[MUSIC TONE RESOUNDING]
Hi, students-- hope you're well.
In today's lesson, I'm going to talk
to you about phrasal verbs.
And I'm also going to encourage you to learn more of them
and use more of them.
I'm going to start with who should
learn more phrasal verbs.
It's best for upper intermediate and advanced-level students
because, at this level of English,
you're going to be in more situations
around native speakers.
And in order for you to be able to understand
what's being said more easily, you need to know phrasal verbs.
And also-- is going to make a much better impression
of your English if you know and use phrasal verbs because it's
going to make your level seem much higher.
And it's important to learn them if you speak English at work
or you live in an English-speaking country
because it's native speaker language.
It's the language that we find most easily
that pops into our heads.
Phrasal verbs are also good language
to use because they can often be very descriptive and very
vivid.
Think, for example, about the phrasal verbs "pop out."
So your eyes can pop out of your head,
like this, like you've seen something surprising.
They're conversational.
When I'm just talking to friends, we use phrasal verbs.
We don't think about it.
And we can also say it's like tabloid language.
If we think about newspapers, we've
got the broadsheets, which are the more respectable ones,
something like The Times or The Telegraph in the UK,
or we've got the tabloids, which are at the other end, which
is something like The Mirror or The Sun,
where there's gossip and football and that sort
of thing.
Tabloid language uses a lot of phrasal verbs.
That doesn't mean it's bad and you shouldn't use it.
It means that's the way that people speak.
And those newspapers reflect that language.
One of my students said to me that English
is like a LEGO language.
You can build your sentences up in quite fluid ways.
And he said that learning phrasal verbs
helps you to put the LEGO together in more creative ways.
So I really liked that description.
Also, if you're-- if you know more phrasal verbs,
it will make watching TV series easier for you.
And it's also good for brevity, which
means keeping what you want to say short.
Without making your sentences really long,
trying to get to your point, we can often
find a single phrasal verb.
There we go.
I've said it.
Let's move now to "how."
So this is the stumbling block, the reason that students,
perhaps, haven't learnt many phrasal verbs yet.
So I would give you my best tips,
which are to pace yourself.
That means you've got to be realistic about this.
There are so many phrasal verbs that you are not
going to be able to learn them all, probably.
And you can't really rush about it.
They're not the only important thing in your English.
So you don't only learn phrasal verbs.
But you should learn a few of them, and often.
And then you should be using them.
And that's what it means to be active in your learning.
And I also think it's good to refresh and learn
some of the grammar about phrasal verbs
so that you can spot the phrasal verbs in a sentence, which
brings me to my recommendation, which is if you're looking
for a book you can use for studying phrasal verbs,
I recommend this one, which you can
get on Amazon, which is called 100 Practical English Phrasal
Verbs.
And it's by Alex Makar, who's one of the Engvid teachers.
And what I really like about this book
is it's got really good explanations.
And it's-- includes the most useful ones,
which brings me to the part that we want to avoid now
because there are so many phrasal verbs.
And if you've ever looked up a phrasal verb in the dictionary,
you can often see that one phrasal verb
can have 15 different meanings.
So you can get overwhelmed and confused
if you try to learn too much, if you
try to learn every use of the phrasal verb
or every phrasal verb that exists.
That's the wrong approach.
So you should learn the most useful ones, the ones
that you can start using right away.
And I think the best way of making that possible
is to buy a book, a resource, that you can follow along
with so that you know where to focus your efforts.
So thank you for watching today's video.
I hope that I've encouraged you to learn more phrasal verbs
and to start using them.
Be sure to come back again for another video
for learning English and improving your accent.
And I'll see you then.
Thank you.
Bye.