Phrasal verbs
bring along – if you ask someone to bring something along, it means that
you want them to bring it with them; it’s a bit like come along (Unit 5).
drop by – ‘visit at home’; if you want to invite someone to call on you at
home next week, you can say Why don’t you drop by next week?
hand in – if we find someone’s wallet in the street and we take it to the
police station, we call this handing something in.
invite round – ‘invite to your home’.
pick up – ‘collect’. We use this phrasal verb for both things and people –
We can pick up the food on the way back; Can you pick me up from
the station?
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10 Which do you
prefer?
In this unit you will learn how to:
• compare things
• express preferences
• compare and contrast what people do
• use adverbs of degree
Dialogue 1
Rosemary and Stuart are discussing preferences.
S
TUART
: Which do you prefer – Indian or Chinese food?
R
OSEMARY
: Well, I really like both.
[thinks for a moment]
I suppose I prefer Chinese when it’s a takeaway, but
I’d rather have Indian when I go out. What about
you?

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H
ANNAH
: I know. But what do you think of it?

Curry is my favourite food
• can’t afford means ‘haven’t got enough money for . . .’
Language point 59 – comparatives and
superlatives
When we compare two things we can use the
COMPARATIVE
form of
the
ADJECTIVE
. Here are some examples:
cheap These shoes are cheaper
than those
heavy Steel is heavier
than aluminium
comfortable My new armchair is more comfortable
than
my old one
good I think brown bread is better
than white
There are two ways of forming comparatives of regular adjectives:
1 with short adjectives, we add -er (so cheap → cheaper)
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Spelling rules
• When the adjective ends in -e, we add -r:
fine → finer
blue → bluer
• When the adjective ends in a single vowel + single consonant, we
double the consonant:
big → bigg
er
hot → hott
er
• When the adjective ends in
CONSONANT
+ y, we change -y to -ier:
happy → happier
heavy → heavier
2 with longer adjectives (more than two syllables) we simply put
more before the adjective:
comfortable → more comfortable
expensive → more expensive
Notice that you can’t use -er with longer words, and you can’t use
more with short words:
comfortable → more comfortable not ‘comfortabler
’
cheap → cheaper not ‘more cheap
’
There are also some

(of them all)
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