Useless as a language-learning tool
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This book, as the synopsis says, contains over 700 verbs with over 1000 meanings. But I think this a weakness rather than a strength. Firstly, the phrasal verbs are grouped 16 to a page with one exercise per verb. The exercise is either a gap-fill, a multiple-choice or matching two parts of a dialogue. In itself this is not exactly imaginative, but the important fact is that it is impossible for a person learning English to assimmilate - much less activate - phrasal verbs in this way. There is no exploration of the nuance of each item: one exercise is deemed to be enough in conjunction with a very poor word or phrase definition in the "mini-dictionary" at the end of the book. The most the typical student will glean from studying (if that's not a misnomer) a page of this book will be a vague and unsatisfactory sense of some meanings which will be swiftly forgotten as being of no practical use.
As the synopsis also mentions, the phrasal verbs chosen are in the main arranged either by particle (eg "out") or by verb (eg "get"). This way of "organising" the material has as much sense as, say, grouping together words ending in "k", or beginning with "t". Importantly, however, there is absolutely no distinction between those items which are extremely common and those which are but seldom used.
In sum then, this book is sloppily conceived and put together and, whilst it may conceivably be of some use in testing the (passive) knowledge of someone who already knows the phrasal verbs, as a learning tool it's only likely to strengthen the learner's prejudice against this aspect of English.
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Excellent.
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This book is very good for whom English is a 2nd language. It is well organized and with mini Dictionary you do not loose time to look up somewhere else. It`s comperehension is well enoguh for Cambridge Profiency test and for life.
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very good range of verbs; clear layout; versatile
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I have been very impressed by this book, and so have colleagues who have asked me to get copies for them. I work as a Speech & Language Therapist, and this is just the sort of resource that I can use: it's got a clear layout, approaches the verbs from different angles, makes suggestions about how to teach them to others, has many exercises and uses a clear format to keep the user focused on the learning points and not be distracted by fancy presentation. I'm sure it's similarly useful to people teaching / learning ESL.
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