The study aims to investigate the challenges hindering an understanding of IPVs in EFL university context. The subjects were 42 male and female Sudanese English language major university students at the Department of English Language in Al-Butana University. A questionnaire and achievement test were employed as instruments for data collection. The results showed that students face many challenges in understanding IPVs as follows: practically, there is no intended focus of the area of IPVs as an important part of language, general overuse of single word verbs instead of multi word verbs and adopting not more appropriate contexts in for practicing IPVs. Moreover, the findings revealed that teaching and learning contexts are not varied accordingly. Based on these findings, the study recommends that IPVs are important area of language that should increase focus on this area by as follows: creating more appropriate contexts and situations for the most common IPVs, increasing chances for practicing IPVs in different contexts, adapting teaching and learning techniques accordingly and making use of common IPVs parallel to single word verbs in the classroom interaction.
