Last check, at speed
Eight gaps. Five seconds each. Verb choice and word order.
The review got until May because the budget had not . I said I would and get back to them. I the two options that could not work, a third supplier, and then the whole thing myself. Nobody had , and I could not any longer.
What is being assessed
Three parts. Five minutes of workplace narrative, three minutes of questions from somebody who has read your reflection, and the written 340 words.
The criteria are below, and they are the criteria.
Six criteria. Match each to what it looks like when somebody is doing it.
The whole unit on one card
Hold these three
| Hold this | Because |
|---|---|
| The phrasal verb is the unmarked choice | In spoken professional English the Latinate single verb is the marked one. Avoiding phrasal verbs does not sound careful; it sounds like reading. |
| A pronoun cannot follow a particle | turn it down, look into it, put up with it. One rule, three types, most of the errors. |
| The stress is part of the item | Particle stressed if separable; verb stressed if not; middle word stressed if three-part. It is also how you can tell which is which. |
Four items. Rewrite using the word given, in spoken professional English.
The client cancelled the review and nobody had approved the change. OFF
I eventually dealt with the emails I had been avoiding. ROUND
I rejected it because the timing was impossible. TURNED
I could not tolerate the situation any longer. PUT
The unit task
How the thirty minutes run. Two to set up, then rounds of eight: five minutes narrating, three of questions. Pairs work in parallel and swap. Four minutes at the end for the written reflection.
Part 1 · Spoken narrative · 5 minutes · No notes
Tell the story from your written reflection to somebody who has read it.
Five minutes, five moves, ordinary English throughout.
- What you took on, and what nobody told you.
- What was actually holding it up — reclassified, not described.
- What you did, including the part that looked like nothing.
- What happened, with a number, and what you would do differently.
Part 2 · Questions · 3 minutes · You do not choose these
Your listener asks three questions.
Three minutes. Answer plainly.
- Question 1 — what did you actually get? Not what happened; what you came away with.
- Question 2 — who did you not tell, and why?
- Question 3 — the listener’s own: the part of the story that did not add up.
- Listener: mark every Latinate verb that arrives under pressure. That list is the feedback.
Part 3 · Written · 4 minutes at the end
Hand in the 340-word reflection with a short note underneath.
Sixty words. Three sentences will do.
- Your six banned words — which of them still got through, in speech or in writing?
- Which phrasal verb did you use for the first time and mean?
- Which of the ten particle families is still empty for you?
Where the unit landed
Self-assessment · tick honestly, this is not collected
| Not yet | Getting there | Yes | |
|---|---|---|---|
| I reach for the phrasal verb before the Latinate one, most of the time | |||
| I put pronouns in the middle of separable verbs | |||
| I never separate prepositional or three-part verbs | |||
| I stress the particle rather than the verb | |||
| I can use verbs from at least six of the ten particle families | |||
| I can raise something difficult in four moves without opening with an apology |
Three questions. Answer for yourself.
1. Under the unrehearsed question, what came back?
2. What kind of problem is this?
3. What is the fortnight’s work?
What you can do now
Since Lesson 1 you have added: fifty high-frequency phrasal verbs organised into ten particle families; the four behaviours and the pronoun rule that catches most of the errors; the stress test that tells you which behaviour a verb has without a list; the four moves for raising something difficult; and a register you can hear the difference in.
And one idea that is not grammar: when two words for the same thing are both available, the faster one wins — so the way to change what you say is to remove the competitor, not to practise the alternative.
Two questions. Twenty seconds.
1. In spoken professional English, which is marked?
2. Where does a pronoun go with put up with?
Next unit — Arguments and Counter-Arguments. You met the cleft in Unit 27 as a way of fronting a topic. Next it becomes the main instrument: what nobody has explained is…, it was the deposit, not the rent, that decided it. Emphasis, built into the grammar, and the structure of a refutation.