‘Get’ has many functions and teaching them all at once would confuse your students. In this grammar post, Jennifer Brooke offers a few suggestions for how to teach ‘get’ to low-level and high-level learners.
Get can function in several different ways, in several different meanings. When it means “become,” it can be used to link a noun with an adjective that is either in its base form (get sleepy) or a comparative (get safer). In a related meaning, it can be part of a passive construction (get divorced). It can mean “acquire” (get a sandwich) or have a multitude of other meanings in phrasal verbs (get up, get away) or prepositional verbs (get on with). In other words, get is a powerful word! But students will just be confused if we show them all the ways it can be used at once. Teachers should strategically teach various functions of get.
Teaching ‘get’ to low-level learners
For low-level learners, it may be best to group the target structures by meaning—that is, do a lesson on get meaning “acquire,” another lesson on get meaning “become,” etc. Once the common meanings have been covered, target some of the common phrasal or prepositional get verbs for focused practice. Alternatively, you can teach situationally, such as by forming a lesson around get expressions about starting one’s day (get up, get dressed, get a cup of coffee, get to work). This avoids teaching get passives explicitly until students have a basic grasp of a number of highly useful constructions. By the way, you may notice that most good grammar series cover get passives about halfway through their third level.
Teaching ‘get’ to high-level learners
For higher-level learners, knowing get’s role in passives can help them sound more natural. For example, each of the following be-passives is perfectly grammatical, but the get-passive provides a nice colloquial alternative: They were married yesterday, He was just fired. For very common get-passives like get married or get fired, it can be more efficient to teach the get-phrases as phrasal units instead of individual words. Proficient speakers of English naturally use get for passives that involve some sort of surprising or momentous action. It is important to note, however, that get-passives don’t work with stative verbs like know or like; The President isn’t liked by anybody sounds much better than The President doesn’t get liked by anybody.
Click here to download some activity ideas for low-level and higher-level learners.
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