Reflexive Basics — Myself, Yourself, Themselves
Learn the eight reflexive pronouns and when to use them: when subject and object are the same person. Fill-blank, multiple-choice, error-correction and match-pairs exercises.
Reflexive Pronoun Basics: Building the Eight Forms
The starting point for reflexive pronouns is the rule of co-reference: use a reflexive when the subject and the object of a verb refer to the same person. 'She looked at herself in the mirror' — the looker and the looked-at are the same. This is the most common use, and the one where form errors (hisself, theirselves) are most damaging. Cambridge Learner Corpus data shows that form errors account for roughly 30% of all reflexive mistakes at B1 level, almost always involving the third-person forms built incorrectly from possessive pronouns rather than object pronouns.
Forming the Reflexive: Object Pronoun + -self/-selves
you + self → yourself / you + selves → yourselves
him + self → himself (not hisself)
her + self → herself
it + self → itself
us + selves → ourselves
them + selves → themselves (not theirselves)
Core Reflexive Verbs
Some verbs commonly appear with a reflexive object because the action typically affects the actor:
Be careful — you'll hurt yourself!
We really enjoyed ourselves at the party.
He taught himself to play guitar.
Please help yourselves to more food.
Common Mistakes
✗ She accidentally cut her while cooking. → ✓ cut herself. (same person = reflexive)