To Catch On to Phrasal Verbs, It Helps to Hook Up With an English Teacher
AA:
I’m Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster –
English teacher Lida Baker joins us from Los Angeles to talk about
phrasal verbs.
RS: The first word is a verb. The second word, sometimes even a third, is usually a preposition.
AA:
Phrasal verbs, also known as two-word verbs, have a reputation for
being tough for English learners. So what does Lida Baker think?
LB: “I think that is a myth.”
RS: “Really.”
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LB:
“Phrasal verbs are not hard to learn, as long as you learn them in a
context. I think what has given phrasal verbs a reputation for being
difficult is the way they are traditionally taught, which is that
students are given long lists of verbs — you know, for instance every
phrasal verb connected with the word ‘go.’ So ‘go on,’ ‘go up,’ ‘go
out,’ ‘go in,’ ‘go away,’ ‘go through,’ OK? That’s a very tedious way
of learning anything.”
RS: “Well, give us some of your strategies.”
LB:
“All right. Well, one thing we should keep in mind about phrasal verbs
is that they are used a lot more in conversational English than they
are in formal English. So you are going to find a lot of phrasal verbs
in conversational settings such as … “
RS: “Come on [laughter].”
LB:
” … television programs, radio interviews, and pop music is a
wonderful, wonderful source for phrasal verbs. I think the best way to
learn, or one of the best ways of learning phrasal verbs is to learn
them in everyday contexts. One good one is people’s daily routine. We
‘get up’ in the morning, we ‘wake up,’ we ‘put on’ our clothes in the
morning, we ‘take off’ our clothes at the end of the day, we ‘turn on’
the coffee maker or the television set, and of course we ‘turn it off’
also. After we eat we ‘clean up.’ If we’re concerned about our health
and our weight, we go to the gym and we … “
RS: “Work out.”
LB:
“There you go. You see, so as far as our daily routine is concerned,
there are lots and lots of phrasal verbs. Another wonderful context
for phrasal verbs is traveling. What does an airplane do?”
AA: “It ‘takes off.’”
LB: “It ‘takes off,’ that’s right. And lots of phrasal verbs connected with hotels. So when we get to the hotel we ‘check
in,’ and you can save a lot of money if you … ”
RS: “Stay — “
LB: “‘Stay over,’ right.”
AA: “And you just have to make sure you don’t get ‘ripped off.’”
LB:
“That’s right! I’m glad that you mentioned ‘ripped off,’ because a lot
of phrasal verbs are slang, such as ripped off. And most of them do
have sort of a formal English equivalent. So to get ripped off means to
be treated unfairly … “
AA: “To be cheated.”
LB: “To be cheated, yeah. And there are lot of other two-word or phrasal verbs that you might find, for instance, in rap
music. For example, to ‘get down’ means to, uh — what does it mean?”
RS: “It means to party, doesn’t it?”
LB: “To go to parties.”
AA: “Have a good time.”
LB:
“Right. Another wonderful context is dating and romance. For example,
when a relationship ends two people ‘break up.’ But when they decide
that they’ve made a mistake and they really are in love and want to be
together, they ‘call each other up’ … “
RS: “And they ‘make up.’”
LB:
“And they make up. Now, if your boyfriend ‘breaks up’ with you and
it’s really, really over, then it might take you a few months to ‘get
over it.’ But, you know, sooner or later you’re going to find someone
else … “
AA: “To ‘hook up’ with — “
LB: “To hook up with.”
AA: ” — to use a current idiom.”
LB: “Right. Or you might meet someone nice at work to ‘go out with.’”
RS: “So what would you recommend for a teacher to do, to build these contexts, so that the students can learn from them?”
LB:
“I think the best thing for a teacher to do, or for a person learning
alone, is to learn the idioms in context. And there are vocabulary
books and idiom books that will cluster the phrasal verbs for the
student. There are also so many wonderful Web sites. I mean, if you
go to a search engine and you just type in ‘ESL + phrasal verbs,’
you’re going to run across — and there’s another one, ‘run across’ –
you’re going to find lots of Web sites that present phrasal verbs in
these contexts that I’ve been talking about. And also grammar sites
which explain the grammar of phrasal verbs, which I haven’t gotten into
because we just don’t have the time to discuss it here. But in doing
my research for this segment I found lots of Web sites that do a really
great job of explaining the grammar of phrasal verbs.”
AA: Lida Baker writes and edits textbooks for English learners.
RS: And you can find other segments with Lida Baker at voanews.com/wordmaster.
AA: And that’s WORDMASTER for this week. With Rosanne Skirble, I’m Avi Arditti.
Studying in the US: Where To Live?
This is the VOA Special English Education Report.
March
Madness is the name for the busy championship season in American college
basketball. But March also means another kind of madness — the nervous wait for
admissions letters from colleges and universities.
This week in our Foreign Student Series, we jump ahead
to the subject of where to live. Housing policies differ from school to school.
Some schools have limited housing or none at all.
Dormitory
buildings might house a small number of students or many hundreds. Some dorms have
suites. A suite has several bedrooms, a common area and a bathroom. Other dorms
have rooms along a common hallway. Two, three or four students might share a
room.
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| A dormitory at the University of South Carolina in Columbia |
Males and females often live on
different floors of the same building. Or they might live on the same floor, or
in some cases even share a suite if permitted. But single-sex housing is
usually also available.
Different groups and organizations such as fraternities
and sororities might have their own houses where their members live. And there
is often housing for married students.
Some
dorms are nice, others are not so nice. But many students say they like the chance
to make friends and be near their classes.
Cost
is another consideration. Dorms can cost less than off-campus housing. But school-owned
housing can also cost more, though the price may include meals.
Here are some questions to ask before making a
decision: How much privacy can a student expect? Will the school provide a
single room if a student requests one? Will the school provide a special diet
if a student needs one? And are any dorms open all year so international students
can have a place to stay during long vacations?
Kirsten Kennedy, housing director at the
University of South Carolina in Columbia, says all first-year undergraduates there
have to live in a dorm. After that, they are free to seek other housing.
Students
can apply to become resident assistants after living in the dorms for a year. International
students can also apply to become resident assistants after a year in the
dorms.
Working as a resident assistant
in student housing is one way to help finance an education. At many schools, RAs
earn money as well as get their room and meals for free or at a reduced price.
And that’s the VOA
Special English Education Report, written by Nancy Steinbach. Our Foreign
Student Series is online at voaspecialenglish.com. I’m Steve Ember.
Bonus Pay at AIG Strikes a Nerve
This is the VOA Special English Economics Report.
Anger
was the common reaction of Americans this week to bonuses paid at rescued financial
companies. Lawmakers held hearings and President Barack Obama denounced the
extra pay at American International Group. The huge insurance company nearly
collapsed last September.
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| A.I.G. chief Edward Liddy waits to speak to lawmakers on Wednesday. Code Pink protesters demonstrate behind. |
Since then, it has received more than one hundred
seventy billion dollars in government aid. Taxpayers now own about eighty
percent of the company. Billions loaned to A.I.G. have gone to pay debts owed
to Goldman Sachs and other American and foreign banks.
But the anger was directed mainly at one
hundred sixty-five million dollars in bonuses paid to employees of A.I.G.
Financial Products. That division caused many of the company’s problems.
The
bonuses were retention payments — a way to keep good employees. Yet some who got
them at A.I.G. have already left.
On
Wednesday, A.I.G.’s new chief, Edward Liddy, told Congress that he has asked
employees to return at least half of bonuses of one hundred thousand dollars or
more. Some, he said, have already done so.
Even some
critics agreed that A.I.G. had to honor contracts. But Thursday, the House of
Representatives voted to place a ninety percent tax on those bonuses at A.I.G.
and at other companies getting large bailouts. Yet such a measure could violate
the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection under the law.
Earlier in the week, the president directed
Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner to look for ways to block the bonuses. But there
were questions about why new restrictions on companies had excluded contracts
dated before February eleventh, including those at A.I.G.
Opinion
polls show that more than half of Americans oppose more aid for the financial
industry. Some observers said it was easy for politicians to attack big
bonuses. Much harder, of course, is changing a system that let companies take the
risks that led to the current financial crisis.
The
Federal Reserve this week announced a new trillion-dollar plan to fight the
recession. The aim is to help lower interest rates on housing and other loans and improve
credit conditions.
The
central bank said it would buy up to an additional seven hundred fifty billion
dollars in mortgage-related securities. The Fed will also buy up to three
hundred billion dollars of long-term Treasury bonds. The Fed has not tried to
influence long-term rates this way since the nineteen sixties.
And
that’s the VOA Special English Economics Report, written by Mario Ritter. Transcripts, MP3s and podcasts of our programs are at voaspecialenglish.com.
