How to use and learn phrasal verbs in English
2024-09-22 15 min
Description & Show Notes
You cannot tackle them all! We tell you how to learn some of them in small portions and Rebecca and Dave explain how natives often forget how understanding phrasal verbs may not be easy for non-natives.
In this episode, we’ll …….
In this episode, we’ll …….
- Give you an overview of what phrasal verbs are. (0:00 - 2:50)
- Discuss the complexity of phrasal verbs (2:50 - 5:03)
- Examine British English vs. other English varieties in using phrasal verbs. (5:04 - 7:24)
- Look at the challenges of learning phrasal verbs and strategies to tackle them (7:25 - 11:25)
- Talk about simplifying communication with non-native speakers and learner preferences (11:26 - 14:22)
In dieser Folge werden wir …..
- Ihnen einen Überblick darüber geben, was Phrasal Verbs sind. (0:00 - 2:50)
- die Komplexität von Phrasal Verbs erörtern (2:50 - 5:03)
- der Verwendung von Phrasal Verbs im britischen Englisch im Vergleich zu anderen englischen Varietäten untersuchen. (5:04 - 7:24)
- die Herausforderungen beim Lernen von Phrasal Verbs betrachten und Strategien vorschlagen, um diese zu bewältigen (7:25 - 11:25)
- über die Vereinfachung der Kommunikation mit Nicht-Muttersprachlern und die Präferenzen der Lernenden sprechen. (11:26 - 14:22)
Transcript
(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Hi, and welcome to the 3 English Experts.
I'm Birgit.
I'm Dave.
And I'm Rebecca.
And welcome to this episode.
3 English Experts is your English podcast to
help you speak better English and create a
positive and happy mindset for your English learning
journey.
Hello everyone and welcome to a new episode
of our podcast.
And today we are going to talk about
the issue of phrasal verbs.
So everybody or a lot of learners have
probably heard about this, have an idea what
is that.
A phrasal verb is a combination of at
least two words, maybe sometimes even more, put
together and then make up a new meaning.
One word very often together with a preposition,
then the meaning changes.
For example, to pick up is a different
meaning than to pick, etwas auswählen and abhochheben.
But pick up is aufnehmen, hochheben.
So that's a combination really.
There are a lot of them and learners
wonder how can they remember them.
We have some tips.
Rebecca will talk about a certain issue and
Dave will bring up more examples.
I will start with offering you two verbs
that can be used in combination with some
prepositions.
For example, to put.
Put is usually etwas hinlegen, abstellen, put it
on the table.
But then you can put something down to
something.
That's a phrasal verb issue, which means abspeichern
unter, put it down to experience.
That's a completely different meaning.
Or you might call some office and they
tell you, hang on, I will put you
through.
Durchstellen, I put you through to my co
-worker, to my colleague.
Of course, you can put things together.
Yeah, that doesn't need a lot of explanation.
Maybe that's obvious.
Sometimes it's easy, sometimes it's not so easy.
Another one that might not be too natural
for German native talkers is put up with.
Can you stand etwas ertragen?
Can you put up with a lot of
noise when you sleep or do you need
it completely quiet?
Put something back, that's again easier, zurücklegen.
I chose another one, take.
Take, etwas nehmen, so that's the opposite of
put, put and take.
Take off, ausziehen, take your clothes off before
you go to sleep.
To take something up, so you start something.
So maybe that's not known by everybody.
Example, a hobby.
You can take up learning English even or
take up a new language.
Yeah, thank you.
Take something in is to etwas aufnehmen, etwas
Neues lernen.
Maybe how much can you take in when
you learn at one session?
That would be a phrasal verb here.
Or take somebody out.
Take me out for a meal, Rebecca.
Yeah, maybe I get a chance at some
time to take you out for a coffee.
When we finally meet.
Yeah, we're listening to you describing them there.
Oh, it's so difficult, isn't it?
Phrasal verbs are a nightmare.
I will honestly just say that right now.
They are so because there's just so many
of them.
And yeah, they go with a really simple
verb like put or take.
But then as soon as you add on
these and you had the one to put
up with.
So you've got two words.
You've got the up and the with.
So it's even more tricky.
And I think sometimes the position of them,
sometimes you have the noun or something between
the preposition and the verb, which is also
quite not so easy.
I was thinking take off.
You were talking about take off like your
jacket.
But of course, take off is also an
aeroplane take off.
Yeah, of course.
Or you can say the sales price or
the sales have taken off, like as in
they've increased dramatically.
And it just shows there's so many different
ways of describing them or just different meanings,
which is quite confusing.
It is.
Yeah.
Is it the same in German?
You've got a lot of Aus and Auf
and.
Well, we have this division of the verb,
don't we?
Where there's Aufnehmen and Abnehmen, but that feels
for us, I think, more like one verb
and not this combination.
I don't really know whether there's a comparison
in our language, but I recommend.
So if you want to look into the
subject, of course, hopefully our podcast episode will
help you to get some ideas and you
can find a lot of material.
So if you look for phrasal verb with
take, you will get online on the Internet
or with later.
David will talk about chat GPT lists.
So maybe take it in parts every week,
every month, a list of phrasal verbs and
you can add to your vocabulary.
Yeah, absolutely.
I just wanted to bring up, I think
I'm not sure about American, I really don't
know, but I know in British English we
overuse or we use a lot of phrasal
verbs.
And I think this is really difficult for
non-English speakers.
So, for example, if I ask most German
English learners, do you know the word hire?
We hired a new salesperson.
They were like, yeah, to hire.
Do you know take on?
We took on a new salesperson.
Maybe not so much.
What does that really mean?
To take on means to hire, einstellen.
But and often the Brits would choose the
phrasal verb over the sort of normal verb.
Same with fire.
So we let him go.
We fired him.
Basically, everyone knows fire.
We fired him.
Everybody would understand that.
I think most non-natives would understand, English
learners would understand fire, but they don't necessarily
understand.
We let him go.
Let him go where?
We let him go to the bathroom.
Where did we let him go?
It just doesn't really make sense unless you
know that.
And I think my advice, I think would
be if you're a non-native and you're
communicating in English with other non-natives.
So if you're German, you write it to
an Italian guy and you're both communicating in
English.
I wouldn't necessarily go with the phrasal verbs
all the time.
Use the word hire.
Use the word fire.
Use the normal verb.
We had to put off a meeting, like
to postpone, for example.
Postpone, they might know.
Put off?
Maybe not so much.
So that would be my advice is if
you're communicating with a Brit and it's maybe
easier and they will use them with you,
probably.
So it is good to know them.
It is good to learn them.
But I think inter non-native communication in
English is going back to this.
Keep it simple.
Don't overcomplicate with trying to be fancy.
Yeah.
Birgit, do you agree with that?
I think that's a very good tip you're
bringing in here, because Germans, that's just proving
what we feel as native Germans.
There's so many choices, so many words.
And we feel we can never know them
all.
And a lot of people want to know
them all.
We want to know it 100%.
Yeah, exactly.
But hearing this from you as a Brit
is a good idea.
And it's so nice to hear there's always
another choice.
And of course, it's not worse or one
is better or the other is worse.
It's a good idea.
Thank you.
Yeah.
And I think there's just...
I know that from German.
I mean, we're saying we're not sure if
it's exactly the same, but I get confused
sometimes with my an, or my auf, or
my ab, or my aus, nemen, abnemen, you
know what I mean?
It's just one little word, one little part
of the word.
It's easy to mix it up.
So it's a good thing to learn.
I think at an advanced level, you have
to get into phrasal verbs.
You really can't avoid them.
At sort of intermediate level, there's a lot
of standard ones, like to get up in
the morning.
I get up, I sit down or I
pick up my kids from school, things like
that.
Obviously, later on, there are some good books
of business phrasal verbs.
I think Dave's going to talk a bit
more like business phrasal verbs that can be
quite useful to use.
You could probably find them on Amazon.
I have a couple of those.
And again, like Birgit said, learn them in
groups.
Just choose right.
I'm going to ones with get or with
put or with take or something.
But not easy.
Dave, how is ChatGBT going to help us?
Yeah, I mean, I just want to say
what you said is also I agree totally.
I mean, it's really very confusing.
And maybe when you're working with the non
-natives, it's better to keep it simple and
use the normal English verbs instead of using
the phrasal verbs.
Often in my experience, for example, when I
do sort of presentation trainings in a situation
where maybe an native is giving the presentations,
I often hear them use typically native phrases,
whether they're idioms or even in this case,
phrasal verbs.
And I see then some of the non
-native participants sort of scratching their head, wondering
what exactly something means.
And so I really often call these phrasal
verbs sort of a secret language of the
natives.
And in order to understand it better, you
have to learn them.
But to come to the ChatGPT, you mentioned
books.
But of course, if you have a iChatGPT,
you can do that as well.
And that's what I did.
I just tested it out.
I asked ChatGPT to create a list of
the top 50 most common ones, which it
did.
So I got a list of the top
50.
What I then did is I wanted to
make me a little table.
So I print it out and I've got
my list for myself.
So I asked it to make a table
with the phrasal verb in one column, an
English explanation in the second column, in the
third column, an example sentence, and in the
final column, a German translation, which it also
did.
And I expected that because I've worked with
it before.
But what I didn't know and what I
learned today was actually the fact that if
you wanted to, you could have that printed
out as a Word document.
So you just have to literally ask ChatGPT
to create a Word document with the grid
lines and everything, and it will do that
for you to download.
So absolutely amazing.
I'm impressed.
It's impressive.
And within seconds as incredible.
Anyway, actually, guys, you've already mentioned most of
the phrasal verbs I wanted to mention.
Oh, sorry.
No worries.
I mean, the main one was the bring
up and you've mentioned it before.
So that was a business thing that you
often hear in meetings, for example.
Thanks for bringing that topic up.
So mentioning something.
Rebecca mentioned the one with the put off.
So to postpone.
Right.
You often get that maybe in emails from
a native speaker saying, oh, the meeting's being
put off, for example.
Or the other one, which I could also
say here, maybe is the call off.
So instead of saying cancelled, people often say
call off.
And so the meeting has been called off.
If you don't understand called off, what does
it mean exactly?
OK, so that's another example of a phrasal
verb.
Yeah.
So very tricky bit by bit.
And if you're having conversations with natives, just
try and oh, what could that be?
Can you work it out?
And worst case scenario, just ask, what did
you mean by call off?
Yeah, I think there is this sort of
discussion about global English.
What is global English?
And someone said to me once, perhaps we
should just teach the natives how to communicate
better with the non-natives.
I do agree with that.
Because natives just wouldn't realise what they're doing.
They don't realise that the language they're using
is over complicated for a non-native, so
they just speak louder and slower than non
-natives.
That doesn't always help.
So I think just telling them don't use
a phrasal verb, but they would probably say,
what the hell is a phrasal verb?
Explaining, use to mention instead of bringing it
up.
Thanks for mentioning that.
They're more likely to know that than bringing
it up.
So I think there is this sort of
argument for when you're communicating with non-natives
in English, they speak in your language.
Help them out.
Be nice and simplify your language.
Not in a dumb way.
You don't have to dumb it down.
But you can just, there are little things
that you can do, I think, to make
communication easier.
Birgit, would you agree with that?
Yeah, that's so interesting.
I think that's really good for listeners to
realise you're saying that, that maybe natives have
a different way of talking and that's maybe
not the easiest way.
I strongly believe that we or a lot
of learners feel like the fanciness, you said
that, a fancy talk.
They really love that.
And that's what they want.
OK, yeah, yeah.
There's an urge, a natural urge of sounding
really British or American.
And maybe that goes into it.
It's the correct use of all grammar tenses
when you are able to use whatever you
need.
And also on top of not the easy
language.
So I agree with you that that would
help.
But I also know a lot of learners
are really after.
OK, they want the fancy stuff.
Yeah, definitely.
I think they do.
Yeah.
But to some extent, maybe I'm a fan
of everything in moderation.
Maybe you can find a middle ground, middle
way.
Except that maybe it's impossible to know them
all because the English language has so many
options and phrasal verbs.
OK.
OK, so this was our episode on phrasal
verbs.
We like to break it down into bits
and pieces.
Everybody, people can take in easily.
And next time we're going to talk about
CV and interview training.
We will have a little focus on what
Rebecca does very often with her clients.
She does a lot of CV interview training
for people who are looking for a new
job and obviously need to talk English.
So this will be our subject of our
next episode.
Hopefully you will tune in and press play
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