This study examines the effects of explicit instruction and exposure only on ESL students' ability to recognize, use and recall phrasal verbs. Subjects included 55 intermediate-level ESL students in reading classes at an intensive English program. Thirty-seven idiomatic phrasal verbs were divided into two lists. In a repeated measures design, one group of students received List 1 through direct instruction and List 2 through exposure only, while the other group received the opposite. Pre and posttests were given to measure students' ability to recognize, use and recall the phrasal verbs. The results show that treatment type was significant at a high probability level in favor of explicit instruction, although subjects had a higher mean percent gain for recognition than production. The study also reveals that subjects may perform differently--particularly in production--based on the individual difficulty of each phrasal verb. The findings of this study suggest that explicit instruction of phrasal verbs is more helpful than exposure alone for ESL learners' ability to recognize and use idiomatic phrasal verbs, although more instruction time may be needed for phrasal verb production, particularly if there are difficult collocational restrictions in usage. (Contains 10 tables.)