ESL phrasal verbs and other idiomatic expressions can be especially troublesome and confusing for non-native English learners. What makes these colloquialisms so difficult to learn is that the meanings are often counter-intuitive. For example, although students may know the meaning of the words “make” and “up” separately, when confronted with the phrasal verb “make up”, they will likely be confused at the meaning. To make matters worse, this phrasal verb can have multiple meanings, such as “make up a class” or “make up a story”. In fact, many phrasal verbs have multiple meanings depending on the context, and some can also function as different parts of speech. This is true of “make up”, which can also function as a noun, as in “The girl put on makeup”. There is no secret to teaching or learning these phrasal verbs. The best method is to simply practice, drill, and have many examples of these phrases in context.
