THE IDEA TO KEEP
Never learn these verbs alone. Store each verb with its preposition as one chunk — look after, not look plus a rule.
01People: care, company, news
Relationships run on fixed pairs: take care of your health, look after the baby, get along with colleagues, hear from an old friend. Apologize for being late, thank them for coming. Notice that of, after, with, from, and for each attach to a specific verb — swapping them breaks the phrase, so memorize verb and partner together from the first meeting.
Who is looking after the baby tonight?
look after + person
Who is looking after the baby tonight?
02Resources: running out and keeping up
Resources have their own set: run out of milk, pay for dinner, wait for the bus, ask for help. And pace has its pair: keep up with the class, catch up with friends, keep up with the news. Out of always travels with run out — students who split them into run plus out lose the meaning entirely.
We have run out of milk again.
run out of + resource
We have run out of milk again.
03Work and study: focus and finish
Study and work verbs bring academic partners: focus on quality, work on the project, graduate from university, apply for the job, prepare for the exam. Depend on the team, succeed in business, result in delays. Look forward to Friday keeps its surprising to — the whole phrase behaves like a noun phrase, so to stays.
She graduated from Cambridge in 2020.
graduate from + school
She graduated from Cambridge in 2020.
04How to actually remember them
Keep a three-column notebook: verb + partner, one personal example, one review date. Write I ran out of time yesterday — your own sentences stick ten times better than textbook ones. Review each card after one day, one week, one month. Twenty pairs learned this way beat two hundred glanced at in a list.
YOUR TURN
Make the connection.
Read the situation before choosing. The reason matters as much as the answer.
Further reading & a note on these guides
PrepoQuest creates these examples and explanations as original learning content with AI-assisted drafting. Usage depends on context, and these introductory patterns do not cover every construction. Continue with the reference materials below.
A little repetition. A stronger connection.
Build on this guide with focused preposition-pair practice and mistake review in the app.
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