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21

Unit 21: Fakes and phrasals
Phrasal verbs and misspelt words

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  1. 1 Pop-ups
  2. 2 Hidden talents
  3. 3 Can't buy me love
  4. 4 Travellers' tales
  5. 5 The colleague from hell
  6. 6 Jurassic mystery: unpacking the past
  7. 7 Career changes
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  10. 10 The dog ate my homework!
  11. 11 The diary of a double agent
  12. 12 Fashion forward
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  14. 14 Extreme sports
  15. 15 Food fads
  16. 16 Me, my selfie and I
  17. 17 Endangered animals
  18. 18 A nip and a tuck: cosmetic surgery
  19. 19 I'm really sorry...
  20. 20 Telling stories
  21. 21 Fakes and phrasals
  22. 22 Looking to the future
  23. 23 Becoming familiar with things
  24. 24 From rags to riches
  25. 25 Against the odds
  26. 26 Our future on Mars?
  27. 27 Where is it illegal to get a fish drunk?
  28. 28 Dodgy dating
  29. 29 Annoying advice
  30. 30 I'll have been studying English for thirty weeks

Session 4

Meet a Roman centurion who's travelled to modern-day London and needs some help with his phrasal verbs. Can you help him find the right words to say to make his spoken English sound more natural?

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Session 4 score

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    Activity 1
  1. Activity 1

Activity 1

Marcus the centurion goes on holiday

Use phrasal verbs to sound natural

Meet Marcus the time-travelling Roman centurion. He's arrived in London - or Londinium as he calls it in Latin - for a short holiday and he wants to tell you all about it. His spoken English is pretty good but is a bit too formal and old fashioned.

Listen

Listen to Marcus and try to answer these questions:

1. What was he expecting to see in London?

2. What is he wearing at the moment?

3. What idiom does he use to mean 'don't expect to achieve everything in a short period of time'?

Listen to the audio and complete the activity

Show transcript Hide transcript

Salutem! That's Latin for 'greetings'. That's what I said when I had to register at my place of rest – but the man on reception gave me a very strange look.

How did my journey terminate in this magnificent city I hear you ask? Well Emperor Caesar said I should escape to take my rest as I had been working so hard. So I chose to come here – Londinium – one of the northern outposts of the Roman Empire.

But it isn't what I had expected – no chariots – instead I have to explore the city on these strange red double-decker buses. And for entertainment, people go to a theatre to see something called a 'musical' not slaves being eaten by lions, unfortunately.

I shall go to observe one of these 'musicals' but not before I have absorbed the atmosphere of the city from a strange contraption called The London Eye. But how do I get there? The nice man at the hotel gave me a 'Tube map' but I can't seem to decipher it.

I shall use my feet to walk there – actually not walk but march – and I will enquire for directions. Maybe these people will be able to suggest which musical I go to see tonight – I do hope there's one that involves slaves being cut to pieces.

But please detain yourself. If I am to go to the theatre tonight I need to attire myself smartly - not wear this scruffy old toga. I only have a few pieces of gold and Londinium isn't cheap so I will need to compare prices at a number of shops – and if I have a few nuggets left I might buy Caesar an 'I 'heart' Londinium' T-shirt. He'll love that!

Oh but how am I going to do all of this today? I suppose I've always got tomorrow – after all Rome – I mean Londinium wasn't built in a day!

Answers

1. Marcus was expecting to see chariots and slaves being eaten by lions!

2. He is wearing a scruffy old toga.

3. The idiom he used was 'Rome wasn't built in a day'.

To do

Now listen to Marcus again. There are 11 places where his English would sound more natural if he used a sentence with a phrasal verb.

Which sentences containing phrasal verbs would make Marcus the Roman's English more natural. If you want to see a list of phrasal verbs, have a look at the vocabulary reference page.

Help Marcus use phrasal verbs

11 Questions

Choose the sentence with the correct phrasal verb to make Marcus's spoken English sound more natural

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End of Session 4

We hope you found this session useful and that you might drop in a few phrasal verbs into your next English conversation. In the next session try to listen out for some more of them as you enjoy our new drama - Gulliver's Travels.

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