English Phrasal Verb Game Primer Tutorial

English Phrasal Verb Game Primer Tutorial

That’s three different sources now that have told us that Phrasal verbs, in English, are about the hardest issue for early learners of English, as there is no real pattern to why they are the way they are.

The three sources?

• my first TESOL lecturer
• the TESOL course notes
• current Italian teacher

Consequently, it ends up that ESL students, more or less, have to memorize them, to learn them.

Today, we’ve written a web application to try to help. Today’s game asks you to fill in the game’s missing start, middle (after all, with a lot of phrasal verbs the context matters … a lot) or end to a phrasal verb, and we’ll call the game “The Phrasal Verb DotDotDot Game” (hopefully not too snappy for you?!) … and you score points for each correct phrasal verb you form. It uses English phrasal verbs, and we invite you to play with another player, and add your own, maybe while they aren’t looking?! (Hint: Try the middle Dot).

This game uses HTML and Javascript programming languages.

Hopefully you can figure the rules when you click the picture above for a live run.

Anyway, see how you go with this ESL sentence game that makes use of a (HTML canvas element) chalkboard! We really like using the HTML canvas element for the simulation of a school blackboard, but readily admit that smartboards (or interactive whiteboards) have come a long way since then, helping teachers teach and collaborate with students.

Here is a link to some downloadable HTML (with Javascript) programming code you could rename to phrasalverb_chalkboard.html.

Today we’d like to thank this link for a great list of phrasal verbs (thanks for the list and you can find senrence examples at this link too) and, as per usual with ESL games, The Free Dictionary for the phrasal verb lookups that may help linked off the underlined dot.

So here is the HTML and Javascript phrasalverbs_chalkboard.html source code and here is a live run.

If this was interesting you may be interested in this too.