88%

Help Maria describe her healthy eating journey by dragging the correct words to complete each sentence.

Last month I decided to follow a balanced diet.

"Follow a diet" is the standard collocation for adhering to a specific eating plan.

Now I always have a nutritious breakfast.

"Have breakfast" is the most common and natural collocation for eating the morning meal.

And try to cut down on sugar throughout the day.

"Cut down on" is the perfect phrasal verb collocation meaning to reduce consumption of something.

Easy B2 | Upper Intermediate Verb Phrasal verb Collocations Vocabulary for B2/Upper Intermediate

To ChallengesPrevious Next

Verb

walk → walk / walks / walked / walked / walking (5 forms, regular)
go → go / goes / went / gone / going (5 forms, irregular)
be → am/is/are/was/were/be/being/been (8 forms)
can → can / could (modal: only 2 forms, no -s, no -ing)

A verb is the one word class every English sentence requires. Carries tense (when), aspect (duration), mood (attitude), and voice (active/passive). Regular verbs add -ed; ~200 irregular verbs have unpredictable past forms.

Key insight: fix your verbs and most grammar problems disappear. Wrong tense, wrong agreement, wrong form — verb errors account for the majority of grammatical mistakes.

Phrasal verb

give up = quit — ≠ give + up literally
come across = find by chance — ≠ come + across literally
put up with = tolerate — 3-word phrasal verb
look into = investigate — ≠ physically look inside something

Phrasal verbs = verb + particle/preposition forming a unit with non-literal meaning. There are thousands, and they dominate casual native English. They must be learned as whole units.

Key fact: the particle completely changes the verb's meaning. Look up (search), look after (care for), look into (investigate), look down on (disrespect) — all different.

Collocations

✅ make a decision — ❌ do a decision
✅ strong coffee — ❌ powerful coffee
✅ heavy rain — ❌ strong rain
✅ highly unlikely — ❌ very unlikely (grammatical, but less natural)

Collocations are word pairs that English habitually puts together. Both options may be grammatically valid, but one sounds native and the other doesn't.

Pattern: there's no logic to predict them — you make decisions but do homework, you have strong coffee but heavy rain. They must be learned as chunks, not deduced from rules.

Vocabulary for B2/Upper Intermediate

Register precision: big → substantial, considerable, significant
Hedging: tend to, somewhat, arguably, to some extent
Reporting verbs: claim, argue, suggest, acknowledge, deny
Idiomatic: break the ice, out of the blue, get the hang of

B2 vocabulary = ~4,000–6,000 words. Register awareness, hedging, reporting verbs, idioms, figurative expressions. Grammar is no longer the limit — precision of word choice is.

Focus: synonyms with different registers (begin/commence/start), hedging language for academic writing, and the reporting verbs that distinguish said from claimed/argued/insisted.

B2 | Upper Intermediate

✅ If I had studied harder, I would have passed. — third conditional
✅ The report is being reviewed by the committee. — passive progressive
✅ Having finished the exam, she left. — participle clause
✅ He denied having taken the money. — complex verb pattern

These are B2 patterns — the CEFR upper-intermediate level. At B2 you handle mixed conditionals, all passive forms, participle clauses, and can argue a point clearly. This is the level most universities and employers require.

Marker: if you can write a structured essay and debate an abstract topic, you're B2.

Easy

She is a teacher. — one verb form, one rule
I have two cats. — basic possession, short sentence
He doesn't like coffee. — simple negation with do-support
Only one answer is clearly correct; distractors are obviously wrong.

Easy marks beginner-level challenges: A1–early A2, one rule at a time, everyday vocabulary, no trick questions.

Use "Easy" when you want to build confidence on a specific rule without interference from other grammar or tricky contexts.