Please, what does it mean : phrasal verbs. Thank you very much for your answer.

A phrasal verb is a combination of a verb + preposition (one or more words), such as

He had to LOOK UP the meaning of 'phrasal verb'.
We postponed our meeting, but we could not PUT IT OFF indefinitely.
You can CHECK FOR more examples on Google.

Thank you Sanne. Yes English is full of phrasal verbs, verb and preposition as Sanne said. They are often very useful.

Get on, get off, get by, get in,
take on, take off,
put on, put off, put through
give in, give up, give over,
hand in, hand off,

...

Phrasal verbs are words that have two or three parts, for example "carry on", which means "continue".
Ex: I'm tired, but I've got to carry on.
"carry on" does not mean "carry", as in "I am carrying a box". The meaning is unconnected. You can't understand the meaning of "carry on" by looking at "carry" or "on". "Carry on" has its own meaning.

Not every verb + preposition is a phrasal verb. It is only a phrasal verb if the phrasal verb "carry on" has a different meaning than the verb "carry".

For example:
"Look up there!" "Look up" is not a phrasal verb. The meaning of "look" has not changed. The speaker wants you to look at something.
"Let's look up this word." "Look up" is a phrasal verb. The speaker wants to check the meaning of a word in a dictionary.

Phrasal verbs have a different stress pattern. In a phrasal verb, for example "look up", the stress is on "up". "look UP". Normally, prepositions have very weak stress in English. This is one difference between a phrasal verb and a normal verb + preposition.

@ Bortrun What a great explanation!

@SanneT

Thanks so much :-)

This is a pretty confusing area for learners. Phrasal verbs are used a great deal in speaking, but less so in writing, so people who learn mostly from textbooks tend to have a poor knowledge of phrasal verbs.

In Japan, students are generally taught that phrasal verbs are idioms, which is kind of unfortunate.

Phrasal verbs should probably be learned as distinct vocabulary items, not as carry + on = ?, carry + off = ?, carry + over = ?, etc. This sort of thing just gets confusing for learners.

...

Hi Agisson
I see you probably now have an understanding of what phrasal verbs are from the other LingQers' comments. But how should you study them?

I know of two methods which both work quite well. The first is grouping phrasal verbs by their particles (preposition/adverb). So, all phrasal verbs with for example "on" in them would be in one group. e.g. get on, take on, carry on. Each particle has a few meanings and you can use this to work out the meaning of the phrasal verb in any sentence. And so in this way you understand the usage of the phasal verbs and can decipher new ones you come across.

The second method is perhaps easier for some and that is grouping phrasal verbs by topic. e.g. Phrasal verbs to do with dating: pick up, ask out, break up, make out, etc. This method can be good because you might be better able to remember phrasal verbs in real life that relate to the topics you have studied.

The best thing to do is to keep a phrasal verb diary and to write down any new ones you come across and put them into groups (either by preposition or by topic) and then you can go over them whenever you have time.

I seem to remember a website - phrasalverbdemon.com (I think) and they have things like news articles and songs which have been written out and that you can listen to, and there are phrasal verbs in each song/article on the site. This is a fun way to learn new ones. There is also a phrasal verb dictionary on that site.

All the best with the phrasal verbs.

Best regards
Keshia