Phrasal verbs are some of the trickiest things for English learners.

What’s the difference between “put up” and “put across”, “set up” and “set down”?

They are also (to most people) really boring to learn. Who wants to read a book of 1,000 phrasal verbs? 

Not me, certainly.

That’s why I was super excited to launch our first “Phrasal Verb Challenge”. It lasted for 21 days, set out (=aimed) to help people learn phrasal verbs in a more interesting way.

Here’s how it worked.

We created 21 different mini stories, based on subjects in English Learning for Curious Minds. This included everything from The Life of Gladiators to The Story of Red Bull, Harry Houdini to Bonnie & Clyde.

Each mini story contained 10 different phrasal verbs.

Every day, for 21 days, I posted a short video with a voice actor* reading out this mini story.

Then, I made a short video lesson where I went through each phrasal verb. Here’s an example of one about Harry Houdini.

‍

And best of all, our in-house AI-powered English tutor, Da Vinci, gave everyone feedback and corrections on every task that was submitted.

It was a lot of fun, and it was amazing to see how creative everyone got.

In the numbers:

• 674 tasks completed
• 11,778 words written
• 195 phrasal verbs learned
• 139,278 words of corrections written by Da Vinci
• 0 minutes of rest by Da Vinci

Congratulations to everyone who took part, and you are all in need of a well-deserved rest!

*the voices were actually created by the most advanced text-to-voice AI-models available.