrasal verbs are combinations of ordinary verbs like put, take, come, and go and particles like in, out, on, and off. They are a very important part of everyday English. Every student of English needs a basic understanding of the most com­mon phrasal verbs and also of common nouns and adjectives made from phrasal verbs.

Most phrasal verbs are nor informal, slang, or improper for educated speech or formal writing. Exactly the opposite is true — most phrasal verbs are accept­able at all levels of spoken or written English. In fact, for many of the phrasal verbs in this textbook, there is no alternative to the phrasal verb — there is no other way to say it.

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However, a few phrasal verbs in this textbook are identified as informal, and it is better not to use them in serious, formal speech or writing. But these informal phrasal verbs are important because they are very common in everyday informal speech and writing.

Some phrasal verbs are very easy to understand. For example, it is not diffi­cult to understand sit down or come in because their meanings are obvious. But  many phrasal verbs are very idiomatic. Idiomatic means that there is no way to know what the verb and particle mean together by knowing what the verb and particle mean separately. For example, every beginning-level student learns what the words call, run, off, and out mean, but that does not help the student to know that call off means cancel or that run out means use all of something.

Each section of this textbook starts with a FOCUS, an explanation of some­thing important about phrasal verbs. Then eight phrasal verbs and an explana­tion of each important meaning of each one are presented along with one or more example sentences for each meaning. Following that are several exercises to help you understand and remember what the phrasal verbs mean and how to use them in a sentence. And like real conversation, questions asked with I or we are answered with you, and questions asked with you are answered with / or we.

And because there is a lot to learn in this textbook, there is a lot of review to help you learn it. Every phrasal verb is reviewed at least twice later in the book. The more idiomatic phrasal verbs are reviewed more often, and the more impor­tant meanings of phrasal verbs with several meanings are reviewed more often.

Terms, Abbreviations, and Symbols Used in this Textbook

verb          Verb  refers to the verb part of a phrasal verb. In other words, the phrasal verb minus the particle. In the phrasal verb pull over, pull is the verb and over is the particle.

particle       The adverbs and prepositions in phrasal verbs are both called particles in this book. Many particles are adverbs and preposi­tions, and it can be very difficult and confusing to figure out if a particle in a particular phrasal verb is one or the other. Fortunately, this is almost never important to the student, so it is a lot easier to simply call them both particles.

p.v.          phrasal verb n.           a noun made from a phrasal verb

part.adj.       participle adjective — a past participle of a phrasal verb used as an adjective put on it. When words or sentences have a line through them, it means that they are incorrect.

...            Three dots between the verb and the particle mean that the object of the phrasal verb can be placed between the verb and the particle.