A PRACTICAL APPROACH TO LEARNING THE PHRASAL VERBS. PHRASAL VERBS ABOUT FOOD

A PRACTICAL APPROACH TO LEARNING THE PHRASAL VERBS.

PHRASAL VERBS ABOUT FOOD

Dosimova Natalia

English teacher

Secondary school # 30 city Tomsk

The article is devoted to the descriptions of such grammatical phenomenon in English as «Phrasal Verbs». The basis of this article is the problems that students most often come across with — «practical and theoretical value of the types of Phrasal verbs, the structure and their role in the English Grammar».

Practical value lies in the fact that the work can be used by other students and teachers who are interested in such grammatical sentences for the following purposes:

— to improve their knowledge of the grammar structure of the English Language

— to understand the structure of the phrasal verbs

— to get deeper knowledge about such phenomena in the English grammar as Phrasal verbs.

Very often my students ask me the question: "How can I learn to speak English? I understand a lot but I cannot say anything”. SPEAKING is the only one answer! The communicative conception of any language learning is good and effective. So the conversation classes are based on questions and answers, different situations, role games. We discuss news, movies, books, and events, various lexical and grammatical themes. And when a student tries to speak English, he realizes that a lack of vocabulary is a great problem for him. So I give the students topical vocabulary notes including not only the most common words, but also idioms, phrasal verbs and set phrases. Before each lesson I ask them to learn as many words and expressions as possible. Then we discuss the topic and the students have great opportunities to use the words they have learnt before. So the passive vocabulary becomes the active one.

In this article, we look at one of the most enjoyable parts of everyday lives – food. We think about and talk about food in all sorts of ways – and Phrasal verbs about food are a great way of learning the language. In the Modern English language, the number of the Phrasal verbs grows. Together with the growth in number, the frequency of the usage also grows.

What is a Phrasal verb?

Well, let’s take the following: “Pick at”, “snack on”, “pig out”, “bolt (it) down”, “polish off”. These are all phrasal verbs. So which part of this is the verb? If you said “pick”, “snack”, “pig” and “polish”, you are right. We have verbs here, and then we have “at”, “on”, “out”, “off”. These words are called “prepositions”. So a Phrasal verb is a mix of a «simple» verb (consisting of one word) with a preposition. There are very many phrasal verbs in the English language and they are used in normal, everyday speech and writing. And this is one of the reasons why English is sometimes difficult. The preposition is very important to the meaning of the word. The most important thing is to understand the meanings of English Phrasal verbs and to use them in speech and in writing. English people use them all the time

Now let’s get started. So the first phrasal verb is “Pick at”.

e.g.  “I’m sad, so I pick at my food.”

Well, we know that some people eat a lot, when they are very sad. But many people, when they are very sad, they don’t want to eat. “Pick at” means not to eat a lot; it means to eat very, very little (to eat a small amount of a meal). You might pick at your food when you are sad or when you are sick.

e.g. He picked at his food without much appetite.

The next Phrasal verb we use is “snack on”. When you “snack on” something, you don’t eat a lot, but you’re not going to a restaurant and snacking on food. It’s usually you snack on, may be popcorn, potato chips, candy, maybe sunflower seeds. When you “snack on” something, it means you’re eating some of it, but it’s not your dinner (lunch). You’re a little hungry so you’re eating it between meals.

e.g. “Tonight, I’ll see a movie. At the movie theatre, I’ll snack on popcorn.”

So, these two words have to do with eating. “To pick at” means to eat very, very little. And “snack on” means eating a little bit more.

Then we have the next word - “pig out”. This word means to eat a lot. If you “pig out”, you eat a lot of something. “to pig out” – to eat a lot of food.

 e.g. “I pigged out. On Friday, I went to a restaurant. The food was good, I pigged out. I ate a lot”. “We pigged out at breakfast in this restaurant”.

This word is very interesting too. If you “bolt (it) down”, you eat food very quickly.

 e.g.  As we drank coffee, I was struck with the speed with which she bolted down her lunch.

Then we have this word “polish off”.

“Polish off” is when you take all the food. There’s no food left on your plate. You’ve eaten everything on your plate. You polish it off.

e.g. “Ann polished off her dinner.” It means she ate all of her dinner. There’s not even a crumb. She ate everything. She polished off her dinner.

So let’s look at some more Phrasal verbs about food.

The next Phrasal verb is “live on”. When you “live on” something, it means you eat a lot of it. It is the main thing you eat. So for example, a lot of students don’t have a lot of money, time. They can afford neither to go to restaurants nor to cook healthy meals. So what do they live on? Well, they live on macaroni and cheese. It’s very common for students to live on macaroni and cheese. So “live on” means the main food you eat.

If you live on something or if you eat a lot of something, sometimes, it becomes important to “cut down on” something. This means to eat less.

“Live on” is you’re eating a lot of something.

“Cut down on” = “cut back on” means you want to eat less or drink less in order to improve your health.

e.g. “I cut down on sugar”. It means I eat less sugar. “I cut down on sweets”. – I don’t eat much sweet. I eat less sweet. So if you ever go on a diet, if you ever try to lose weight, you will probably cut down on junk food or cut down on McDonald’s.

e.g. You should cut back on the amount of coffee that you drink.

The next one is also very common. “Order in” refers to the following situation: if you’re at home or there’s a snowstorm out or maybe you’re very lazy; you don’t want to go outside to a restaurant. So what do you do? You call the pizza guy, or you order food in. So, “order in” means that you call someone to bring you food. Let’s look at some examples for this phrasal verb.

e.g. “Let’s order in. I’m lazy today. I’m too lazy to cook. Let’s order in.”

Then we have the next expression, “eat out”.

When we “eat out”, we’re actually going somewhere. This describes eating outside the home – usually at a restaurant or café, or anywhere else you might be able to purchase and eat something substantial. So when you eat out, you go outside. I don’t like to cook. I love to eat out. I love to go to a restaurant.

e.g. “We decided to eat out as nobody wanted to cook after we got home.” “Let’s eat out.”

The last expression is “dig in”. It’s a very common expression, too. “Dig in” means, pretty much, “eat”. So if you have your friends over to your house for dinner and you’ve just given them food and everybody’s waiting, you can say, “Dig in. Eat”.

e.g. “The food is getting cold. Dig in. Eat the food.”

So these expressions are very useful. They’re very common. And you will hear them a lot if you go to restaurants, if you’re talking to people about food. So they are very important to know.

Get to know Phrasal verbs better by putting them into action! Food is a part of our everyday lives, so we should try using these Phrasal verbs at every mealtime.

It is not an exaggeration when we say that the items about Phrasal verbs are one of the main and important items of theoretical study and practical mastering of the English language. Phrasal verbs take a considerable place in vocabulary verbs of Modern English language and are generally used in idiomatic phrases. Phrasal verbs are frequently used. Their usage becomes usual phenomena in English grammar as well as mass media. Postposition plays the main role in the semantic meaning of the verb. And phrasal verbs usage in the informal speech allows us to express our thoughts and make our speech more dynamic and diverse.

Bibliography:

1. Bollinger, D., (1971), The Phrasal Verb in English, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass.

2. Comrie, B., (1976), Aspect, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

3. Арнольд, И.В. Стилистика современного английского языка. И.В.Арнольд. — М.: Просвещение, 1981.

Internet sources

4. Longman Dictionary of Phrasal verbs”,www.answer.com/topic/phrasal verbs

5. Phrasal verbs h p://2udnature-online-eikaiwa.com/Phrasl verbs

6. Video engvid.com http://www.engvid.com/phrasal verbs and expressions about food/

7. The Oxford companion to the “English Language” www.answers.com/topic/phrasalverbs

8. Get Chambers free online resources at www.chamberslearning.com

Dictionaries

9. Новейший англо-русский словарь, русско-английский. - К.: Издательство «Арий», М.: ИКТЦ «Лада»,2008,-960

10. Online-dictionary MULTITRAN

11. Oxford Advanced Dictionary of Current English [Text] / A.S. Hornsby with the assistance of A.P. Cowie, J. Windsor Lewis. – Oxford University Press, 1978.