Increase Your English Vocabulary with These 5 Phrasal Verbs

hi i'm anne marie with speak confident english and welcome to you're confident english wednesday lesson if you are an intermediate english user you have a strong foundation in english grammar and vocabulary but when you speak you feel that you forget everything or you feel stuck or too nervous to try to speak then you are in the right place all of my confident english lessons are designed specifically for you so that you can improve your english skills your fluency and of course boost your confidence so today we're going to focus on vocabulary because one of the most difficult things is expressing yourself in your second language you've probably experienced a time when you were trying to express yourself in english maybe you were talking with someone on the phone or face-to-face or maybe you wanted to say something in English but the words that you needed were stuck they were completely frozen in your mind or they were stuck in your mouth you couldn't find the word that you needed to express what you wanted to say that is such a frustrating feeling and I know because it happens to me as well many of you know if you've been following me for a while I'm an American but I live in another country so I use my second language every day and there are still days when I can't find the word that I want to express myself and sometimes I want to scream or cry or give up and say I'm never speaking in this language again but then I remember I'm a language teacher I know how to do this I know how to build my vocabulary so that I can express myself more and more and do it more easily so that's what we're going to focus on for you I want you to do that in English so that when you are communicating with other people whether it's by email or telephone or in conversations or if you're making friend I want it to be easy for you so let's talk about how you can do that realistically so that you can really make progress in your vocabulary and then we're going to focus on five phrasal verbs that you can start adding to your active English vocabulary this week so that you can speak more naturally communicate more easily and express yourself in English so first let's talk about the super simple trick to building your vocabulary it's really not hard but I see a lot of people make mistakes the reality is you cannot learn a hundred new words or a hundred new idioms or a hundred new phrasal verbs in one day it just isn't possible that's not how we learn new language and new vocabulary and that is a common mistake that I see so many students making is they find a list of words maybe it's medical English or financial English or phrasal verbs or idioms and they look at the word and the definition and they try to memorize it or they try to learn it the problem is all of those words will be in your mind but when you try to speak you won't be able to use them they're going to be stuck in your mind because you didn't learn the real meaning and you didn't learn how to really use that word in your normal everyday English speaking life so the key to learning vocabulary is to do a little bit every day if you've been following me you know I say that a lot a little bit of English every day is so good for you it's like eating an apple a day or all of your vegetables it's perfect for building your grammar skills your ability to speak your vocabulary all of the things that you need to speak more accurately and fluently in English so a little bit every day is exactly what you need so a little bit of new vocabulary every day whether you're listening to something in English you're reading something you're talking to someone a little bit every day is exactly what you need to do and the other key is to learn those words in context so that means not a list of words with a definition but looking at how we use that word or the phrasal verb or the idiom in a real-life expression and that is exactly what I'm going to help you do today today we're focused on five phrasal verbs that all use the word take and your goal for this week is to add those five phrasal verbs to your active vocabulary so you can of course do that by practicing with this lesson there is always an opportunity at the end of the lesson for you to practice you can practice throughout the week by posting something every day in the comments I read all of them I respond to all of them so I will give you feedback and help you learn those words so you can express yourself more easily using the same vocabulary the same phrasal verbs that native speakers use every day so let's get started with looking at five phrasal verbs using the word take and looking at how they're used in real context the way that I would really use these words and we'll use that context to help you understand what those words really mean then of course you can go to the online lesson to get more examples and to practice first phrasal verb we're focusing on today is to take on for example today I feel like I'm want to take on the world so let's look at an example where we can try to understand what the word means using the context all of the other sentences and words around the phrasal verb I just got the job of my dreams I'm moving to a new country I've lost ten pounds on my diet and tomorrow I'm travelling to Norway to a two-week vacation I feel amazing I'm ready to take on the world so I'm curious what do you think what does take on mean this woman has the perfect day right now everything is going right in her world and she's ready to take on the world so think for a moment what could that mean what is she saying really about her feeling at that moment she's ready to take on the world hopefully you're thinking about she's ready to accept a challenge she's ready to take on new responsibilities she has a new job coming up she's moving to a new country all of these new things are happening in her life which often means new responsibilities and new challenges so she's ready she feels ready to accept those new things she's ready to take the challenge and to be successful so now let's go to phrasal verb number 2 all right for this second phrasal verb we're going to look at take after so for example everyone tells me I take after my mom I definitely have her features but I think my personality is more similar to my dad's so let's think about that we've have some other words I'm competin is comparing me to my mom I use the word features so we can talk about facial features your eyes your eyebrows your nose your mouth the shape of your face those are your features and then I say I definitely have her features but my personality is more similar to my dad's so if I'm more similar I'm comparing myself to my dad's personality and someone is saying that I'm similar too I take after I resemble my mom so to take after is used to talk about how someone looks or their personality and they are making a comparison between two people to say that one resembles the other this third example is possibly very new to you maybe you've never heard this before but that's perfect you're going to add a brand new phrasal verb to your vocabulary this one is take a back and to be honest with you we don't usually use this phrasal verb in the simple form like that take a back we actually use it in the passive form so let's look at the example and then we'll talk about that passive form did you see Sarah's face she was completely taken aback I was nervous that someone might have told her about the surprise party or maybe she had found some of the decorations but nope she was definitely surprised and I'm so glad she's been with this company for 25 years plus she's the nicest person in the office we had to celebrate her okay so in this context in this situation we know there was a surprise party for a woman who had worked for a company for a very long time 25 years and everyone liked her so if someone is surprised by something we usually see the look of surprise or shock on their face and when someone feels surprised or shocked about something we can say they were taken aback or I might say I was taken aback so we're using that passive form which means we're using the past tense of to be I was or they were and then we're using the past participle the third form we're getting technical the third form of the verb take so taken and then our preposition aback so she was taken aback her face looked completely surprised she felt surprised or shocked by the party that the company threw for her okay just two more to go so in this phrasal verb example we're looking at take over in this example next week my colleague is going on her maternity leave for three months so while she's gone I'm going to take over some of her tasks I imagine in your work situation there may have been a time where your colleague is sick so they stay home for a day or two days or three days they go on vacation or perhaps your female colleague goes on maternity leave this is when she leaves for the time when she has her baby and she stays home with the baby so what happens when your colleague doesn't come to work you take over your colleagues tasks you take control of someone else's responsibilities you take more responsibilities so think of a situation in your own life when a colleague has gone on vacation has been sick from work or gone on maternity leave and you've taken over those responsibilities for a couple of days or a few months or maybe the position was empty for a long time and you took over the responsibilities permanently and finally our last phrasal verb with the word take to take through so let's look at an example hi everyone thanks for coming today I know we're all very busy so I'll keep this meeting brief I just like to take you through the agenda for the annual company meeting next week so we can all be ready to discuss our marketing and sales strategies for the next three to five years so we can imagine this conversation or a person saying these sentences at a business meeting and they're going to take everyone through the agenda to take someone through something is to show them the step-by-step process so think about your life have you ever had to show someone a step-by-step process at work have you had to train someone or maybe you're on the telephone with someone and you're taking them through the process to fix something or how to do something this is the perfect situation for you to use this phrasal verb and there you have five phrasal verbs for you to add to your vocabulary this week and here is what I want you to do you can of course watch this video and start practicing with these phrasal verbs you can leave comments on the YouTube video or you can go to the online lesson and look at additional examples where I provide more contextual examples using these phrasal verbs and then go to the end of the lesson where you have the opportunity to practice this is your chance to get real practice and get feedback from me on using these new vocabulary words to make sure that you really understand them and you can use them in your real life so go to the practice activity and follow the steps that I've taken you through to build your vocabulary practice using these examples leave comments in the comment section and I'll be sure to take a look and give you feedback as always if you enjoyed this video please subscribe to the YouTube channel you can join my newsletter list and get a confident English lesson every Wednesday or share this with your colleagues and friends on Facebook or Pinterest those are fantastic ways to let me know that you enjoy this video and you'd like to see more of them thank you so much for joining me and I'll see you next Wednesday for your confident English Wednesday [Music] [Music]

Channel: Speak Confident English

Views: 254,813

Rating: 4.9232559 out of 5

Keywords: Increase Your English Vocabulary, how to increase vocabulary, how to increase vocabulary in english, learn english, how to increase english vocabulary, improve vocabulary, vocabulary, english vocabulary, speak confident english, phrasal verbs

Id: 5C7ZGThjKag

Length: 14min 13sec (853 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 14 2016