Phrasal Verbs for IELTS Speaking

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  • 19/09/2018

If you look at the speaking band descriptors, band 7 for vocabulary states that you must ‘uses some less common and idiomatic vocabulary’. What is idiomatic vocabulary? This means language that has a different meaning to the actual words, i.e. you can’t guess the meaning of the phrase from the individual words.

Phrasal Verbs ứng dụng trong IELTS Speaking

Examples of this type of language include idioms and phrasal verbs. However, overusing idioms can sound unnatural. Phrasal verbs are a much more natural way of achieving the requirements for band 7 vocabulary. We can see an example of a phrasal verb below:

“I need to look up a word in the dictionary.”

Look up actually means to search for. However, if you did not already know this, you may think it means to look up at the sky or ceiling!
Now we understand what a phrasal verb is, do you know how to use it both grammatically and regarding correct pronunciation? Look at the following uses. Which are correct?

  • Look up a word.
  • Look a word up.
  • Look it up.
  • Look up it.

Did you guess correctly? The first three uses are correct, but the last use is incorrect. So, we can’t put the object pronoun at the end of the phrase (Look up it).

How about the pronunciation? When we use phrasal verbs with pronouns, we stress both parts of the phrasal verb, but not the pronoun. So the stress is as follows:

Look it up.

Now you know how to use them, you should start learning some! Reading in general is a great way to learn vocabulary. However, here is a useful link to a website with a lot of phrasal verbs and their definitions.

http://www.englishcurrent.com/idioms/basic-english-phrasal-verbs-preintermediate-intermediate/

Happy learning!

IELTS Training

Mr. Paul Davision

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