 Phrasal verbs in English from espressoenglish.net Phrasal verbs are verbs with two or three words. They consist of a main verb plus a particle. The particle could be a preposition or an adverb. Here are some examples of phrasal verbs. I wake up at 7.30 every day. Please turn off the TV. My brother and I don't get along. We fight all the time. She came up with a good idea. Wake up, turn off, get along, and come up with are all examples of phrasal verbs. We use them a lot in spoken English. But phrasal verbs are difficult because you often can't understand the meaning of each expression from the words themselves. Also, many phrasal verbs are very similar. Like take up, take on, take in, take over, etc. And a number of phrasal verbs have multiple meanings. In this lesson, you're going to learn different types of phrasal verbs and how each one functions in an English sentence. Phrasal verbs can be transitive or intransitive. And transitive phrasal verbs can be separable or inseparable. I'll explain what each of these categories means and give you some examples. Intransitive phrasal verbs have no direct object. A direct object is acted upon by the verb. Here's an example. I hung up the jacket. Hang up is a transitive phrasal verb because it has a direct object, the jacket. What's the object that I performed the action of hanging up on? The jacket. I hung up the jacket. But an intransitive phrasal verb has no direct object. For example, I get up at six o'clock. Get up is an action that stands by itself. It has no object. Here's some more examples of intransitive phrasal verbs. I woke up at 10.30 a.m. You can come over to my house after school. He's going back to Russia next month. Click on the link in the video for 15 more examples of intransitive phrasal verbs. Now let's look at transitive phrasal verbs. Transitive phrasal verbs have a direct object. Here are some examples of transitive phrasal verbs. The direct object is in blue. You need to fill out this form to register for the course. Fill out means complete and this form is the direct object. I'm going to cut down on fast food this year. Cut down on means reduce and the direct object is fast food. Check out that website. It's really great. Check out is another way to say look at and the direct object is that website. Now there are two types of transitive phrasal verbs. They can be separable or inseparable. Separable means you can separate the two words of the phrasal verb and put the direct object in the middle. And for inseparable phrasal verbs you can't do this. Here are some examples. Turn off is a separable phrasal verb. You could say please turn off the TV or please turn the TV off. Both ways are correct. But look after is an inseparable phrasal verb. You can say I'll look after your dog while you're on vacation. But don't say I'll look your dog after while you're on vacation. That's not correct. Look after is inseparable. We can't separate look and after. We can't put the direct object in the middle. There's an important detail about the word order for separable phrasal verbs. When the direct object is the specific name of a thing or person it can be located either after the phrasal verb or in the middle. For example I threw away the old pizza and I threw the old pizza away. Both are correct. However when the direct object is a pronoun like me you him her us them and it then it must go in the middle. So you can say I threw it away. But don't say I threw away it. That's incorrect. Again when we specifically say the object we can put the object at the end of the phrasal verb or in the middle. I threw away the old pizza or I threw the old pizza away. But when we use a pronoun it then the pronoun must go in the middle. I threw it away. Here's an example with the person. You can say I picked up my son from school or I picked my son up from school. Both are correct. But when we use a pronoun him then we must say I picked him up. Don't say I picked up him. It's not correct. So how do you know if a phrasal verb is transitive or intransitive and separable or inseparable? Unfortunately there's no rule for looking at a phrasal verb and knowing what type it is. The best way is just to study each phrasal verb in context with lots of examples. You can do that inside my phrasal verbs in conversation course. This course will help you learn 500 common phrasal verbs and how they are used in spoken English.