Zooming in on phrasal verbs (part 1)

The last two weeks have been very busy for me (and the rest of the Spanish seminar team).  I've been giving seminars focusing on various exams and different papers.

In the past ten days, I've been discussing the Cambridge English: Advanced Use of English paper with two different groups of teachers.  Thinking about how we can help our students do well in this Paper as well as how to widen their language resources generally, one area where they definitely need to devote themselves to and to dwell on is phrasal verbs.

The Use of English paper requires the candidate to display knowledge of the formulaic structures of language (e.g. collocations, idiom, etc.) which aid the development of naturalistic speed and fluency of language production. Candidates must also show an understanding of, and sensitivity to, precision in choice of words, grammatical accuracy.....

(Cambridge English: Advanced Use of English Paper Overview) 

http://cambridge-english-advanced.cambridgeesol.org/files/CAE_Use_of_English_paper_overview.pdf

I've mentioned English Profile to your before.  And I've also mentioned the English Vocabulary Profile. 

If you use the search tool to find the phrasal verbs which have been allocated to a particular level, the number of verbs assigned to the lower levels is considerably smaller than the higher levels.

At A1, there are four phrasal verbs listed:  come from, get up, go out, wake up.  All very much related to daily routines and personal information, as you would expect at this level.

At A2, 27 phrasal verbs are listed.  Go up to the next level, B1, and you find 135.

This number doubles when you search for phrasal verbs at B2:  277 new phrasal verbs appear.  Well, not all of these phrasal verbs are new, but a new meaning is added.  'get up' appears on the B2 list with the meaning 'stand up', as in the example:

The whole audience got up and started clapping.

Unfortunately, there is no general public access to the English Vocabulary Profile for the C levels, so I made this word cloud from the phrasal verbs listed under the preview version (for letters d, j and k only)

This revisiting words and phrasal verbs and expressions is a very important part of learning English.  It's an essential part of 'understanding of' and 'sensitivity to' 'precision in choice of words...'

In my next post, I will share some great resources for working on the area of phrasal verbs. 

So, I hope your week kicks off well and that nothing keeps you from deriving pleasure and enjoyment from your classes and life!!!