HEAAADERLOGORIGHT

FESTIVE PHRASAL VERBS

CHRISTMAS
1
Christmas pictures

Match the words to the pictures.

Christmas cards Christmas pudding Santa Claus bauble

a Christmas tree a candle a present a reindeer
a sleigh a stocking bells mistletoe

1. 2. 3. 4.

5. 6. 7. 8.

9. 10. 11. 12.

Can you think of anything else that is associated with Christmas?

Discuss any of the questions below.

1. Are there any unusual Christmas traditions in your country? Do you celebrate
Christmas in a traditional way?
2. Was Christmas different when you were younger? How?
3. Do you enjoy this time of year? Why? What do you dislike about this time of year? Why?
4. What is the most expensive Christmas present you plan to buy?
5. Do you donate something (money, clothes...) to charities?
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FESTIVE PHRASAL VERBS

2 Phrasal verbs

Study the questions and match each underlined phrasal verb with its meaning below.

1. Are you looking forward to Christmas?

2. Do you often put off buying Christmas presents until the last minute?
3. Do you put up decorations during the Christmas period?
4. Do you hang up stockings on a Christmas tree?
5. Do you enjoy wrapping up presents?
6. Are you going to give something up for the New Year?
7. Have you ever ended up somewhere you didn’t expect to be on New Year’s Eve?
8. Do you plan to go out or stay in on New Year’s Eve?
9. Do you usually bump into old friends over the Christmas period?

a. attach something somewhere from the top of the object

b. covering something completely with paper material
c. delay, postpone
d. finally found yourself in a place that you didn’t intend to go to
e. meet by chance
f. place something somewhere so that everybody notices it
g. stop doing something, for example a bad habit
h. take part in a social activity outside the home
i. waiting for something with pleasure

Ask and answer the questions with a partner. Try to use the phrasal verbs in your answers and get
more information by asking further questions, for example ‘Why/Why not?’, ‘Where did you end
up?’, ‘What are you going to give up?’ etc.

Now complete the phrases below and make an original sentence for each phrasal verb, selecting
one of the choices or using your own ideas.

1. look forward to a. a birthday party/the end of the week/the winter

2. put up b. a gift/a toy/a bottle of wine

3. put off c. an umbrella/a coat/a hat

4. hang up d. a sign/a poster/a painting/a notice

5. wrap up e. at a party/in a strange part of town/in the wrong street

6. end up f. your boss/your teacher/your doctor

7. bump into g. your homework/cleaning the floor/doing the dishes

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3 Same verb, different meaning

Some phrasal verbs can have more than one meaning. Use one phrasal verb from Ex. 1 in the correct
form for each pair of sentences. Each phrasal verb has a new meaning in the second sentence.

1. I was really surprised when I Mike on New Year’s Eve. I hadn’t seen him since we
were at school together.
I the wall on my way to the bathroom. I think I had too much wine this Christmas.
2. Alan always the cleaning until the minute before the guests
arrive. His awful behaviour really me every Christmas.
3. Can you that bottle of wine? It’s a present.
It’s getting late. Let’s this meeting and go
home.
4. I hardly ever during the week. I’m just too
busy. When the lights , I will fall asleep like a baby.
5. Jim smoking last year. He hasn’t smoked since then.
When Claire decided to exercise every day, she stuck to it and never .
6. You can your coat over there.
He was complaining on the phone about the present I gave him, so I decided to .

1. : to hit an obstacle accidentally

2. : to stop doing what you had decided to do, for example because it is too
difficult

3. : to end a telephone conversation by putting the receiver down

4. : to make you stop liking someone or something

5. : to finish or conclude something

6. : to stop burning or shining

4 Talking point

Discuss any of the following questions.

1. What things put you off when you meet someone for the first time?
2. Have you ever hung up on someone who was being rude?
3. Do you make New Year’s resolutions? Do you usually stick to them or do you give up very quickly?
4. What things do you put off until the last minute (apart from buying presents)?

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FESTIVE PHRASAL VERBS

5 Traditions

The pictures show Christmas traditions about Santa Claus in the English-speaking world. Decide
if the sentences are true or false.

1. Santa Claus is also sometimes called Kris Kringle or Father Christmas.

2. Santa’s sleigh flies by itself.
3. Santa has a pet reindeer called Rudolph.
4. Santa enters people’s homes through the door or windows.
5. People leave a plate of sandwiches for Santa to enjoy when he visits.

6 Before you watch

You are going to watch a video called, "What If Santa Really Delivered Presents in One Night?" This
video considers how the story of Santa Claus would be scientifically possible.

Read these facts from the video and choose the best answers. Then watch to check your ideas.

1. Around 600 thousand / 600 million / 6 billion people in the world expect a visit from Santa every year.
2. There are several children in every home, so Santa would only need to visit 24 million / 200 million/240 million
homes.
3. He would have 31 / 24 / 13 hours to deliver all the presents.
4. Santa would have to fly twice as fast as / 100 times as fast as / 1,200 times as fast as the fastest plane in
the world.
5. Reindeer can run 18 / 80 / 118 kilometres per hour.
6. Santa’s bag of presents would weigh around 6,000 / 60,000 / 600,000 tons.
7. The reindeer would fly at 3 / 300 / 3,000 times the speed of sound.
8. When Santa sat in the sleigh, he would experience a force that is tens of thousands / hundreds of
thousands / millions of times stronger than gravity.
9. Santa would receive a total of 72 million / 720 million / 7 billion cookies from all the houses that he
visited.
10. Santa would consume 39 million / 396 million / 396 billion calories if he ate all the cookies and
drank all the milk that people left for him.

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FESTIVE PHRASAL VERBS

7 Vocabulary
Match these words and phrases from the video with their meanings.

Group 1

1. accelerate a. accept that something is true without checking

2. assume b. include or consider a piece of information

3. deafen c. increase speed, start to go faster

4. factor in d. make someone lose their hearing

5. survive e. manage to stay alive in a dangerous situation

Group 2

1. a rough estimate a. a difficult or dangerous experience

2. bystander b. a guess which is more or less correct, but not exact

3. load c. a person who is close to an event but is not actively taking

part in it
4. massive d. the amount of something which an animal is carrying or pulling

5. ordeal e. very large

Watch Again

Complete these sentences from the video with a word or phrase from the vocabulary exercise.
Change the word endings if you need to so that the word fits the grammar of the sentence. Then
watch the video again and check.

• But if we consider certain religious and cultural traditions, we get

1
of about 600 million people.

• So 2 the different Christmas Eve start times across the planet, and

Kringle’s got a luxurious 31 hours to make his

deliveries.
3
• Since we don’t know exactly how fast a reindeer can fly, they can
let’s
manage those incredible speeds.
4
• Even then, they have to lug is much too heavy for them.
the
5
• For starters, the team would create a sonic boom as they hurtle
6
through the air at 3,000 times faster than the speed of sound, any
7
on the ground below.
8
• When a typical coaster , you get pushed back against your
seat.
9
• Let’s assume Santa and friends miraculously this
10 .

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FESTIVE PHRASAL VERBS

Think of something...

...that you assume when you meet a new English teacher

...that accelerates to a very high speed

...that you have to factor in when you plan how much money you need every month

...that is massive

...that can deafen you

8 Language in Context
Choose the best meaning for these informal expressions in bold from the video, using the context to
help you.

1. Legend has it that he drops by when the kids are asleep. So that gives him eight hours, right?

a. it’s a true fact that

b. the popular story says that
c. Santa is a great guy because

2. So factor in the different Christmas Eve start times across the planet, and Kringle’s got a
luxurious 31 hours to make his deliveries. Unfortunately, this is where his luck runs out.
Because just to reach every house, he’ll have to fly 1,200 times faster than the world’s fastest
jet fighter.

a. the situation changes from good to bad

b. the situation changes from bad to worse
c. no one knows what’s going to happen

3. A force tens of thousands of times stronger than gravity would pin him to the sleigh, smashing
his bones and internal organs to jelly. But it’s not all doom and gloom. Let’s assume Santa and
friends miraculously survive this ordeal.

a. everything is terrible
b. no one understands why this happens
c. there is something positive in this situation

9 Talking point
Discuss these questions in pairs or small groups. Use words and phrases from the lesson.
1. In your country, do you have a magic character that brings children presents at Christmas
or another time of year?
2. When you were a child, did you believe in Santa Claus or in some similar character?
3. How old were you when you stopped believing this?
4. How did you find out the truth?
5. Do you think it’s healthy for children to believe in magic characters like Santa Claus? Why/not?
6. If/when you have a child, what will you tell them about magic characters like Santa Claus?

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