The 50 essential phrasal verbs to ace the TOEIC

Transcript

0:00 You can know a thousand TOEIC words and still lose a point to two tiny ones.

Turn down. Nothing to do with turning anything downward. Bring up. Nothing to do with carrying anything upward. Two familiar words, one literal translation, and you've just picked the wrong answer.

That's a phrasal verb, and the exam is full of them. The TOEIC wants to know whether you'd survive a Tuesday morning in an English-speaking office, and in that office nobody arranges a meeting. They set one up.

Ready?

0:29 Start with the meeting itself, because that's where the working day starts.

Nobody arranges one, you set it up. Nobody cancels it, you call it off. Nobody postpones it, you put it off. And nobody concludes it, you wrap it up.

Inside the room you bring up a point rather than mention it, you go over the contract slowly, you run through it quickly, and afterwards you follow up. Somebody carries out the analysis. Somebody else comes up with the idea.

Then the decisions. Your proposal gets turned down, or the manager signs off on it. You take on the project, think it over, work out the details, and go ahead.

Two more the exam adores. This situation calls for action, so calls for is requires. The data backs up our findings, so backs up is supports.

1:18 Now let's move to communication, where the exam hides most of its answers.

You don't reply, you get back to someone. You don't contact them, you reach out to them. You don't inform them, you fill them in. Relay a message and you pass it on. Spot an error and you point it out.

Investigate becomes look into. Stay informed becomes keep up with. And when it really matters, you spell it out.

Careful with these two, they pull in opposite directions. Bring forward moves a date earlier. Put forward proposes an idea. Same shape, nothing in common.

Then the paperwork. Reports get handed in, or turned in, same thing. Contracts get drawn up. Forms get filled out. You work on a presentation, a colleague takes over the project, everyone else carries on.

And when the pressure lands, three verbs land with it. Cut down on expenses. Step up the marketing. Speed up the process.

2:15 Every office has problems, so the exam has a vocabulary for them.

You deal with an issue, you sort out a mess, and when you're truly stuck, you can't figure it out. You run into difficulties by accident, come across a useful article by luck, and get over the obstacle by effort.

Break down plays both sides. The system broke down, so it stopped working. Let's break down the costs, so let's analyse them. Same two words, opposite worlds.

Schedule trouble comes in three. You fall behind, you catch up, you make up for the lost time. Plus the two you'll hear in almost every recording, log in and log out.

2:55 And now come the four traps built around them.

One, literal translation. Bring up isn't carry upward, it's mention.

Two, double meanings. Turn down a job offer. Turn down the volume. Context decides.

Three, separable particles. Fill out the form, fill the form out, same verb. Don't panic when the object slides into the middle.

Four, a single space. Set up is a verb, setup is a noun. Log in is what you do, login is what you type.

Here's the payoff. The audio says, we had to call off the meeting, the CEO is sick. What happened to the meeting? Scheduled, cancelled, postponed, attended. Know call off and the point is free. Miss it and you're flipping a coin between two answers that both sound right.

3:44 So how do you make all this stick?

Not with an alphabetical list. Group them by scene, the way we just did, the meeting room, the inbox, the crisis. Memory runs on association.

Then write your own sentences about your own job. A definition you copied fades by Thursday. A sentence about your own Monday morning stays.

Feed your ears too, business podcasts, workplace series like The Office or Suits. And review in small doses over weeks, because recognition isn't enough. You need reflex, since the audio plays once and never comes back.

Now tell me, which one has tripped you up the most? Drop it in the comments, and say if you want a second list for the Reading section.

All fifty are written up in the companion article on the Erosophia blog, with free resources to practise them. Go grab it, and your TOEIC score will thank you.