Day 18 Three UP Phrasal Verbs

Hi, I’m Vanessa from speakenglishwithvanessa.com. Today, we are going to talk about three phrasal verbs: look up, keep up, make up. Using the technique that I talked about in my phrasal verb video last week. Let’s get started.

If you remember the technique that we talked about last time, was to use a phrasal verb that has a same participle: look up, keep up, make up, to help you remember. And also think about a story from your personal life you could use these phrasal verbs. So these are stories from my personal life, but I want you to think about a story from your life when you could use them. And if you want, you can leave a comment below with this story. So, let’s get started with the first phrasal verb: look up.

Look up simply means to research, to search for something and find an answer. So, we could say “when I wrote an email in French, sometimes I have to look up word that I don’t know how to spell.” So, with me, I have, this is always on my desk, a French words book, it’s really handy. And a quick French dictionary. These things help me to look up French words really quickly while I am writing an email, or trying to speak French. When I’m not sure at the word, I can look it up really quickly. LOOK UP.

The second phrasal verb is keep up. Keep up means to stay with something physically or mentally. So when I was living in Korea, sometimes I would try to watch Korean dramas. But often time, they were only in Korean. Sometime, they had English subtitle online, but often time, they were only in Korean. And it was hard for me to keep up, to understand at the same time. What they were saying? It’s hard for me to keep up when native speakers are speaking Korean. It’s so fast and my vocabulary isn’t high enough yet to be able to understand them. I couldn’t keep up. This is keep up mentally. I couldn’t keep up with what they were saying. The other kind of keep up is keep up physically. To stay with someone physically. So when I was in elementary school, I loved to run. I just ran all the time. And one day a year, we have a feel day. This is a day where kids get together, and competes with some activities, like running or jump. Or some fun things. So, when I did a long running race, like enduring running for kids. Not too stressful, but just something fun. When I was in elementary school, I was pretty fast for a small child, for a girl. And no one could keep up with me. I was ahead of everyone. They couldn’t physically stay with me. They couldn’t keep up with me. So, this is my story about physically keep up and the other story is mentally keep up. So, what about you? I want you to think about a time when you could use keep up physically or mentally in your own life to help you remember it. Let’s go on to No3. Make up.

The third phrasal verb using up today is make up. Make up means to imagine something, to use your imagination. It can also mean to apologize to someone. But, we are only going to talk about the first meaning today. To imagine something. So the story can help me remember make up, and maybe help you remember too. Think about your own story as well. When I was little, me and my sister and our two neighbors, two girls who lived across the street, we loved to make up fun, crazy, silly stories. And tell the stories to each other. So, one of the stories we made up was about a hunter who was trying to kill a bear. And the bear was really smart, so the bear stood against a big rock. And his shadow looked huge. So, he scared the hunter away because his shadow was so huge. And it was just a story we make up. We didn’t read it in a book, we didn’t see a movie about it. We just made it up. This is something completely imaginary. So what about you? What has been a time when you have imagined something? Maybe your child has made up a crazy story, a funny story. Or you did in your childhood. This is a good change to be able to remember the word make up, made up by remembering a story from your life.

Thanks so much for watching this video about three phrasal verbs. Go on over to my website where I’m going to give some more examples and some more details about these three phrasal verbs. Thanks so much and I’ll see you there. Goodbye.