How many phrasal verbs are there in English? Bob the Canadian wrote a story using just the verb "to get" 99 different ways! Of course multi-part verb variations were a part of the narrative!
According to one article on the internet there are over 10,000 phrasals. Now, that article might have included some prepositional verbs by accident. I don't care to quibble over definitions. Any way you look at it, multi-part verbs are a challenge for ESL students.
Most language courses teach phrasals grouped by the main verb This can be logical if you have just taught the verb's tenses and want the student to practice them in different ways.
Personally, I prefer to teach multi-part verbs grouped by preposition. Since there is no way a student can memorize 10,000 definitions, they must get a feel for the way in which each preposition will affect the verb it is attached to. Phrasal verbs are best understood once you realize that they are metaphors! Wikipedia has a good article on the subject and here is the link to my page summarizing it. Also, here is a link to a blog entry by Denise Santos explaining the concept in detail.
But isn't a metaphor one kind of figure of speech most often used in poetry? That is what most people believe. English speakers, however, use conceptual metaphors all day long without giving it a second thought. How can you impart the meaning to an ESL student? One way is to draw an illustration; however I'm not a very good artist. Another is, of course, to use the words truly figuratively in a poem! That's what I've started doing. Here's a link to my first effort, using the preposition "up", So far I have 2 poems using the metaphors as metaphors and one using the "up" verbs in simply a literal, tongue-in-cheek poem.
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