Eight that have no single-word version
Eight phrasal verbs with no neat Latinate equivalent. Match each to what it means.
One situation, four registers
A team has missed a deadline. Four texts about it, all composed for this lesson.
A · Two colleagues, in a corridor
— Did the report go in? — No. It got held up because Marta’s still waiting on the figures, and the figures depend on something that hasn’t been signed off yet.
— So who do we chase? — Nobody, really. It’ll sort itself out on Monday when the finance meeting happens. I’d rather not bring it up before then, because the last time somebody did we ended up with a workstream.
B · The email that followed
Hi both — quick update on the report. It’s been held up while we wait for the figures, which are tied to an approval that hasn’t come through yet.
I’d suggest we hold off until after Friday’s finance meeting rather than chasing it now. I’ll follow up straight afterwards and let you know where we’ve got to. Shout if you’d rather I raised it sooner.
C · A conversation with the person responsible
— I wanted to go over the timeline with you before it goes any further. Not to pick over what happened; more to work out what we do next.
— I should have flagged it earlier. — Possibly. What I’d rather focus on is that nobody else knew, and that is the part I want to sort out. If something slips, I need to hear about it from you rather than come up against it in a meeting.
D · The relevant paragraph of the process document
Where a deliverable is at risk of exceeding its agreed timescale, the responsible officer shall notify the programme lead at the earliest opportunity. Notification shall be recorded and the revised timescale shall be authorised in accordance with the change-control procedure.
Failure to notify may be escalated in line with the performance framework.
Seven statements. Decide which text each is true of. A text may be the answer more than once.
A The corridor
B The email
C The conversation
D The process document
1. Contains no phrasal verbs at all.
2. Explains a decision not to act by referring to what happened last time.
3. Uses phrasal verbs while remaining entirely professional in tone.
4. Explicitly separates reviewing the past from deciding the next step.
5. Keeps the corridor’s verbs and adds one polite formula at the end.
6. States a consequence without naming anybody who would apply it.
7. Describes a chain of dependencies in three linked clauses.
The register line is not where you think. Text C is the most serious conversation of the four — a manager raising a performance problem — and it is full of phrasal verbs: go over, pick over, work out, sort out, come up against.
Only text D avoids them, and text D is not speech. It is a document nobody will read until something has gone wrong.
Where the stress goes
Two kinds, and you can hear which is which
| Type | Stress | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Verb + adverb particle (separable) | On the particle | She turned the offer DOWN. · I put it OFF. · They called it OFF. |
| Verb + preposition (inseparable) | On the verb; the preposition is weak | She LOOKED into it. · I DEALT with it. · We WENT through it. |
| Verb + particle + preposition (three-part, inseparable) | On the middle particle | I can’t put UP with it. · I never got ROUND to it. |
Which means the stress tells you the grammar. If the second word can carry stress, it is an adverb particle and the verb separates: turn it down. If it cannot, it is a preposition and the verb does not: look into it, never look it into.
Say all three rows aloud twice. Lesson 4 builds the whole separability system on the fact that you can hear it.
Four sentences have been removed from a fifth text. Put each one back where it belongs.
The handover was supposed to take two weeks and it took five months. [1]
The person leaving wrote everything down, which everybody thanked her for and nobody read. [2] What was missing was not information; it was the twenty relationships she had that nobody had written down anywhere.
[3] Each one had to be rebuilt from the beginning, usually by somebody phoning a stranger and explaining who they were.
None of that appears in the handover document. [4] It records what a job consists of, and it cannot record who will take your call.
That is not a criticism of the document. It is a limit of documents.
Saying it the way it is said
Eight gaps. Choose what a colleague would say.
The report got because Marta is still the figures, and the figures depend on an approval that hasn’t yet. I’d rather not before Friday, because last time somebody did we with a whole workstream. I’ll straight after the meeting and let you know where we’ve . If you’d rather I it sooner, say so.
Seven sentences. Five are register; two are grammar.
1. I shall commence the analysis on Monday. — to a colleague
2. Please advise if you require clarification. — an email to your own team
3. I put up it with for two years.
4. We need to reduce our expenditure on software. — in a meeting
5. He has assumed responsibility for the second team. — said in the corridor
6. She went it through with me line by line.
7. I will revert to you in due course.
Say the policy out loud
Task card · Pairs · 12 minutes · Writing then speaking
Take text D — the process document — and say it to a team of three people who have just missed a deadline.
Six minutes turning it into speech, six delivering it to the pair beside you.
- Every passive with a hidden agent gets a person: you need to tell me, I’ll sign it off.
- Every Latinate verb gets its spoken equivalent, where there is one.
- Keep the content exactly: the same obligation, the same consequence, nothing softened away.
- Then deliver it. The other pair says whether it sounded like a manager or like a document being read.
The trap in this task. Turning the document into speech makes it kinder sounding, and it is easy to lose the consequence along the way. Keep it. If you don’t tell me, it goes to your review is spoken English and it says exactly what the last line of the document says.
What survived the translation
Two questions.
1. When you said the policy out loud, what happened to the consequence?
2. What does that show about the document’s register?
Serious and phrasal
Two questions. Twenty seconds.
1. Which of the four texts was the most serious conversation?
2. How can you hear whether a phrasal verb separates?
Next. The fifty that carry most of professional English — in groups, with the ones that mean two things marked.