Phrasal Verbs Game

Updated Feb 2023 - let me know if there are any problems.

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About

This is a mini game for studying English phrasal verbs. The target audience is learners of English as a second language.

A phrasal verb is a pair of words that go together and act as a verb. For example, "give up" is a phrasal verb meaning to quit. Phrasal verbs are typically made of a verb + preposition. For example, "take on", meaning to be responsible for something, is made up of the verb "take" and the preposition "on". Often the meaning of a phrasal verb can vary from the meaning of the component parts. For example, "throw up" meaning to vomit would be quite hard to infer just from the 2 parts. Because of the subtle meanings, phrasal verbs can be a difficult area for language learners.

The aim of this game is to help students learn and practice a set of phrasal verbs in an easy and engaging way. Hopefully, students can understand the meaning from the image and sentence, then from repeatedly matching the phrasal to this context they can associate the phrasal verb with the meaning, and then subsequently transfer this to everyday usage. In this respect, the game is quite behaviourist in its approach - repeatedly pairing the words and meaning to strengthen the association. Although, as with most content like this, the responsibility is really on the learner to make best use of this as a resource. Some learners may even feel they get most out of just clicking though the images on the review screen.

The game has 48 phrasal verbs which were chosen according to how easy they are to represent visually. The phrasals used here are not the most common phrasals or the easiest, they are just the ones that are more visual. This is a list of those used:

Round 1

• fall down
• wake up
• take off
• plug in
• try on
• run out
• do up
• sit down

Round 2

• put out
• take out
• break up
• turn over
• hand in
• lie down
• hold on
• hang out

Round 3

• break down
• hand out
• get on
• fill out
• tear up
• turn into
• throw away
• turn down

Round 4

• hang up
• pick up
• put away
• turn on
• look after
• fill up
• put on
• read out

Round 5

• hold out
• think about
• take off
• stand up
• turn off
• get up
• take care
• tell off

Round 6

• get on
• work out
• fall over
• put up
• look at
• dress up
• take out
• cut down

The game has 3 parts. In the first part, you just click on the phrasal verb that matches the image. This part covers all the phrasals used in the game and it repeats any items that mistakes are made on. In the second part, you click on the image to match the text. The third part presents a larger image and you have to make a phrase or sentence.

This game is made in Javascript using the Pixi.js library. If you have any comments, questions or feedback, then please use the form below to post a message.