Study & Education — Part 3
The Celpip Plus team
Written and reviewed against the official CELPIP scoring criteria
What you'll learn: multi-word verbs students actually use for everyday academic actions — falling behind, catching up, cramming, and figuring things out — that sound far more natural than their single-word equivalents.
Why phrasal verbs fit student life so well
Academic life produces a specific set of recurring situations — missing class, scrambling before an exam, working through confusing material — and English has developed phrasal verbs specifically for describing them. "I fell behind in class" is what a native speaker says; "I became delayed in class" is not, even though it's grammatically parseable. This lesson supplies the natural forms.
Grouping by academic moment
The phrasal verbs below cluster around three common student moments: falling behind and catching up, working through material, and finishing up a course. Learning them in these small clusters, rather than as one long list, mirrors how they actually get used together in a single conversation or story.
Word bank: study phrasal verbs
| Collocation | Meaning | Example sentence |
|---|---|---|
| fall behind (in class) | fail to keep pace with coursework | I fell behind in class after missing a week due to illness. |
| catch up on (readings) | finish work that has accumulated | She spent the weekend catching up on her readings. |
| cram for (an exam) | study intensively in a short period before a test | He crammed for the final the night before. |
| figure out (a problem) | work out a solution through effort | It took me an hour to figure out that math problem. |
| hand in (an assignment) | submit completed work to an instructor | Please hand in your essays by Friday afternoon. |
| look into (a topic) | research or investigate something further | I want to look into scholarship options before deciding. |
| drop out (of a course) | leave a course before finishing it | He dropped out of the class after the first month. |
| sign up for (a class) | register or enroll for a course or activity | We signed up for the same elective this term. |
| brush up on (a subject) | review and refresh existing knowledge | I need to brush up on my grammar before the exam. |
| work through (material) | study or process content step by step | We worked through the textbook chapter by chapter. |
| put in (effort/hours) | invest time or energy into something | She put in extra hours preparing for the presentation. |
| wrap up (a course) | finish or conclude something | We wrapped up the semester with a group project. |
Worked example — Speaking Task 2 (personal experience)
Prompt: Describe a time you struggled with your studies and how you managed it.
"During my second year, I fell behind in class after taking on too many extracurricular activities. At one point I had to cram for a midterm the night before, which obviously wasn't ideal. I realized I needed to figure out a better system, so I started using weekends specifically to catch up on readings I'd missed. I also decided to brush up on some basic concepts I'd forgotten, rather than assuming I already knew them. It took real effort — I had to put in extra hours every week — but by the time we wrapped up the semester, I'd not only recovered but actually improved my grade."
Common mistakes
- "Fall down in class" instead of fall behind in class — a literal-translation error; "fall down" means to physically drop, not to lag academically.
- "Give in an assignment" instead of hand in an assignment — a common blend of "hand in" and "give"; only "hand in" (or "submit") is correct here.
- "Look up a topic" used interchangeably with look into a topic — "look up" means checking a quick fact (look up a word), while look into means researching more deeply; the two aren't fully interchangeable.
- "Sign in for a class" instead of sign up for a class — "sign in" means logging into an account or system, not registering for a course.
Recap
Phrasal verbs are the natural vocabulary for the everyday ups and downs of student life, from falling behind to catching up to wrapping up a course, and they cluster naturally around a handful of common academic moments. Pick a real study struggle from your own experience and narrate it in three sentences using at least three phrasal verbs from the table, paying attention to keeping each particle correctly attached.