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What Are Phrasal Verbs?


By: Ulfatun Maghfiroh

As a foreign language learner, you might be questioning what Phrasal Verb is once you hear that couple words. However, for those who have been aware of it, you might think, it's one of the hardest parts of English language learning.

 Whether you notice or not, actually you had already heard phrasal verb since you’re an elementary school student. Your teacher certainly had ever said “Turn off the lamp!” or “Hand in your assignment ASAP!” Both of them are samples of Phrasal Verb that commonly used on our daily conversations in school. For better understanding about phrasal verb, let me introduce a bit of it for you guys.    

What is phrasal verb?
A phrasal verb is a combination of words which are a verb + a preposition/adverb. The meaning of phrasal verb is utilized itself behind the original verb’s meaning. So, if we would like to get the meaning of phrasal verb, we cannot sperate each word and translate it as an individual thing, we should take them as a whole. The important thing that we should remember is not all the combination of a verb and preposition/adverb called phrasal verb. For example; The phrase ‘Turn after’, It has no phrasal verb’s meaning. Phrasal verbs are used on informal context. It’s very common in English.
 The phrasal verb “Turn Down” as an example, it consists of 2 words. The word ‘Turn’ which means ‘memutar’ and ‘down’ means ‘bawah’, those are the meaning of each word. If we combine those word’s meaning, it becomes “memutar kebawah”. It is a wrong meaning. We should remember that this is a wrong way to get the meaning of a phrasal verb. 

How do we know that right meaning of phrasal verb?
You guys maybe complain, if we couldn’t translate it per word then what? How do we know that right meaning of phrasal verb? Well, the right way is translating them as a whole. So, what should we do if we have no idea about its meaning as a whole? Well yeah, as you did when you don’t know the meaning of a target language’s word. You must look it up on dictionary. Yep, there is a specific dictionary that is used to search phrasal verb’s meaning. There are a bunch of dictionaries whether in the form of applications or webs on internet. Those could facilitate your learning process on getting phrasal verb’s meaning and understand more. Here are the samples of online dictionary that usually I use; Phrasal verb dictionary Apps, and Phrasal verb dictionary on www.englishpage.com.  However, these things could be used if you are permissible to use internet and mobile phone. If not, absolutely you should use the old one like oxford dictionary.

As each of phrasal verb has its own meaning. So, in order to understand and be able to use phrasal verbs. We should memorize them one by one, because there is no comprehend way of learning phrasal verbs but memorize them. The same as we memorized a list of vocabularies as we did at the early age. This is a foundation of learning language.

Examples of Phrasal Verbs 
Here’s the lists of phrasal verbs that we commonly used in our activity and its example in a sentence: 
Phrasal Verbs
English Meaning
Indonesian Meaning
Example in A Sentence

Put on
Put the clothing on the body
Memakai 
I put on my scarf before going around everywhere.

Set up
To arrange 
Mengatur 
We set up the birthday party 10 minutes before he comes. 

Throw away
Discard 
Membuang 
My mom usually throws the dirt away from our home. 

Call on
Ask to recite in class
Memanggil 
Mrs. Yuni called on Heni for answering the third questions.  

Look after
Take care of 
Menjaga 
You have to look after your little brothers when I’m going for work.

Bring up
Mention a topic
Membawa (topik)
She brought up about coronavirus issue on the discussion section yesterday.

Do over
Repeat a job



Give away
Give something for someone for free
Hadiah/ Hibah
Zack give the flowers away to his fans on the concert.

Find out
Discover 
Menemukan 
I found out you met him on the garden yesterday. 

Look up
Search in a list
Mencari (dalam list)
Hendy look up the new vocabulary he found at journal article.


So, do you remember others phrasal verbs that you had ever heard except those things? I hope you do. I hope after reading this article, you guys could learn something. Thank you. 

Reference:

Phrasal Verbs. (n.d). Retrieved from www.gingersoftware.com/content/grammar-rules/verbs/phrasal-verbs/
Common Phrasal Verbs. (n.d).  Retrieved from http://guidetogrammar.org/grammar/phrasals.htm


Comments

  1. Rika Septianingrum17 June 2020 at 08:12

    Is it possible to teach or introduce phrasal verb from elementary school? Since we know that phrasal verb is hard for EFL. However we also known that, elementary school students usually learn about the easiest material because it is early introduction phase about L2.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Nur Kumala Anwa20 June 2020 at 09:06

    Thank you for sharing this. I sometimes still try to memorize them everytime I want to use phrasal verbs which ended up I replace them by using other words. But I'll try to use them more often.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Avinanuraizah21 June 2020 at 03:03

    Thanks to give me knowledge about phrasal verbs. This is increase my knowledge. Thank you.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Siti Muyassaroh21 June 2020 at 03:15

    Thank you for sharing the post. I thought that those words are something like idiom. LOL

    ReplyDelete
  5. Utami Setianingtyas Aldina21 June 2020 at 03:31

    This article boost my knowledge, tho. But, it's a little bit hard to say if we ain't used to it.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Tuti Lasmiasih21 June 2020 at 04:54

    This article is very helpful because I can get more knowledge about phrasal verb. Sometimes I still hesitate to use phrasal verb. Great post.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Setia Ningsih21 June 2020 at 05:24

    Thanks!! This post really helps me to enrich my vocabulary

    ReplyDelete
  8. Rizal Alfi Ramadhani21 June 2020 at 05:27

    Thanks! it's very helpful for me to improve my knowledge about phrasal verbs

    ReplyDelete
  9. Dessy Indah Tri Mentari21 June 2020 at 05:38

    This article really helps me in learning English, thanks

    ReplyDelete
  10. Duwik Lestari21 June 2020 at 05:44

    Wow, great and very detail information in this article. It helps me in understanding more in learning. Thank yoy

    ReplyDelete
  11. Anggi Ulul21 June 2020 at 06:58

    Thank you for sharing this knowledge.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Ranggajati Bintang W21 June 2020 at 08:39

    It's really helpfull. Thank you for sharing!

    ReplyDelete
  13. Wiwit Sulistiyani21 June 2020 at 09:50

    Thank you for sharing this helpful article. It reminds me about Phrasal verbs

    ReplyDelete
  14. Arnel Framodyano21 June 2020 at 12:40

    It is really helpful article. Thanks for sharing.

    ReplyDelete
  15. 4 life21 June 2020 at 13:23

    Thank you for sharing. It gives me more knowledge about phrasal verb.

    ReplyDelete
  16. Risma Alfiani22 June 2020 at 00:43

    This article really helpful. Thank you.

    ReplyDelete
  17. Sinta Rizqiana22 June 2020 at 03:05

    That's really good article. Thank's for sharing.

    ReplyDelete
  18. novita devi22 June 2020 at 03:59

    thank you, it's nice article!

    ReplyDelete

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