Phrasal Verbs at B2: Where the Object Goes, and 40 Worth Knowing
Phrasal verbs are usually taught as vocabulary, and at B2 they stop behaving like vocabulary. Where the object goes is a grammatical question with a real answer, and getting it wrong is one of the few remaining errors that a listener actually notices.
A phrasal verb is a verb plus a particle that work as one unit, usually with a meaning you could not have guessed from the parts. Give up does not mean give. Come across does not mean come. That much is normally covered by A2, and it is the easy half.
The half that decides whether you sound advanced is where the object goes, because English gives you a choice with some phrasal verbs, no choice with others, and no choice at all once a pronoun is involved. The wider case for learning language in units rather than single words is in why fluent English is built from chunks.
Three types, and only one of them gives you a choice
Every phrasal verb belongs to one of three groups, and the group is a property of the verb that you have to learn along with the meaning.
| Type | Behaviour | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Intransitive | No object at all, so nothing can separate | The car broke down. Sit down. |
| Transitive, separable | The object may go in the middle or after the particle | Turn the light off, or turn off the light. |
| Transitive, inseparable | The object always follows the particle | I look after the kids, never look the kids after. |
The pronoun rule, which has no exceptions
With a separable phrasal verb, a pronoun object must go in the middle. Not may, must. Turn it on, not turn on it. Throw them away, not throw away them. Pick her up, not pick up her.
This is worth learning as a reflex rather than a rule, because it comes up constantly in speech and it is the version listeners notice. Once the thing being talked about has already been mentioned, everyone switches to a pronoun, which means the middle position is where most real conversation puts the object.
The reason is rhythm rather than logic. English puts stress on new information, and a pronoun is by definition old information, so it cannot carry the end of the phrase. Saying turn on it forces a stress onto a word that has nothing to say.
- Here is the form. Fill it in, not fill in it.
- The music is loud. Turn it down, not turn down it.
- I found your keys. I will bring them back, not bring back them.
- She is at the station. I will pick her up, not pick up her.
Three-part phrasal verbs are always inseparable
A smaller group takes a verb, an adverb and a preposition together, and nothing ever goes in the middle. I look forward to your reply. We ran out of milk. She puts up with a lot. He gets on with everyone.
These are worth flagging separately because they look like they should separate and they never do. There is no version of it where you say look your reply forward to. Once you know a phrasal verb has three parts, the question of where the object goes is already answered.
Forty that earn their place at B2
This is not a complete list and it is not meant to be. These are the ones that appear constantly in ordinary conversation, grouped so that related meanings sit together. The separable ones are marked, because that is the piece you cannot look up in the middle of a sentence.
| Area | Phrasal verbs | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Plans and arrangements | put off (sep), call off (sep), set up (sep), bring forward (sep) | The meeting was put off until Thursday. |
| go ahead, fall through, come up | The deal fell through at the last minute. | |
| Work and problems | deal with, sort out (sep), work out (sep), look into | I will look into it this afternoon. |
| come up with (3-part), get round to (3-part), carry out (sep) | She came up with a better approach. | |
| Discovery | find out (sep), come across, turn up, point out (sep) | I came across an old photo of the two of them. |
| People | get on with (3-part), put up with (3-part), fall out, look up to (3-part) | He gets on with everyone in the office. |
| let down (sep), take after, bring up (sep) | I did not want to let them down. | |
| Change and progress | take up (sep), give up (sep), carry on, keep up with (3-part) | She took up running last winter. |
| cut down on (3-part), catch up, end up | We ended up staying an extra night. | |
| Movement and travel | set off, drop off (sep), pick up (sep), check in | We set off before it got light. |
| Money and quantity | go up, go down, run out of (3-part), pay off (sep) | Prices went up again in the spring. |
| Everyday objects | turn on and off (sep), throw away (sep), fill in (sep), put away (sep) | Fill it in and send it back. |
The register trap
Phrasal verbs are the informal option, and the single-word equivalent is the formal one. Put off and postpone mean the same thing and belong in different rooms. Find out and ascertain, look into and investigate, go up and increase, sort out and resolve.
Learners who build vocabulary mainly from reading tend to have the formal half and use it everywhere, which is what makes advanced spoken English sound stiff. The correction is not to abandon the formal words; it is to have both and to notice which one the situation is asking for. In a meeting, put off. In the minutes of that meeting, postpone.
How to learn them without a list
Learning phrasal verbs by particle is the traditional approach and it works badly, because up appears in give up, take up, look up, make up and turn up with no shared meaning worth extracting. Learning them by topic works better, because that is how they arrive in real conversations.
What matters most is that you store the type along with the meaning. A phrasal verb you know the meaning of but not the shape of is a phrasal verb you will avoid using, which is the quiet failure mode here: learners understand hundreds and produce a dozen, because producing one means committing to where the object goes. That gap is the same one described in how to remember grammar rules.
- Store the whole sentence, with the object in it, so the shape comes along with the meaning.
- Mark whether it separates. That single letter is what lets you use it rather than only recognise it.
- Learn them in topic groups, not by particle.
- Practise the pronoun version out loud. Turn it off is the version you will actually need.
Where MindDory fits
A phrasal verb needs three things stored together: the meaning, the shape, and a sentence you would say. That is more than a word and less than a rule, and it is exactly the size of item that survives with spaced review and disappears without it. MindDory keeps the sentence you met it in and brings the item back when it is closest to slipping rather than when you last added it.
If you want to see where you stand first, the free B2 English vocabulary list is a better diagnostic than a quiz: the entries you recognise but could not produce in a sentence are the work.