Verbs followed by preposition

There are verbs which are followed by prepositions like in Spanish but sometimes it's different:

• I work with my computer      but      I listen to the news every morning

These prepositions may be dependant (you usually find them with that verb) or not as you could see in the previous examples. To see more details about this point you can go to this link. But if you want to see the main differnces between prepositional and phasal verbs, these are:

• I gave up smoking - I gave it up        I looked after the children - I looked after them

In the first example you use an adverb, the meaning is really different to just GIVE and the pronoun must be between the verb and the particle; in the other example the meaning is very similar (you look after the children to check they are OK) and you can't separate the particle from the verb. If you need more information, go to this link.

Most of these prepositions are fixed and there are no clear reasons for using one or another so the best way is to learn them by heart. You should practise a lot with exercise to learn them. Here you are some links to do exercises:

• exercise 1        exercise 2 (a long explanation and a list with exercises at the end)
• exercise 3        exercise 4         exercise 5        exercise 6        exercise 7

Apart from doing exercises you should practise these forms orally, that is, say aloud 2 or 3 examples of each of the verbs with preposition; for example, THINK ABOUT: Have you thought about what I told you yesterday? I'm thinking about going on holiday to Mallorca.

To finish with, here you are the links to practise how to write pargraphs; click here and then here