PHRASAL VERB FUN Peter Gray Second Edition, Enlarged and Revised No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author's rights. This book is cheap. If you steal it, what does that make you? Copyright 2014 © Peter Gray For the second edition, I want to thank three people in particular who helped me. Noni Lu, may there be no end to our friendship, José Sierra, who now knows when something is broken or not quite right.and MªJesus Segura for being such a fantastic friend. This book is dedicated to all my students who taught me most of what I know How to Use This Book Most people think that phrasal verbs, verbs with more than one word, are hard to learn. As students we are given lists and lists of them to memorise, and we usually find the whole thing boring, complicated, and really hard to remember. I have been teaching for many years and this is the number one complaint of my students. This book is different. There are no lists and there is nothing to memorise. Instead, there are over 600 little stories, one for each verb. The fact is that phrasal verbs are not a logical system, designed by some maniac a few centuries ago. No. There are simply something that grew up naturally. Most natives don't even know the expression phrasal verbs. We never learn them at school. We know the difference between chopping down a tree and then chopping it up. We also know that when a building burns down, it is the same as when it burns up. Neither do we ever confuse put up your cousin with put up with him. When I was thinking about this book, I quickly discovered that the verbs fell into groups, and that the up of drink up had a completely different meaning from the up of give up. So I grouped these verbs together in the particle index. You might like to go there first. I suggest that you start anywhere you like in this book, and then jump about at random for about ten minutes. Don't try to memorise, don't try to learn. Just play with it. You may like to say the various sentences aloud. You may like to pretend to be a star and speak in front of your bathroom mirror to an adoring crowd. Be an actor. Fool around. Have fun with it. Then next day, another ten minutes. If you do this every day, I money-back guarantee that in about ten days you will know more about phrasal verbs than 99% of all non-native teachers who teach English for a living. I also promise you that you will have fun doing it. . Table of Contents Phrasal Verb Structure ask... back... bang... bank... be... bear... beat... blow... boil... bottle... break... bring... brush... burn... call... calm... carry... catch... chat... check... cheer... close... come... count... cross... cut... deal... die... do... dress... drink... dry... end... face... fall... feel... figure... fill... find... fit... fix... follow... get... give... go... grow... hand... hang... have... hold... join... keep... knock... know... lay... leave... let... lie... live... look... make... mix... move... name... own... pass... pick... play... point... pull... push... put... rule... run... see... sell... send... set... settle... show... shut... sign... sink... sit... sort... speak... split... stand... start... stay... step... stick... take... talk... tell... think... throw... try... turn... use... watch... wear... work... Particle Index Phrasal Verb Structure Phrasal verbs are verbs with more than one word. There are four categories - from the point of view of structure - and you must be clear which category each verb belongs to. 1. Two-word verb without an object, sometimes called intransitive verbs (because the action is not 'transmitted' to an object). For example Every morning, I get up. (No object. Nobody else is involved.) No problem. Back to Table of Contents 2a. Inseparable two-word verb This means that nothing can go between the two words. That horrible dog just turned on me. (It suddenly attacked me.) This is not a problem if you learn this verb as turn on me, turn on you, turn on him, and so on. Back to Table of Contents 2b. Separable two-word verb This can be a little more difficult. If the object is short, like a pronoun (you remember, words like I, me, him, us) it MUST come between the two words of the verb. If not, you have a choice. For example I turned on the television. I turned the television on. I turned it on. (Now we can watch it.) This can be a problem. So you have to remember it as turn it on. Back to Table of Contents 3. Three-word verbs are almost always inseparable. I don't know how you put up with him. He is so rude all the time. No problem. But there is a small group of three-word verbs which have an object get it over with put it down to take it up with Back to Table of Contents