Hey, everyone. I'm Alex. Thanks for clicking. And before we start today's lesson, I have
some very exciting news. I have a new website, and I have written an English phrasal verbs
book for you to help you improve and practice your phrasal verbs. The name of the website
is EnglishAlex.com. Once again, that's EnglishAlex.com. And the name of the book is "100 Practical
English Phrasal Verbs". I think you're really going to love it, so let me explain a little
bit about the book. You get 100 high-frequency phrasal verbs, over 900 examples, 20 lessons
of context-based learning, and only the most common usages and multiple definitions. So,
if you want to improve your knowledge of phrasal verbs, if you want to practice your phrasal
verbs, see common sentences, see phrasal verbs in context, check out the link in the description
to this video, and you can pick up the PDF and e-book version of the book or the physical
book.
Now, on to the lesson where we learn the best way to learn phrasal verbs. So, when you're
learning phrasal verbs, like with any vocabulary, you need to put it in context. Now, when you're
learning a language, there are two ways you come across it. One, in the wild. So, this
means if you're having a conversation with someone, if you're watching a movie, if you
hear a song and you hear a new phrasal verb or a new piece of vocabulary, you wonder what
does that mean? Okay? So, you can come across it in the wild.
Now, if you do come across a phrasal verb in the wild, that is, you know, you hear it
in a particular situation, in a movie, in a song, etc., you probably want to find out
what that phrasal verb means. So, if you can't ask the person you're talking to if you hear
it in a conversation, then you need to go out and find out what it means probably on
your phone very quickly. Right? What does that mean? If you want to take a more proactive
approach, so let's imagine you do not have a lot of people to speak English with, if
you do not have a lot of people to communicate and learn English from, you can be proactive
by picking up a book or going to a website, and you can pick an easy to remember example.
So, let's say today, you know what? I want to study and I need to improve my English
phrasal verb knowledge. So, you pick up a book or you go to a website and you say, "Okay,
let's look at these five phrasal verbs today." Or, "Let's look at these two phrasal verbs
today." So, if you want to be proactive, the best way to learn phrasal verbs and to remember
them, number one, is to pick an easy to remember example. I'm going to step away from the board
for a bit. You can take a screenshot if you like to make that easier for you, if you like
doing that, and I'm going to read a little bit. So, for example, if you are trying to
learn the phrasal verb "put away", right? So, to put away something means to place it
in its appropriate place. And if you want to remember this phrasal verb, you might want
to use a sentence like, "Put your phone away." Okay? And you remember this sentence, "Put
your phone away. Put your phone away." It's a common context because this is something
that you might hear from a teacher, you might hear it from a boss at work, and it's easy
to remember. "Put your phone away. Put your phone away." What does that mean? Oh, yeah.
Put it in its appropriate place. So, "Put it in my pocket. Put it in my bag." You have
now placed the phrasal verb in context. You've given yourself an easy to remember sentence.
Number two, learn related phrasal verbs. Okay, so, for example, I've given you some easy
examples here. So, learn the opposites of the phrasal verb that you're learning if an
opposite exists. They don't always exist, but sometimes they do. For example, "Turn
on", right, to activate something, "Turn on a switch, a light, a computer", "Turn off".
Okay, so these are opposites. "Turn on", "Turn off". It's a simple example. Or, number two,
you can learn similar or same phrasal verbs. So, some phrasal verbs you can put together,
right? So, "Throw away", "Throw out", "Get rid of", all three of these phrasal verbs
refer to discarding something. So, you're like, okay, I have this group of phrasal verbs
that can kind of be used in similar contexts and in similar ways, or they might mean the
exact same thing, which is great, because now you've kind of created a phrasal verb
family. So, you've put it in context, right? You've found out what it means. You've given
yourself a useful sentence that's easy to remember. Maybe you've learned and studied
some phrasal verb opposites and related phrasal verbs. Now, what next? Well, you can either
study, study, study, study, study, which has been proven that if you cram... "Cram" means
try to compress a lot of information in a short amount of time, like if you study the
night before a test. This doesn't really work for long-term memory. If you want something
to stick in your long-term memory, you have to practice something called spaced repetition.
So, let me step away from the board one more time. Now, spaced repetition means, let's
say you come across the phrasal verb "throw away" today, and you learn what it means,
you give yourself an example, and you think, "Great, throw away." Okay. Now, don't just
keep saying "throw away, throw away, throw away, throw away", and then forget about it
forever after the first day. Don't study it for two days and then never think about it
again. Now, what you want to do, the science of this says you should study on the first
day, give yourself a break, study it two days later, study it on a third day, take a longer
break, study it on the seventh day, take a week off after that, study it on the 14th
day. So, the longer... You slowly start expanding the amount of time that you're taking between
looking at the phrasal verb so that it cements itself in your long-term memory. That's the
goal of spaced repetition. So, this, again, has been scientifically proven to help increase
the chance of you remembering and recalling information, whether that is vocabulary or
grammar or anything else related to language learning.
So, one more time, to learn phrasal verbs, the best way, put it in a context. Did you
hear it in the wild? If you heard it in the wild, go find out what it means, if you can.
Right? If you hear it in a movie, you can pause the movie, you can look at your phone,
say "Come across". What does that mean? Okay, "Come across". Okay? Or if you don't want
to wait to hear phrasal verbs and you want to be proactive with your learning, if you
want to say "I'm going to learn phrasal verbs, let's study, let's learn some", you can, you
know, find the definition in a book, find the definition online, and then pick an example
that's easy to remember for you. So, like I said, what did I say about your phone? Put
your phone away. Right? Good.
Learn related phrasal verbs, so this means learn the opposites if they exist. Learn related
phrasal verbs that are similar or the same if they exist. Again, they don't always exist,
but sometimes they do. And then, if you can, I know this is difficult because spaced repetition,
you might have to set it on your calendar, not everybody can do this, we're all very
busy people, but if you can do this, this is the best way to remember phrasal verbs,
remember new vocabulary, and store it into your long-term memory.
So, I hope this video has been helpful for you, and one more time, I want to tell you
guys I am very, very excited that I finally have a website where you can learn more English.
I have free blog updates over there where you can see, you know, idioms, phrasal verbs,
anything that comes to mind that I think will be beneficial to your English knowledge, and
you can buy a copy of my first book, 100 Practical English Phrasal Verbs. One more time, it has
100 high-frequency phrasal verbs, over 900 examples, common sentences, 20 lessons of
context-based learning, and only the most recent usages, the most common definitions,
so you won't hear stuff in my book about, you know, a phrasal verb that was used 100
years ago that nobody uses anymore, only the most current usages, because I want this book
to be useful for you. That's why I called it 100 Practical English Phrasal Verbs, because
language, well, you have to be able to use it, and if you go to englishalex.com or click
on the link attached to this video description, I promise you, the book will give you language
you can use. So, until next time, thanks for clicking.