254 Part IV: The Grammar You Need to Know – and How to Teach It
Teaching phrasal verbs
With all these rules about phrasal verbs, it may sound a bit daunting teaching
them. So here are a couple of tips.
Avoid teaching phrasal verbs as a big topic in itself. Lessons about all the
phrasal verb rules tend to be boring and confusing anyway because students
don’t learn in this way.
Print copies of the rules so that students can use it as a reference, perhaps on
a sheet they can keep at the back of their books. However, it’s best to teach
just a few phrasal verbs at a time, in context and with lots of examples.
One way to teach ‘to put up with’ and ‘to fall out’ is by following these steps:
- Start with spoken content.
‘Twins Paul and Paula live together. She is very untidy and likes to
have her friends round every day. Paul likes his home to be quiet and
organised. He loves his sister but maybe it’s time to move out. When he
complains, they fall out, but after two years he can’t put up with the situ-
ation anymore’.
- Have students discuss the situation.
Ask, ‘How do they feel about the situation?’
- Display board work.
For example:
- To put up with s/t (pv, inseparable)= to tolerate something
- To fall out (with s/o) (pv inseparable)= to argue then stop being
friendly
- Paul can’t put up with Paula’s friends. They annoy him too much.
- Paula and Paul fall out whenever they talk about the problem
because he shouts at her.
- Have students do some practice exercises.
Write a sentence about each of the following situations using ‘to put up
with’ or ‘to fall out with’ in the correct tense. For example: The man gets
doesn’t complain when the neighbours play very loud music. The man
puts up with his neighbours’ loud music.
Last week Evelyn and Debbie argued about where to go for the
evening. They got angry and have not spoken since then.
Mrs Singh will not allow her son to continue smoking in the house.
The reason why the sisters were nervous about seeing each other
was because they had had a big disagreement.
