Sound like a native, not a textbook: master the little verbs that carry big meanings.
A phrasal verb is a verb plus one or two little words (a particle: a preposition or adverb) that together create a new meaning — often very different from the verb alone. Give means one thing; give up, give in and give away mean three completely different things. Native speakers reach for these constantly, so understanding them is the difference between textbook English and the real thing.
At B2 the challenge is no longer just knowing what a phrasal verb means. You must handle its grammar — whether the object can split it (turn it off vs turn off it), whether it takes one particle or two, and whether the meaning is literal or figurative. This unit sorts them into clear types and adds a set of everyday idioms that work the same way.
Many two-word phrasal verbs are separable: the object can come after the particle or between the verb and the particle. Both orders are fine — until the object is a pronoun (it, them, him). Then the pronoun must go in the middle.
| Object type | Pattern | Example |
|---|---|---|
| a noun (after) | verb + particle + noun | She turned off the radio. |
| a noun (split) | verb + noun + particle | She turned the radio off. |
| a pronoun | verb + pronoun + particle | She turned it off. (never "turned off it") |
Other phrasal verbs are inseparable: the object — even a pronoun — always comes after the whole verb. You can never put anything between the verb and its particle.
| Phrasal verb | Meaning | Example |
|---|---|---|
| run into | meet by chance / hit (a problem) | I ran into her yesterday. (not "ran her into") |
| look after | take care of | Who will look after the dog? |
| get over | recover from | It took weeks to get over the flu. |
Some phrasal verbs carry two particles. These are always inseparable, and the object comes after both particles. They are extremely common in speech, so learn them as fixed units.
The same phrasal verb can be literal (its plain, physical meaning) or figurative (an idiomatic meaning you cannot guess from the words). Many have several meanings, so context decides.
| Phrasal verb | Literal | Figurative / idiomatic |
|---|---|---|
| break down | The car broke down. (stopped working) | He broke down in tears. (lost control of emotions) |
| pick up | Pick up the pen. (lift it) | Things are picking up. (improving) |
| take off | The plane took off. (left the ground) | Her band took off. (became very successful) |
Phrasal verbs sound natural and informal. In formal writing (reports, essays, official letters) a single-word, often Latin-based, verb is usually preferred. Knowing both, and choosing the right one for the situation, is a real B2 skill.
| Informal (phrasal) | Formal (single word) | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| put off | postpone | delay to a later time |
| find out | discover | learn a fact |
| carry out | conduct | perform (a study, a task) |
| set up | establish | create / start (a club) |
These are the errors B2 students still make with phrasal verbs. Check your own writing against every row.
| Wrong ✗ | Right ✓ | Why? |
|---|---|---|
| Can you turn off it? | Can you turn it off? | a pronoun object must split a separable verb. |
| I ran her into at the shops. | I ran into her at the shops. | "run into" is inseparable; the object stays after it. |
| I look forward to meet you. | I look forward to meeting you. | "to" here is a preposition, so use the -ing form. |
| She can't put up the noise with. | She can't put up with the noise. | a three-part verb is never split. |
| The school carried out an inquiry into the accident and put it off. | ...conducted an inquiry... and postponed it. | in a formal report, single-word verbs fit the register better. |
Two friends plan the school fair. Read it twice and watch each phrasal-verb type in action: a separable verb (put off / call off), an inseparable one (run into), a three-part verb (come up with), and an idiom (get the ball rolling).
Choose the correct answer. — 10 questions, each one is marked instantly. Questions get harder as you go.
Learn the phrasal verbs and idioms, then use them to talk about plans, problems and teamwork.
Describe a real plan, project or problem you have dealt with (e.g. organising an event, starting a hobby, fixing something at home or school). Write 8 sentences telling the story. Use at least 8 of the phrasal verbs and idioms above.
Sentence starters (you can begin with these):
Değerlendirme öğretmenin tarafından yapılacak. (Your teacher will review your task.)
Read the text, then answer the questions.
Good readers prepare before they start. Before you read, think about these three questions (you do not need to write the answers):
Phrasal verbs to spot (from the Speaking section): come up with · put up with · call off · sort out · take on · cut corners · get the ball rolling · throw in the towel
Starting something of your own is never as simple as it looks. Plenty of people come up with a clever idea, yet only a few manage to get it off the ground. The gap between dreaming and doing is where most bright plans fall apart.
For most young people with a plan, the trouble is not a shortage of ideas but a shortage of follow-through. It is easy to sketch out a project in your notebook after school, and even easier to talk it up with friends who nod along encouragingly. Turning that rough sketch into something that actually works, however, calls for patience, planning and a fair amount of nerve. You have to line up your ingredients, work out your prices, plan every batch and win over customers who have never so much as tasted your baking. Many people badly underestimate just how much groundwork is involved, and once the first flush of excitement wears off, they quietly let the whole plan slide.
Take Mira, a twelve-year-old who set up a small cake stall at the Saturday market three years ago. At first, everything went wrong. Her helpers let her down, the oven at home broke down overnight, and she nearly gave up. Instead of throwing in the towel, she sat down and worked out exactly what had gone wrong. She cut back on waste, took on one reliable friend as a helper, and drew up a simple plan she could stick to.
Mira had not always dreamed of running her own stall. She had spent a year helping out at bake sales and school fairs, putting in early starts and picking up the tricks of baking from the bottom up. When she finally decided to strike out on her own, plenty of people tried to warn her off, pointing to the long list of school stalls that had quietly folded after a week or two. She listened politely, weighed up the risks and pressed ahead anyway, convinced that she could carve out a niche of her own as long as she stuck to what she did best.
That first winter tested her to the limit. The morning the oven packed up, she lost a whole batch of dough and had to throw out ingredients she could barely afford to replace out of her pocket money. Two of her helpers let her down without warning, turning up late or not at all, and for a few anxious weeks it looked as though the whole plan might fall apart before it had properly begun. Rather than lash out at everyone around her or lose heart altogether, Mira kept a level head. She jotted down every setback in a battered notebook, looked for patterns and gradually turned each disaster into a lesson she could act on the following week.
Taking on a reliable friend made a far bigger difference than she had expected. With an extra pair of hands she could set up on time, keep the table well stocked and still find a spare moment to chat to the people queuing at the stall. Together they streamlined the Saturday routine, cut back on the waste that had been quietly eating into her small profits, and set out clear roles so that nothing important fell through the cracks. Slowly but surely, the chaos of those early weeks gave way to something that ran almost like clockwork.
Money was the biggest headache. To keep costs down, Mira refused to cut corners on quality, even when it would have been far easier to do so. She pointed out to her friend that customers can always tell when a cake has been rushed. Slowly, word got around, and regulars began to turn up every Saturday before the market even opened.
Keeping track of her money was a constant juggling act. Flour, sugar, boxes, bus fares — the costs added up alarmingly quickly, and for a long stretch every spare coin went straight back into the stall. There were weeks when she barely broke even, and the temptation to switch to cheaper ingredients was always lurking in the background. Mira held firm. She had watched other stalls chase quick savings and pay for it later on, when word got around that their cakes were not what they used to be and the regulars drifted away, and she was determined not to fall into the same trap.
Word of mouth turned out to be worth far more than any poster she could have made. A single happy customer would mention the stall to a neighbour, who would then drop by out of curiosity and leave with a warm box of fresh cupcakes under one arm. Before long a loyal crowd had built up, and the queue on a Saturday morning sometimes stretched right across the market square. Mira made a point of learning her regulars' names and remembering their usual orders, a small personal touch that kept them coming back and set her apart from the shop-bought cakes on the other stalls.
Of course, running a stall means putting up with long hours and constant problems to sort out. There are days when nothing goes to plan and you feel like giving in. Even so, Mira insists that the fun makes up for the stress, and she looks forward to opening a second stall at the spring fair next year.
The day-to-day reality was rarely glamorous. She was often up long before her friends on a Saturday, mixing and icing while the rest of the town slept soundly, and she rarely finished tidying up before the last tray had been scrubbed clean. Free weekends were few and far between, and there were stretches when she genuinely wondered whether all the effort was really worth it. Yet the sight of a table full of happy customers, and the quiet pride of having built something up from scratch, was usually enough to carry her through the rough patches. Plans for the second stall were already taking shape, and she talked about them with the same steady confidence that had brought her this far.
If there is one thread running right through her story, it is sheer resilience. Every plan hits rough water sooner or later; what really matters is whether you sink or swim when it finally does. Mira freely admits that she made her fair share of mistakes, from baking far too much stock to trusting the wrong helper, but she has always treated each blunder as a lesson rather than a defeat. That willingness to pick herself up, dust herself off and try again is, in her own view, the single quality that separates the handful of people who succeed from the many who quietly give up along the way.
Her advice to anyone starting out is refreshingly simple. Do not sit around waiting for the perfect moment; it will never come along. Get the ball rolling, learn from your mistakes, and never lose sight of why you began. All in all, she says, the risk was well worth taking.
Choose the correct answer.
Are these sentences true or false, according to the text?
Complete each sentence with ONE word from the text — the missing part of a phrasal verb or idiom.
Write your answer in your own words. These questions are not marked automatically.
1. According to the text, why do most new plans fail to get off the ground?
2. How did Mira react when everything went wrong at the start?
3. Do you agree with Mira's advice to "get the ball rolling" rather than wait? Why or why not?
Find these phrasal verbs and idioms in the text — each one appears at least once: come up with, get off the ground, let down, break down, throw in the towel, cut corners, put up with, get the ball rolling. Note their meaning, then check.
Aimee talks to Paul about his first few weeks at a new job and how he found his feet.
You will hear a conversation: Aimee asks Paul about his first weeks at a new job — how he settled in, the problems he ran into, and how his team backs him up. Listen for the phrasal verbs he uses. You will listen TWICE. First listen: answer questions 1-5. Second listen: answer questions 6-10. (Kaydı İKİ kez dinleyeceksin: ilk dinlemede 1-5, ikinci dinlemede 6-10.)
Write and submit an informal message packed with natural phrasal verbs; your teacher will review it.
Phrasal verbs make your writing sound natural and friendly — perfect for an informal message to a friend or classmate. In a formal report you would swap many of them for a single-word verb. For this task you want the informal, phrasal versions.
| Formal (single word) | Informal (phrasal verb) | Example |
|---|---|---|
| postpone | put off | We had to put off the trip. |
| cancel | call off | They called off the meeting. |
| tolerate | put up with | I can't put up with the delays. |
| devise / produce | come up with | She came up with a great plan. |
| resolve | sort out | We soon sorted it out. |
| discover | find out | I found out what went wrong. |
See the difference — the same news, written two ways:
| Too formal for a friend ✗ | Natural, informal English ✓ |
|---|---|
| I wish to inform you that the event was cancelled. We subsequently postponed it and eventually resolved the difficulties. | Just so you know, we called off the event. We put it off for a week and, in the end, we sorted everything out. |
A friendly update message has three parts. The skeleton stays the same — you change the content, not the structure:
| Part | What to write | Example |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Opening | Greet the reader and say why you are writing. | Hi Sam, I just wanted to fill you in on how the project is going. |
| 2. Body | Tell the story with phrasal verbs: what came up, what went wrong, how you dealt with it. | We ran into a few problems and nearly threw in the towel, but we came up with a plan and sorted it out. |
| 3. Closing | End warmly, using a phrasal verb or idiom. | Looking forward to catching up soon — let's get the ball rolling next week! |
Write an informal message or email to a friend or classmate, telling them about a recent plan, project or problem you dealt with — for example: organising a trip, starting something new, or fixing a problem at school. Tell the story naturally, using plenty of phrasal verbs.
Değerlendirme öğretmenin tarafından yapılacak. (Your teacher will evaluate your writing.)
Mixed questions from the whole unit, then check what you can do.
14 questions: grammar + vocabulary + reading + listening. Each question is marked instantly.
Tick what you can do now. Honest answers help your teacher.
İşaretlemediğin madde varsa ilgili bölüme dönüp tekrar çalış — soldaki menüden her bölüme geri dönebilirsin.
Oturum kontrol ediliyor...