How Can You Learn Phrasal Verbs by Shadowing?

If you are studying English at any level, shadowing is a great way to study. And you can add other study methods to it so your study will be even better. Shadowing will help you learn phrasal verbs deeply. You will learn what 'sounds' right about them, and how to recognize them.


Shadowing takes time, and some students want to speed up their studies. You can learn faster anytime you study with more than one method. Here are a few ideas, although you may certainly have more ideas of your own.

Shadow and Read 

You can shadow a lot and make a mistake in your pronunciation or a meaning of a sentence and not even notice it. For this reason, I tell students that once every four times you shadow a story, you should read the script at the same time. You will almost certainly have an 'aha!' moment when you realize a mistake you made, or understand something deeper.

The trick with doing this is: not too much. As you shadow and read, you may find it smooth and easy. Both shadowing and understanding will be easier. It will be tempting to shadow and read more often. Do not do it often. It is a powerful technique only if you do it infrequently. Too much salt will spoil the soup, and too much shadowing and reading will spoil your studies.

Study the Meanings 

You may think that you should not read too much after my comments above, but now I am telling you to read. Be sure to read the meanings of the phrasal verbs before you do the shadowing. Not just once. You should read and review the meanings frequently. Listening practice is great, and you also have to keep up regular old fashioned reading study.

You may read quietly sometimes, and you should also read out loud sometimes. Reading the meanings out loud lets you hear your own voice speaking English, as well as hearing the meaning. Hearing the meaning in addition to reading is very good. You may even want to record your voice reading the meanings and use that for studying, too.

Listen and Repeat 

After you have been shadowing a story for a while, but before you have memorized it, start practicing listen and repeat. Listen to one sentence from the story with a phrasal verb in it. Then stop listening and repeat the sentence as well as you can. If the sentence is long, just practice repeating part of it. Then another part, and so on until you can repeat the whole sentence.

Draw Pictures 

Draw a picture of the situation in the story. Use faces of the characters, and show their feelings and relationships. These pictures can be private, and of course, they do not have to be very good. You will be surprised how much very badly drawn pictures can help your understanding of the story and the phrasal verbs. You will also be surprised how much faster you will remember these things.

Making Your Own Sentences 

You may feel uncomfortable making your own sentences using the phrasal verbs at first. If so, then simply copy the sentence with the phrasal verb in it. Do this for several days, and then when you are more comfortable start to make small changes in the sentence.

Small changes will start to add up to bigger changes and then bigger changes. Before long, you will be making your own sentences with no trouble at all. 
Get started now. Go write one of those sentences.

Thesaurus 

Use a thesaurus to find the phrasal verb you are studying. Look at the words that have a similar meaning. Try reading the sentence with those words replacing the phrasal verb, and think about how the meaning changes. Sometimes the new word will not make sense, and other times it will be ok, but not quite the same. That is fine. Just be aware of how you think the meaning changes.

Summary 

There are lots of great methods you can study to make your shadowing practice even more effective and help yu learn faster. First, try to shadow and read the story once in a while, but not too often. Be aware of anything you realized. Next, be sure to study the meanings of the phrasal verbs directly by reading them silently and out loud. Of course, you can listen and repeat the parts of the story until you can say them by memory. Help your visual memory help you by drawing pictures about the story, especially people's faces. Then make your own sentences using the phrasal verbs. Finally look at the similar words in a thesaurus, and see how using them will affect the meaning of the story.

You will find lots of stories to get you started shadowing practice for phrasal verbs at English Listening World.com, and you can also sign up to receive my e-zine for free when you are there.

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