Phrasal Verbs Questions for the ESL Classroom

Phrasal verbs are two or more words that together act as a completely new word, with a meaning separate from the original words.

For example, work out means to “exercise” very different from the definitions of work and out alone.

Examples of phrasal verbs are:

ask somebody outinvite on a date
back somebody upsupport
break downstop functioning (vehicle, machine)

It’s impossible for an English speaker in the United States to go a day without using one of those words so check these questions with the most common phrasal verbs to assess your learners or have a nice conversation with your friends


Phrasal Verbs Questions

These are examples of phrasal verbs questions with all kinds of tenses in English divided into sets of 10

This is the first set of phrasal verbs questions

  • Do you like to work out?
  • Do you get along with all your brothers and sisters?
  • What time do you usually get up?
  • How often do you get together with your friends?
  • Do you take care of your little family members?
  • Do you ever stay up late?
  • How often do you hang out with your friends?
  • How do you cheer up your friends when they are sad?
  • Do you turn off your phone when you go to bed?
  • What do you do when you hang out with friends?

This is the second set of phrasal verbs questions

  • Have you ever dropped out of high school or university?
  • Have you ever run into a celebrity?
  • Have you ever worked out at 3:00 AM?
  • Have you ever thrown up inside a car?
  • Has anyone ever tried to break into your house?
  • Have you ever called off a very important meeting?
  • Have you ever chickened out of something?
  • What was the stupidest thing anyone has ever talked you into?
  • Have you run into old school friends recently?
  • Have you ever found out something surprising about a coworker?

This is the third set of phrasal verbs questions

  • How often do you back up important files from your computer?
  • What did you do the last time your car broke down?
  • Have you ever brought up a topic that caused a huge argument?
  • Have you ever cheated on your boyfriend or girlfriend?
  • Has your boyfriend or girlfriend cheated on you?
  • Have you ever turned down a job offer or a promotion? 
  •  What type of things do you put off doing? 
  • Who do you look up to at work? 
  • Have you fallen for someone at school or work?
  • What are some things that you got away with?

Phrasal Verbs Video

This is a good video to learn more about Phrasal verbs from the Keep Smiling English YouTube channel

More Conversation Questions

I hope you have found all the phrasal verbs questions that you were looking for

These are other ESL conversation questions that you might find useful for your language classes

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Manuel Campos, English Professor

Manuel Campos

I am Jose Manuel, English professor and creator of EnglishPost.org, a blog whose mission is to share lessons for those who want to learn and improve their English