This paper proposes an effective teaching method to enhance Japanese college students' understanding and use of English phrasal verbs. Phrasal verbs play a crucial role in English and are frequently used in everyday conversation. However, they present particular difficulties to learners of English because of their syntactic and semantic complexities. These factors prevent students from paying attention to the meanings of these verbs and their particles. This study examines how to teach phrasal verbs based on their degree of cohesiveness. It also demonstrates how the meaning of verbs and particles are combined, making use of key concepts such as core meanings and container metaphors. The particles in phrasal verbs generally indicate the movement of actions more clearly than one-word verbs without particles. The challenge is to teach students how to infer the derivational meanings of phrasal verbs. For this, contextual knowledge can be helpful, as previous studies have pointed out. Movies are an effective medium that enables students to predict the meaning of phrasal verbs as well as obtain contextual knowledge. Finally, the author introduces a teaching method for phrasal verbs with the particles up and off using material from Harry Potter movie series.