G'day, how's it going mate? Sorry I haven't been able to upload new blogs for a while. I apologise. Ok, so today's topic is gonna be like this: Think about how you master phrasal verbs. Even for myself, I'm not really good at this, to be honest with you, but I know all of the basic etymological knowledge. So, I'm basically fine. How about you guys? How are you learning phrasal verbs? My short answer is that prepositions are the key when it comes to surmising the meaning of phrases. What do I mean that? Well, let's get straight into this.
To start off, prepositions play an important role in changing the overall meaning of what phrases entail. I mean, if a verb doesn't come with any preposition, then it is just a normal verb, not a phrasal verb, right? For instance, when you see the preposition 'up' along with a variety of verb, you could guess, hmmm...it might mean something like go up?! Yep, 'up' means there might be seen as a gradual, gentle or incremental ascending path. You know what I mean? I reckon it's better to show you more examples here. Apart from 'go up', what else can you come up with? Oh my, I've just said already. 'Come up with', which comes with 'up', but this one comes with 'up with', as you can see. So, there are a coupe of phrasal verbs that come with two prepositions. Other than that, normally you often encounter one preposition.
Anyway, if you wanna explain like something is ascending from economic and financial perspectives, for instance, then you probably often see the following phrasal verbs: Drive up, Hike up, Push up, Jack up, etc. They are almost the same meaning as it is. The nuances slightly differ, of course, but overall they should be interchangeable in speaking and writing as well.
In conclusion, when you are learning phrasal verbs, you should focus on prepositions first, and then verbs. Knowing all meaning and role in prepositions is crucially important to be able to master phrasal verbs. I know it's sort of daunting and hard, but ultimately you don't need to memorise them forcefully. The key takeaway from today's blog is this: Understanding the role and meaning of prepositions. If you got that, then I do believe you could master phrasal verbs naturally without putting any significant effort.