Using English is particularly useful for its phrasal verb dictionary, idioms dictionary and ask a teacher forum.  They have quizzes about phrasal verbs and if you have any questions they have special forums for phrasal verbs and idioms.  If you’ve heard an expression in a film or read something in a book that you just can’t understand, ask the helpful people at Using English.  I post there sometimes, too!

It may not always be necessary to use phrasal verbs, but they are a big part of using English naturally and fluently.  So how do you practice them?  First we need to figure out what exactly is difficult to remember about them and then find a way to isolate that and drill it in a way that we can remember.  Read my blog post about remembering phrasal verbs if you haven’t already.  Once you have examples that you want to practice, Anki is...

Once you have looked up the meaning of a phrasal verb, you will usually remember it when you see it again.  For example, to put up with something means to tolerate it.  You might read this and look it up in the dictionary and the next time you see it, you’ll remember what it means from the context.  But the difficult part is remembering all of the parts when you want to use it. The best thing to do is to take an example sentence from Using...

Have you ever looked up a word in the dictionary and then had to look up three or four more words in order to understand the definition?  This is why these publishers have written learners’ dictionaries.  • Macmillan • Cambridge • Oxford • Longman • All of the definitions are carefully written using clear, simple language so they can be easily understood by people whose first language isn’t English.  Each dictionary has a unique style with...