Phrasal verbs stick when you put them to work: when you write and speak with them and see what to fix. A list alone won’t get you there. It teaches you to recognise find out in a text, but when you write, I knew still comes out where you meant I found out. Free LetsWords exercises help you understand the meanings: the Phrasal verbs section covers 264 verbs, each with its meaning, examples, a common mistake and an exercise. The LetsWords trainer teaches you to use them without mistakes: you recall the verb from its meaning and build sentences with it, the trainer points out usage and grammar mistakes, suggests a correction and explains it, and spaced repetition locks in the result.
Which phrasal verbs to learn first
Don’t try to get through the whole list. Five verbs you actually use are worth more than fifty you only recognise. Choose by two criteria.
First, frequency and your goal. Take the verbs that come up all the time in conversation, TV shows and work emails, then pick the ones you need: some for everyday talk, others for study and writing.
Second, your own typical mistakes. Two classic learner errors are invented an idea instead of came up with an idea and refused from the offer instead of turned down the offer. If you write things like that, start with those verbs. You’ll be fixing mistakes that are already in your English.
For conversation and everyday life:
- find out — discover information
- look for — try to find
- look after — take care of, keep safe
- look forward to — feel excited about something that’s coming
- give up — stop doing, stop trying
- pick up — collect, learn along the way
- get on with — be on good terms with someone
- run out of — use all of something, have none left
- turn down — refuse, say no to
- put off — delay
- come across — find or meet by chance
For work, study and written answers:
- come up with — think of or suggest an idea
- figure out — understand or solve something
- deal with — handle, cope with, have dealings with
- carry out — conduct (research, a survey), perform (a task)
- point out — draw attention to, mention
- set up — start a company, get something ready
- rely on — trust, depend on
In an IELTS essay, neutral verbs like carry out, point out, deal with and rely on fit better. Save casual ones like hang out for conversation.
Why phrasal verbs get mixed up
The particle changes the whole meaning, and you can’t always work it out from the parts. Turn down an offer means refuse it, turn up late means arrive late, and it turned out means that something proved to be true. It works the other way too: same particle, different verbs. Look after means take care of, while take after means resemble an older relative.
That’s why it pays to learn verbs in groups. The two ways of grouping do different jobs.
By verb. Meanings that are easy to confuse sit side by side, so you tell them apart from the start. The turn, get and look groups are a good place to begin.
By particle. A particle often carries a shared meaning, and that makes a new verb easier to understand. Out often means reaching an answer: find out, figure out, work out and sort out sit together in the out group. Up often adds a sense of completion: use up means use all of something. It sits with about twenty more, like end up and show up, in the up group.
Don’t learn every meaning in a verb group at once, or turn up, turn down and turn out will start to blur. Take the two or three you need and skim the rest to compare them with the ones you already know. Bring in the particle groups once you know more verbs.
Where the object goes: pick it up, not pick up it
The second common mistake is about word order, not meaning. Phrasal verbs are either separable or inseparable.
Separable. A noun can go after the particle or before it: pick up the kids and pick the kids up. A pronoun (it, them, you) only goes in the middle:
I’ll pick you up from the airport at nine.
If you don’t know the word, look it up.
The same goes for look up and call off.
Inseparable. The object always comes after the whole phrase, even a short it:
Thanks for reporting the bug. We’ll look into it today.
I can’t put up with it anymore.
These include look into, look after and three-word verbs like put up with. The rule is set out in Cambridge’s grammar guide.
Learn each verb together with a pronoun: not just look up but look it up; not look into but look into it. The pattern line on each verb’s page shows you how: for look up, it reads look it/them up.
LetsWords feedback example: call off or put off?
You’re studying call off and writing about your working week: the client couldn’t come to the meeting on Monday, so it was moved to Friday.
The client couldn’t come to Monday’s meeting, so we called off it until Friday.
What the feedback shows. The sentence has two mistakes.
- Meaning. Call off means cancel completely: the meeting isn’t happening. In your case it was moved, and until Friday says so. You need put off: delay until later.
- Object position. Put off is separable, so it goes between the verb and the particle: put it off.
The corrected version:
The client couldn’t come to Monday’s meeting, so we put it off until Friday.
The feedback also suggests a better way to say it. For an email to the client, a more formal version works:
We have postponed the meeting until Friday.
Use it in a new situation. Now use both verbs to talk about your own life. Rain ruined your picnic plans: that’s call off, and the pronoun goes in the middle again:
We had planned a picnic, but it rained all weekend, so we called it off.
For a month, you kept delaying that call to the dentist: that’s put off, and a verb after it takes -ing:
I put off calling the dentist for a month, and the pain only got worse.
On a word-and-translation flashcard, you’d have recalled “cancel” correctly and never noticed you were confusing cancelling with postponing. The mistake showed up once you used the verb yourself, and the feedback gave you a rule for every sentence after it. Lock in the pair with the exercises for call off and put off.
How to practise phrasal verbs
- The free exercise on the verb’s page. Read the meaning and examples, go through the common mistake and choose an answer in the exercise. This checks that you’ve understood the meaning.
- Using the verb in LetsWords. Each verb page asks you to write a sentence about yourself. In the trainer, you write that sentence and get feedback: whether the particle is right, where the object goes, which form follows the verb and how to sound more natural. Feedback can be brief or detailed, and it takes your goal into account: an exam or general English. If you don’t know what to write about, the generator suggests an idea in your native language at the difficulty you choose. Hulstijn and Laufer compared three tasks with new words: reading a text, reading and filling in gaps, and writing a composition using the words. Learners remembered the words best after writing and worst after reading. A sentence about your life with a phrasal verb is the same kind of task: you choose the meaning and the structure, and the feedback shows what worked.
- Recall from the meaning. In review, you see a hint in your native language that means “delay”. You recall put off yourself and write a new sentence with it. Karpicke and Roediger showed that retrieving learned vocabulary from memory again and again helps you retain it long-term. Recognising a verb on a list is easier than pulling it out of memory, but conversation demands the second.
- Review at intervals. Spaced repetition brings the verb back in later sessions until it feels natural. A review by Cepeda and colleagues covering 317 experiments found that the gap between reviews shapes how well you remember material later, and the longer you need to remember it, the longer the gap should be.
The LetsWords vocabulary trainer already has a ready-made phrasal verb collection, so there’s no need to build a list from scratch. Verbs from TV shows, books and work emails can go into your own collection, and you practise them the same way. Our article on active vocabulary shows how this approach works with any word.
Common mistakes with phrasal verbs
- The wrong verb. Everyone says I look after my mother instead of take after: that says you take care of your mum, when you meant you’re like her. See take after for more.
- An extra preposition. Learners often add on where it doesn’t belong: came across on an article, pointing out on my mistake. The correct forms are came across an article and pointing out my mistake: see come across and point out.
- An infinitive instead of -ing after to. In look forward to, to is a preposition, so -ing follows: I’m looking forward to seeing you, not to see you. See look forward to for more.
From a list to your own English
The free exercises in the Phrasal verbs section help you understand meanings and common mistakes. To get these verbs into your emails and conversations, recall them from their meaning, use them yourself and review them at intervals. LetsWords will show you what to fix and why. Start vocabulary practice in LetsWords and write about your life with put off, come up with and figure out, instead of just recognising them in a text.