Travel & Transportation — Part 3
The Celpip Plus team
Written and reviewed against the official CELPIP scoring criteria
What you'll learn: the phrasal verbs English speakers rely on to narrate a trip in order — checking in, setting off, pulling over — so your storytelling sounds sequential and natural instead of stiff.
Why phrasal verbs matter for travel narratives
Speaking Task 1 and Writing Task 1 both frequently ask you to describe a sequence of travel events. Learners who avoid phrasal verbs tend to fall back on single-word substitutes that sound formal or slightly off — "we departed" instead of "we set off," or "the plane was postponed" instead of "the flight was held up." Native speakers move fluidly between phrasal and single-word verbs, and CELPIP raters are listening for that range. The phrasal verbs below are the ones that appear most often in travel contexts specifically.
A note on separability
Some of these verbs allow an object between the verb and particle (check my bags in), while others don't (set off, pull over). Where a verb is separable, both word orders are shown in the example so you can hear the natural rhythm of each.
Travel phrasal verbs
| Collocation | Meaning | Example sentence |
|---|---|---|
| check in | register for a flight/hotel | We checked in two hours before the flight. |
| set off | begin a journey | We set off for the airport at 5 a.m. |
| pull over | stop a vehicle at the side of the road | The driver pulled over to check the map. |
| take off | (of a plane) leave the ground | The plane took off twenty minutes late. |
| touch down | (of a plane) land | We touched down in Calgary right on schedule. |
| hold up | delay something | Heavy fog held up our flight for two hours. |
| drop someone off | leave a passenger at a location | My brother dropped me off at the terminal. |
| pick someone up | collect a passenger from a location | She picked me up from the station at noon. |
| get held up | be delayed unexpectedly | We got held up at security for almost an hour. |
| head out | start moving toward a destination | Let's head out early to avoid the crowds. |
| break down | (of a vehicle) stop working | Our rental car broke down halfway through the trip. |
| set out | begin a trip or expedition | The hikers set out at sunrise for the summit. |
Worked example — CELPIP Speaking Task 2
Prompt: Describe an unexpected event during a trip.
"Last winter, my family and I set off on a road trip to Banff. We headed out early to beat the traffic, but about an hour in, our car broke down on the highway. We had to pull over and wait for roadside assistance, which held up our whole schedule. A tow truck eventually picked us up and dropped us off at a garage in the nearest town. By the time we got a replacement car and set out again, we had lost almost four hours. We still made it to the hotel and checked in before midnight, but it turned an easy drive into a real adventure."
Common mistakes
- Saying "take place" instead of take off when describing a plane leaving the ground.
- Using "arrive down" instead of the correct phrasal verb touch down.
- Writing "held on" when the intended meaning is held up (delayed).
- Forgetting that drop off and pick up are separable — "drop off me" is incorrect; it must be "drop me off."
- Confusing set off (begin a journey) with "set up," which means to arrange or establish something unrelated to travel.
Recap
These twelve phrasal verbs — check in, set off, pull over, take off, touch down, hold up, drop off, pick up, get held up, head out, break down, and set out — give you the narrative backbone for any travel story on the CELPIP test. Part 4 shifts to the formal connectors and written phrases you'll need for travel-related Writing tasks.