Phrasal Verbs (1)

Objectives of today’s lesson:

In this lesson, Learn English with Julia presents to you “Phrasal Verbs (1)”, in order for you to:

• discover some common Phrasal Verbs
• try and learn 20 Phrasal Verbs with sentences
• understand a Phrasal Verbs definition
• see the different types of Phrasal Verbs

Video Script:

Hello and welcome to this video!

Let’s discover everything we need to know about phrasal verbs today!

So what is the phrasal verb?

First of all let’s learn that it’s a combination of a verb and a particle

That particle can be a preposition or an adverb

So why is a phrasal verb such a scary thing?

Well, it’s because if you take two words and put them together and that new word creates a new semantic unit. It can be quite scary and quite confusing! So that’s what phrasal verbs do:

They take a verb and a preposition or adverb and that combination, those words
create their own semantic unit.

Our example today is “to call off”

Now to call off doesn’t mean to call off off of the table so I’m calling off the table no…

to call off can mean: to cancel, or to summon

So that is one example!

Now that means that the individual meaning of the individual component is no longer relevant.

That makes phrasal verbs quite unpredictable.

Therefore when you’re learning a new phrasal verb, try to learn the meaning and an example.

Generally a phrasal verb is a two-word phrase and phrasal verbs only have more than just one meaning.

They have 1+ meaning (I wrote here)

So the common patterns: depending on the object of my phrasal verb, if it’s a pronoun or a noun, these words will be positioned differently in our sentence.

Here are two examples if I use a phrasal verb. Here “to call off” – I keep those two components together

If I’m using a noun group, for example: he called off (so my phrasal verbs, a verb plus particle are together, is followed by the noun group):

Example: He called off the meeting.

however if I use the verb with a pronoun, the pronoun is placed between the verb and the particle

I would have: call + pronoun + off

Example: He called it off.

So that’s the basic theory covered!

Let’s look at some examples now together (in video 2).

Grammar Quiz:

Keywords listed in English:

• phrasal verbs
• a particle (a preposition or an adverb)
• a semantic unit

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