Phrasal verbs are essential for fluent and natural English. Here are our top tips for learning them!
Tip 1: Don’t be scared of phrasal verbs!
We understand that they can seem difficult, but you probably know lots already. You wake up in the morning, right? You put on your coat when it’s cold, and you probably sit down to watch TV in the evening. These are all phrasal verbs, and they’re not very hard, are they?
Tip 2: Decide which phrasal verbs are useful for you.
There are thousands of phrasal verbs in English, so a better question is ‘How can I learn the phrasal verbs that will be most useful to me?’. When you see a new phrasal verb, ask yourself how useful it is likely to be. If the answer is ‘very useful’, or even ‘probably quite useful’, write it down and make the effort to learn it. Be prepared to forget the less useful ones – nobody’s brain is big enough for all of them!
Tip 3: Learn phrasal verbs in topic groups.
It is easier to remember sets of verbs that have some connection. Whatever you do, don’t try to learn groups of phrasal verbs with the same verb. English teaching books sometimes present them like this, but we think that’s very confusing! Which do you think is easier to learn and remember, a topic group such, as this one on going out with friends (catch up, hang out, meet up, come along, eat out) or 5 phrasal verbs with ‘put’ (put down, put off, put on, put through, put up with)?
Tip 4: Set yourself a realistic goal.
If you learn 5 phrasal verbs a day, you will have 150 in just one month. That will make a big difference to your English.
Tip 5: Learn phrasal verbs in context.
When you write down a new phrasal verb to learn, write the sentence you found it in too. Just like any other verbs, they have their own habits. For example, you need to know about verb patterns. For instance, you need an -ing verb after carry on (‘They carried on talking.’), and you need to know their typical subjects and objects of transitive verbs – for instance a car breaks down but a computer doesn’t!
For more help with phrasal verbs, see our post Everything you need to know about phrasal verbs
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