Welcome to today’s Lunchtime Lessons post. This week we are looking at Phrasal Verbs in relation to Valentine’s Day. Our Lunchtime Lessons are free Online English classes where we look at areas of English which are often difficult for students.
If you didn’t manage to join us for our live session, you can catch up with the highlights of the class below. If you’d like to join our live session for the chance to ask the teacher questions, you can book your place directly on our website. These classes are 100% free and are on Tuesdays at 12pm.
Valentine’s Day Phrasal Verbs
Welcome to today’s Lunchtime Lesson. Today we are talking about Valentine’s Day and some useful vocabulary related to it. A lot of these expression are multi word verbs also known as phrasal verbs. So, multi word verbs are basically verbs that have various components. And I know that students quite often find them really difficult to learn because they have different components. But also because a phrasal verb can change its meaning depending on the context. This makes it even harder to understand them.
Around Christmas time we did a Lunchtime Lesson about how you can learn phrasal verbs. Today’s lesson is going to continue with the technique we looked at in that class. If you like to check out that lesson, you can find it here.
What we’re going to do with these phrasal verbs, or multi word verbs, is working with their meanings. We’re going to think about how we can record them in an efficient way to help you learn and memorise them better. To start off, I have here a list with definitions and to give you a bit of help, a list with multi word verbs. Can you match them? For example, the first one when you end a marriage means to get divorced. You can find the answers bellow.
If you’d like some example sentences with all those multi word verbs, watch the video.
Now that we’ve matched all those definitions to a multi word verb, I’d like you to do a little gap fill exercise where you can use those new words. Just like before, you’ll get to the solutions if you press the square with the number 2.
You probably noticed that I highlighted three more multi word verbs in the text. Can you think of their meaning in this context?
Solution:
- move in with someone = go to live with someone
- cheat on someone = be unfaithful to someone
- see someone = date someone but not seriously
The best way to learn multi word verbs
We’ve just seen lots of new vocabulary. And now we’re going to think about what’s the best way to record it so that we can learn it in a really efficient way. If you checked out our Christmas phrasal verb lesson, you might remember that I said a great thing to do with multi word verbs is to try and learn the opposite at the same time. This is in general a good and efficient method to learn any vocabulary because it makes it easier for you to remember it. And by using this method you double your vocabulary at the same time. It’s important to notice that the opposite of a multi word verb is not necessarily another multi word verb. Sometimes it’s just a normal everyday verb, sometimes we just make the verb negative and sometimes there is no opposite. Now, let’s do the same with the rest of our multi word verbs.
Let’s take the first example – getting married. The opposite of that in our context would be to get divorced. I’d like you to think of the opposite of each multi word verb we looked at today.
By clicking on the square with the number 2, you’ll find the solutions.
Isn’t this a great way of learning new vocabulary? I think learning a word together with its opposite makes it way easier.
If you like you can also translate those expression in relation to the context of relationships in your own language. This can be very helpful. But you really need to think about the context when doing this, as multi word verbs can change their meaning depending on what the context is.
Now, that we’re at the end of today’s lesson I would like to wish everybody a Happy Valentine’s Day wherever you are. It’s a great year to celebrate it because there’s nothing else to do. Make yourself a romantic meal, even if you’re by yourself. Treat yourself with a bubble bath, buy yourself some flowers and eat lots of chocolate. I mean, what’s wrong with that?
We would love to hear about your Valentine’s Day. Leave us a comment and maybe you can even use some of the new multi word verbs.