Mastering Phrasal Verbs with Lindsay Dow Review

To be honest, before taking Lindsay’s course, I had no clue what phrasal verbs were. I don’t remember learning them in school and I am certain that I’ve never come across them being referenced when learning another language. When one says that native speakers don’t always make the best teachers, I can relate. I’d have a hard time explaining English grammar to a student.

Like this hilarious comic from Itchy Feet, not all native speakers make good teachers.

Thankfully, there are talented educators out there like Lindsay Dow, who not only have the knowledge needed to explain just what things like phrasal verbs are, but also has the ability to do it in an engaging and fun way.

But before I get into my review of Lindsay’s Mastering English Phrasal Verbs course, I want to say something else that I’ve noticed about Lindsay. And that’s that she does an excellent job with consistent branding. When you visit her site, the colors, the fonts, and her writing/teaching voice are consistent across the board, and the same can be said for her course. Even down to the color of Lindsay’s shirt!

Now to the course itself.

What the “Mastering English Phrasal Verbs Through Story” Course Includes

The course includes a large collection of videos, quizzes, video transcriptions, and quite a bit of additional content. Mastering English Phrasal Verbs Through Story is setup on Teachable so it has a wonderfully clean interface that is easy to navigate. The course also provides learners with a progress bar so they can keep track of where they’re at in the course.

In addition to the video course content and transcriptions, Lindsay’s Phrasal Verbs course also includes a workbook, lists and explanations of the phrasal verbs, downloadable mp3s of each of the stories, access to the Facebook group, links to live webinars hosted by Lindsay regarding phrasal verbs, and a copy of Lindsay’s eBook “Finding Time in Your Life for Language Learning”.

A Review of “Mastering English Phrasal Verbs Through Story” with Lindsay Dow

When I first started the course, I must admit I was a little unsure. I’m a native English speaker, do I really need to take a course on the English language? But as I said before, I didn’t really know what phrasal verbs are, so it made sense to work on not only improving my target languages, but my native languages as well. Even as a native English speaker, I don’t speak the language perfectly (probably never will), but that doesn’t stop me from trying to get better at it. So I went ahead with the course anyway.

The course starts with an introduction to phrasal verbs and then the remaining units use stories to provide examples of the verbs and how to use them. The explanations are really clear and at the end of the course, you really understand just how to use them.

I love that the terms are taught in the context of a story, or a series of short stories. It keeps the course quite engaging and provides a context to the new grammar and vocabulary.

The only thing that I would suggest as far as the course content would be that the quizzes were more focused on the meanings of the phrasal verbs rather than on overall comprehension of the story. There are some questions that encourage you to demonstrate your understanding of the verbs, but there are others that ask you about certain details of the story and I think the quizzes would better serve learners if the quizzes focused more on the phrasal verbs themselves.

Conclusion

Overall, I really enjoyed working through Lindsay’s Mastering English Phrasal Verbs Through Story course. I thought the stories were entertaining and I learnt quite a bit about phrasal verbs – even as a native English speaker. If you’re an intermediate or even advanced English speaker, this is a really great course and I highly recommend that you consider enrolling. It will teach you quite a few phrases that native speakers use in day-to-day conversation and can serve as a great way to help boost both your overall comprehension and speaking.

What about you? Is there anything that you’d like to learn more about in your native language? If so, I’d love to hear about what you’d like to learn in the comments!