Three-part Phrasal Verbs Explained Simply [472]

🚨Improve your English with structured online lessons. Book a free trial and get clear feedback on your level, pronunciation and speaking. Book here ➡️  https://www.englishlessonviaskype.com/trial

In this podcast episode, I'm focusing on 3-part phrasal verbs, an essential part of boosting your vocabulary and speaking skills. Phrasal verbs can seem tricky at first, but with practice, they can significantly improve your English speaking abilities.

Today, you'll learn about different 3-part phrasal verbs that are commonly used in everyday English. I explain each in simple terms, making it easier for you to understand and remember them. By adding these phrasal verbs to your vocabulary, you'll find yourself speaking more fluently and confidently. I cover examples in real-life contexts to show you how these phrasal verbs are used in conversations. This approach helps you not only learn their meanings but also how to use them correctly when you speak or write in English.

If you often hesitate, make mistakes, or feel unsure when speaking English, book a trial lesson. We assess your level, correct you clearly, and give you a focused plan so you know exactly what to improve.

Book a free trial here: https://www.englishlessonviaskype.com/trial

If you prefer to study on your own, explore our online courses. They give you structured lessons to build stronger grammar, clearer pronunciation, and more confident speaking step by step

Discover all courses and guides: https://englishlessonviaskype.com/confidence

Transcript

0:08

Hi there, this is Harry. Welcome back to Advanced English Lessons with Harry, where I try to help you to get a better understanding of the English language, to help you with your conversational skills, your business English skills, interview skills, whatever your goals are, we're here to help. And for those of you and your friends or family who want one-to-one lessons, well, you know what to do. Just get in touch, www.englishlessonviaskype.com and you can apply for a free trial lesson and we'll be very happy to hear from you and very happy to help you. The lesson we have for you today is all about phrasal verbs, but in this case we're looking at advanced English lessons, as I said, and we're looking at three-word phrasal verbs. So a brief introduction to what they are. Phrasal verbs normally with two words, one verb, one preposition, break down. A three-word phrasal verb has an extra preposition, one verb, two prepositions. Okay, so we can pick up on something. Okay, so pick the verb up on your two prepositions. Okay, a little bit more complicated, but often when we have a phrasal verb with three parts to it, it does add to the complication, but they're very, very useful expressions. Okay, so to catch up with a friend, okay, so catch up on your work, yeah, you can catch up in the park when your friend is running around the park, you can catch up, but if you catch up with the homework that you didn't do when you're out sick, that's a three-part phrasal verb to catch up with something, catch up with somebody. Okay, so we're going to go through a list of these. And as always, I've got 10. I'll give them to you and then I'll give you some examples. And if you don't understand them or you can't use them, then you come back to me and we'll give you some more examples later. Okay, so let's start. Number one, to come up with something. So if you're sitting around a table with your colleagues, you're having a brainstorming session or just a chat among your team, you come up with some new ideas. Come up with some ideas to launch a new product. Come up with some ideas to entertain your clients. Come up with some ideas for the Christmas party. If you have a Christmas party in your office every year and it always gets more and more difficult to find something that the staff will find entertaining. So you're looking for something fresh, something new, something different. So you're hoping some of your colleagues will come up with some new ideas that people will find interesting. So come up with something, come up with an idea, come up with a suggestion, come up with a plan. Okay, so to come up with. Next, get along with. Okay, so we usually get along with someone. We get along with our classmates. We get along with our siblings, we hope. We get along with friends and family. So when we get along with, it means we have a good relationship. How is John settling into the new school? Ah, great. It only took him a couple of days. He seems to be getting along with everybody, okay. So he's got a few friends. He's joined the football team. As you know, with kids, there'll always be little disagreements here and there. But by and large, they get along with people quite well. Okay. Oh, how do the kids, the twins? Oh, they get along with each other. Fine. Ah, they have their squabbles, they have their fights. But you know, they are really close. They get along with each other very, very well. Okay, so to get along with somebody means to have a good relationship, have a good connection. Yes, occasionally fight an argument, but generally, get along with. I can get along with anybody. If somebody can put up with me, I can put up with them. I can get along with anybody. Get around to. Get around usually to doing something. So, for example, if you've got some odd jobs that need doing in the house, you have to fix that leaking tap, you know, drip, drip, drip. You have to fix the door on the cupboard that is hanging off. You have to put a new plug on the toaster, whatever it is, you get around to doing it eventually. Okay, so, ah, come on, Harry, look at all these things. I've been asking you for weeks and weeks. Yeah, look, I'll get around to doing them at the weekend. I promise on Saturday or Sunday. Well, hopefully I do. Yeah, okay. So there's a to-do list and we get around to doing the things on the list. Every morning I make my little to-do list. And generally by the end of the day, I get and or have gotten around to doing everything that's on the list. So get around to do something means to finish and complete it. Okay. Or you could use it in the negative. I'm really, really sorry I didn't get around to doing everything on the list, but I got most of it done and I'll do the rest next week. Promise. Okay. To get around to doing something. Next, to put up with something or put up with someone. To put up with something or someone is really, you don't really want to and they've got some annoying habits or there's something about them. But for peace of mind and to make sure that there's no arguments, you put up with it. Okay, so many, many people have to put up with a lot of noisy neighbors. This is always the big problem. Every summer they drill and bang and knock. They're doing their repairs and you're just about to start that important call and you hear bang bang bang. So unfortunately you have to put up with it provided that the work is carried out between those hours of nine in the morning and four or five in the evening, whatever the local rules happen to be. Oh, I don't know, this, the repairs, those neighbors, but what can I do? I have to put up with it. Okay. Now, we can also have to put up with somebody if they're in a bad mood. Oh, these exams are really taking its toll on our daughter, you know, but and she's been in a bad mood now for weeks and weeks. Well, we'll just have to put up with it for another few weeks. When she gets the exams out of the way, she'll be back to normal. She'll be on her holidays and hopefully that will be it. It's her final exam. So to put up with something or put up with somebody. Okay, so it's usually when there's a situation, usually some annoyance, usually something you don't want to listen to or hear, but you have no choice. You have to put up with it. Look forward to, well, this is good news anyway, when we look forward to something. We look forward to seeing somebody. We look forward to hearing from somebody. We look forward to meeting somebody. When we use look forward to, it's always followed by a verb with the ing. So that's a really important rule here from a grammar point of view. So when we're looking forward to something, we have something that's going to happen. It could be a birthday party. It could be a special celebration. It could be simply Halloween, Christmas, Easter, whatever the festivity happens to be. Oh, I'm really looking forward to the Christmas holidays. I'm really looking forward to spending some time in the countryside. I'm really looking forward to my birthday because I've got plenty of new books that I'm sure I'll get as presents. So to look forward to something means to have an expectation that an anticipation that something good is going to happen. Look up to. Well, we can look up on the internet to see our favorite movie or book, but when we look up to, it means principally to get some inspiration. He looks up to his parents for inspiration. They help him to tell him what he should do or what career that he should follow. He really looks up to his grandfather. He really has a good relationship with him. His grandfather is always telling him interesting stories. And if his grandfather tells him to do it, you can be absolutely certain that he will follow the recommendation because he looks up to him. Oh, everybody looked up to the boss for years. He was the inspiration behind this company. And no matter who it was, no matter what position they had, he always had a kind word for them. So everybody looked up to him. Now, you can, of course, look up to the sky. Like, literally, you look up to the sky to see the stars. You look up to the sky to see the moon. But look up to in terms of inspiration is idiomatic. Now, the opposite, look down on somebody, and this is very negative, okay? So when this goes back to the times of the kings and the queens, and they're literally their ivory castles and their towers, so they would look down on the peasants below. They would be walking around the bottom of the castle walls or inside the castle, and they would look down on them. So when we use the expression today to look down on somebody, means usually to treat somebody as below you and different from you when you really shouldn't. So we often tell people, you can't look down on those people who have less than you have. You should be grateful for what you have and to grateful that you're not walking in their shoes, but don't look down on them. We shouldn't look down on the poor. We shouldn't look down on those who have less than we have. So when we look down on somebody, it means we treat them differently and less than we would treat ourselves to look down on. Live up to. Well, often we have to live up to somebody's expectations of us. Children all the time have a problem with their parents because they have to live up to their parents' expectations. The parents expect them to get A1 exam results all of the time. The parents expect them to get the 1-1 degree at university, the top job, the great house, whatever it happens to be. So the parents, we parents put enormous pressure on our children that we shouldn't really do and they have to live up to our expectations. So you often read people's biographies and stories when they had problems with their parents that they found it difficult to live up to their expectations, particularly when the parent had been very, very successful, perhaps. A successful actor or actress, a successful writer, a successful politician, businessman, doesn't matter what they were, but if the parents were extremely successful, then it puts huge pressure on their children and they have to live up to those expectations. I find it so difficult to live up to my parents' expectations. How am I ever going to live up to those expectations? I really don't have it in me. I really don't want to do it. I want to do my own thing, to live up to other people's expectations. To keep up with. Okay, well, literally, to keep up with somebody means to walk at the same pace. For example, if they're walking quite quickly in the park, you might say, hang on, hang on, I'm having difficulty keeping up with you. Or if somebody's trying to explain a difficult situation to you, it could be a physics or mathematical problem, and you're saying, I can't keep up with you. Come on, just slow down a little bit and repeat it to me. Make sure I understand what you're doing. Or the teacher in the class will tell the kids, look, it's really important that you keep up with me. We've got a lot to cover. So I can't afford for you to fall behind. If you don't understand it, shout now because I won't have the time to repeat it. So please keep up with me. Okay, so when you want to keep up with somebody, you have to keep at the same pace. If you're walking or running, you have to keep up with people who are reading or the teacher, how they are progressing in your workbook. You have to keep up with them. Or we can simply use it in the negative. I find it really hard to keep up with this pace. Everything is 100 miles an hour. You know, the boss wants this, the boss wants that. We're going to do this, we're going to do that. We're going to change this, we're going to change that. Really, really hard at times, at certain times, to keep up with everything. Okay, we have to keep up with the news. Okay, things happen in the world really, really quickly. Yeah, today this is happening, tomorrow that is happening. And you really, really have to keep up with world events. I like to keep up with world events. I look at the news on the internet before I go to sleep. I look at the news in the morning when I wake up. I don't know. It's just a habit I have to see what has happened overnight so that I can keep up with world events and I can be better informed. Okay, so to keep up with. And then finally, to make up for something. Usually we make up for mistakes, make up for our lack of education. So if somebody didn't have a particularly good education in their early life, perhaps later in life they make up for that by going to do some studies when they're 30s or even their 40s or even their 50s. You often read stories about people going back to school, finished school that they never finished, complete a degree that they never had a chance to complete when they were younger. So they make up for lost time, okay? Or we make up for some time that we took off work, something quite simple. Could I please have two hours in the afternoon? I need to go to the doctor and the only time he can see me is at two o'clock and it takes me 20 minutes to get there, 20 minutes to get back. So it's going to take me an hour and a half. I'll make up for the time tomorrow or the next day. I'll take a short lunch or I'll come in early to make up for the time that I'm taking for this doctor's appointment. So we always make up for something, meaning if there's a shortfall, we make up for that shortfall. If something is lacking, we make up for whatever is lacking. Okay, lacking in education, lacking in money. Or if you make a mistake, you'll make up for it. If you forget somebody's birthday, one of the kids or the wife or whoever, you very definitely better make up for it. So, oh, look, I'm really, really sorry I had to go away on that business visit, but it couldn't be helped. So I'll make up for it next weekend. We'll go away. We'll pack the bags on Friday evening. We'll head off, switch off the mobile phones, and we'll just have a weekend to ourselves. And that will make up for forgetting or cancelling that reservation we had last weekend. Okay, so to make up for something. Okay, so they're all, as we said, three part phrasal verbs. They're not too complicated, okay? The difference is as an extra preposition. So normal phrasal verbs, one verb, one preposition, three part phrasal verbs, one verb, two prepositions. So one additional preposition. So try to go through them, have a look at them, see where you might use them. And if you don't understand them, as always, you know the drill, come back to me and I'll give you some additional examples. I really, really appreciate it when you watch and you listen and you like these particular videos because it helps everybody. So until the next time, this is Harry saying goodbye. Join me again soon.