Memorizing Phrasal Verbs

I always found it hard to memorize phrasal verbs and the only way that worked for me was contextualising  and associating them to images.

This week, my FCE group had a gap-fill exercise they had to complete with phrasal verbs. I knew many of the phrasal verbs were unfamiliar to them then this is what came up ...

PRESENTATION:  I presented the phrasal verbs with paper flashcards with a phrasal verb on each one and asked a student a question with the phrasal verb. If the student/ s didn´t understand the meaning (of the phrasal verb) then I would explain it.

PRACTICE: I used the same flashcards to drill the pronunciation of the phrasal verbs. Then, we practised a bit more with virtual flashcards created with QUIZLET http://quizlet.com/1878547/familiarize/

PERSONALIZATION:  I asked students to form pairs and stand up, one student facing the board and the other had the back to the board. Using the e-board, I make a page with all the phrasal verbs but used the spotlight tool  to focus on one phrasal verb at a time. As I focussed on a phrasal verb, the student facing the board had to ask his partner a question w/ that specific verb, the other st answered the question and they changed places for the next verb.

CONSOLIDATION/ MEMORIZATION: I showed my students a stick figure drawing I had made to represent a sentence "I look up to my dad."  so that they could see a simple drawing can represent an idea. I gave each student a sentence , taken from the coursebook exercise they would do next, and asked them to draw a simple image for each sentence. After the drawings were made, I recorded each student reading their sentence. Then, the drawings passed from hand to hand so that they could see each other drawings. I collected the drawings against their will (students wanted to keep the drawings so I had to promise to give them back next class) in order to add the images to their voices in a little video.

EXERCISE: students completed the exercise in the course book very easily.

During the whole activity, there were moments of laughter, one when they were drawing and the other when they saw each other pictures. I heard comments like "Cute", "wow, this is a good one."

REVISION: next class, I intend to show them the video and recap the meaning of each phrasal verb.