talkalot intermediate book 1 eat up your phrasal verbs introduction

Talk a Lot
Intermediate Book 1
Eat Up Your Phrasal Verbs – They’re Good for You!
Introduction
The study of phrasal verbs is a big part of Talk a Lot Intermediate. Phrasal verbs become
more and more common at intermediate level, and can become a massive problem for
students who realise that they have to start learning verbs whose meaning is (often) unrelated
to their form. This section provides materials that can help students practise working with
phrasal verbs. It’s named after an expression that will be familiar to generations of British
children who have been refused permission to leave the table at dinner time until their plate
has been cleared of a (seemingly) monstrous amount of unappetising vegetables:

“Eat up your greens [vegetables] – they’re good for you!”

Learning phrasal verbs is a bit like having to munch through plate after plate of boring carrots
and cabbage – especially for young people. It’s something that they may not particularly want
to do, but something that will be really beneficial in the long run nevertheless. Eat up your
phrasal verbs – they’re good for you!
In this section you will find:
1. A one-page condensed question sheet, which lists all of the main phrasal verb
activities
2. The full list of 57 quick activities for practising phrasal verbs, which are divided into
four categories:
•
•
•
•

Meaning and Context
Form
Practice (Usage)

Memory Games

3. Activity Cards – one for each activity. They can be used as follows:
•
•
•
•
•
•

Decide whether you want to work with a group of phrasal verbs (e.g. from
one of the four units, or any group of phrasal verbs) – or to analyse an
individual phrasal verb
Cut up the cards, and choose either the group cards or individual cards
accordingly
Shuffle the cards and hand them out to students – or mix them up on the
desk in front of the students
Students pick a card and have to perform the task given on that card
There are a few blank cards so that you can design your own questions
Make it more fun by getting teams of students to compete against each other
for small prizes!

4. For guidance about each activity, please reference the Sample Answers after the
Activity Cards (starting on P.60).

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Talk a Lot
Intermediate Book 1
Eat Up Your Phrasal Verbs – They’re Good for You!
Introduction
5. Phrasal Verbs Dice Game (see P.69 for full instructions).
6. Phrasal Verbs – Sentence Bash! (Test Material) (see P.75 for activity and P.121 for
answers)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Definition of Phrasal Verbs – from Unit 1: Hotel
A phrasal verb is a verb phrase that consists of a verb plus preposition or adverb (or both), which has a
meaning that may not be obvious from knowing the dictionary meaning of each individual word in the
phrase.
Example:
“Thing’s are looking up!” [My life is generally improving.]
When:
In spoken English phrasal verbs are more common because they are less formal than longer single
verbs. Like idioms, we learn phrasal verbs from before birth; the simple one-syllable verbs that are used
in phrasal verbs (with a preposition or adverb, or both) are familiar to young children and easy to
remember. The prepositions and adverbs (in, out, up, down, on, off, back, etc.) bring a vibrant sense of
action and movement to our speech, making it more interesting than if we used only standard verbs.
With over 7,000 phrasal verbs in English, phrasal verbs create many shades of meaning, making
English a rich and expressive language. It also allows us to quickly invent new verbs (e.g. the recent
slang expression “Bog off!” which means “Go away!”) without having to find verbs from Latin or other
foreign languages, or inventing new verbs from scratch.

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