Si tus alumnos son como los míos, los phrasal verbs son su peor pesadilla. Pero desafortunadamente, son tan utilizados por los angloparlantes (y más en los negocios) que no pueden escapar de ellos.
Mis alumnos a menudo me preguntan cuál es la mejor forma de aprender phrasal verbs y les digo categóricamente que memorizar una lista de verbos compuestos fuera de contexto es un gran error. Lo que es mucho más efectivo es aprenderlos en los diferentes contextos en que se encuentran.
Por eso prefiero enseñar phrasal verbs agrupados en temáticas. Así fomentamos 3 aspectos:
- Muestra a los estudiantes que los phrasal verbs son una parte normal del inglés.
- Los estudiantes tienen menos probabilidades de sentirse abrumados por demasiados verbos compuestos a la vez.
- Les permite practicar usando los verbos compuestos en el contexto correcto.
Phrasal verbs for small talk
Imagina que tienes una reunión con un cliente y estáis tomando previamente un café. Algunos phasal verbs que puedes escuhar son:
I was called in (= asked to do something) by my boss.
I need to catch up (=do something that should be done) with my emails.
We are putting in (give) hours and hours.
They won’t give up (=abandon) their demands.
We shouldn’t give in (=surrender) to bully tactics.
Do you think they picked up (=receive) the message?
I will need to get back to you (=reply) on that.
Can we work something out (=agree) here?
I agreed to step in (=take their place)for my boss.
You need to run this by (=tell) the client.
Who set this up (=arranged)?
My colleague said they would put in a good word (=say something positive) for me .
That team always stick up for (=support) each other.
I don’t know who to turn to (=get help from).
You can always count on (=depend on) me.
Puedes descargar el diálogo de ejemplo aquí y descargar la transcripción aquí.
Phrasal verbs for business meetings
Ahora veremos otros phrsal verbs comunes para reuniones, en este caso planteamos un texto en el que podrás enocntrarlos todos «encadenados»:
The date and time is set and they put it (= schedule it) in your diary.They need to bring forward (=make it earlier) the time of the meeting to suit everyone.
They then get a call from a colleague to say that something has come up (=happened) and they decide the meeting has to be put back (=postponed) to another day. No problem. In a way they’re quite relieved because they have a mountain of things to do and they were worried that they might have had to call off (=cancel) the meeting anyway.
During the meeting, they have a number of issues they need to raise and deal with (=manage). They may have outlined the items in an agenda that they’ve circulated to everyone beforehand. With some issues, they may have to weigh up (=think carefully about) their advantages and disadvantages before taking action. This could take a while and they might encourage their colleagues to join in (=participate) the discussion.
Sometimes they need to look into (=to investigate/research) a matter before taking a final decision. If that’s the case, they might note down (=write) all the points raised during the meeting to help themselves.
Some people don’t like to be interrupted when they’re talking, while others don’t mind if someone steps in (=interrupt) with their point of view. I have had times when I’ve had to cut in (=interrupt) especially when I thought that a colleague was going on (=continuing without stopping) about something truly unimportant.
There is always someone in a meeting who just keeps rabbiting on (=talking too much about something that’s uninteresting) about some subject that no one else is interested in. So, I often tell my colleagues that we need to press on (=continue) with the other items in the agenda. After all, there’s nothing worse than having a meeting that drags on (=continues for far too long), is there?!
¿Qué te han parecido estas explicaciones? ¿Te han resultado útiles?
Autor: Shanthi Cumaraswamy Streat
