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Compounds

In contrast to collocations compounds are units of meaning. They are formed with two or more words and they are nouns.

• 
  car park (n)
  
• 
  teapot (n)
  
• 
  post office (n)
  

Their meaning of compounds can often be guessed by knowing the meaning of each separate word.

Phrasal Verbs

Although ‘phrasal verbs’ are formed from two or three words. Their distinctive feature is that they have a particular meaning. Phrasal verbs are words that consist of a verb and a participle. Participles can be prepositions or adverbs like: at, for, in, of, in , (a)round, e.g.

• 
  look at
  
• 
  move up
  
• 
  miss out
  
• 
  keep away
  

Some of the phrasal verbs form one word when they are used as a noun:

• 
  crack down (v)
  
• 
  crackdown(n)
  

• 
  make up (v)
  
• 
  make-up (n)
  

Phrasal verbs don’t have to stand directly next to each other. Therefore it’s good to know the grammar patterns of phrasal verbs. Which means the subject [sb] or object [sth] related to the phrasal verb can stand between or at the end of the phrasal verb.

• 
  I’ll look you up in the part next Friday. [to visit sb]
  
• 
  Look the word up in the dictionary. [search for sth]
  
• 
  Things are looking up. [things improve]
  
• 
  Look after Joe/the plant. [care for sb/sth]
  

Idioms

In conjunction with collocations and compounds idioms are word groups with a fixed word order and a specific meaning. The meaning of an idiom cannot be guessed by knowing the meaning of the individual words. Learning Idioms might be one of the most difficult tasks to master a foreign language.

Learning

You see from the examples that it’s necessary to learn word group patterns by heart. Here you’ll find some exercises to learn the described word groups. Links marked with the asterisk (*) need a registration and might cost money after a trial period.