"What students need to build on their knowledge of phrasal verbs is a mental basis"

Being idiomatic to some extent, phrasal verbs have almost always been a difficult area of English teaching and learning, because their meaning is hard, if not impossible, to guess as they are, so in order to teach phrasal verbs, as an EFL teacher, I personally think that having a mental basis is essential for students to serve as a foundation in order for them to build upon their knowledge of phrasal verbs as they move along the path of language mastery.

One of the ways I have found effective is the deductive classification of phrasal verbs based on what they are made of and as a result how they are likely to behave. When introducing the concept of phrasal verbs to learners, I demonstrate that a phrasal verb consists of VERB + PARTICLE.

Now, the classification depends upon the particle, being an adverb, a preposition or both an adverb and a preposition as illustrated below together with the typical behaviour of each.

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I. VERB + ADVERB

                 A. Intransitive (= no objects), e.g. sit down

                 B. Transitive (= with an object) [This group of phrasal verbs are separable.]

                                     1. A noun object, e.g. put your hat on / put on your hat

                                     2. A pronoun object, e.g. put it on

II. VERB + PREPOSITION

                 [This group of phrasal verbs are all inseparable and all transitive.]

                  e.g. look after your computer / look after it

III. VERB + ADVERB + PREPOSITION

                   e.g. run out of, look forward to, put up with

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In the end, I remind my students that the 'Learner's Dictionaries' in this case can be of great help, going on to depict how phrasal verbs from each category would appear in their reference books, i.e. sit down, put sth on, look after sb/sth, run out of sth.

This way of presenting the concept of phrasal verbs in English is rather direct and fast (taking about 30min. in my EFL classes), and my experience shows that my students this way can initially understand the concept more easily with a great sense of achievement necessary to confront the future more labyrinthian lessons more confidently. Of course, it can still be developed further; therefore, please feel free to tell me what you think.

Looking forward to your precious suggestions,

With best regards,

Ali Ekbatani.

An EFL Teacher