Concentration.
It is necessary to be really good at what you're doing.
I wonder if we can play a game today.
Hi. James from engVid.
I was reading a book on concentration, and it dawned on me...
And "to dawn on you" means I understood something that a lot of times when we play games, we
concentrate, we really concentrate, we enjoy it and we learn a lot.
And what I'm thinking today is that I would like to teach you a game that could help you
concentrate and learn grammar easily and make it fun.
I know that sounds like that doesn't make sense, it's like opposites, but bear with me.
Stay with me and let's see where we go.
Okay?
So, Mr. E's playing a game.
Some of you know this as tic-tac-toe, some of you know it as Xs and Os, and I'm going
to use this game here to help you learn phrasal verbs.
Very difficult subject for a lot of people, and today I hope to make it easy and fun.
You will be able to do this by yourself and do it with a friend or family, or other students.
You ready?
Let's go to the board.
Because as E says, he wins and you can, too.
So, first I'm going to look at is preposition, and I'm going to pick one.
Because when we play this game of Xs and Os, you can see the board is here, we're going
to play and I'm going to teach you how to use this preposition with these verbs to create
phrasal verbs.
Now, one of the things we want to do is figure out what "up" means.
You don't have to do this.
You can just go in...
You're on the internet, and you could look up these verbs, and see, you know, the phrasal
verb "pull up", what does it mean?
"Pick up", "close up", but today I'm going to help you with "up".
We actually have a video with phrasal verbs on it, or many videos, where you can go and
research and find out what these ones mean and other ones.
And I believe I did one that gives you a method for "up", "down", and other phrasal verbs.
Go check it out.
www.engvid.com.
Right?
So: "up".
"Up" can mean more.
Okay?
"Increase", "closer", "improve", "finish", or "end".
So, when you know that "up" can mean these things, it means when we use these words here,
we add "up", it will change the meaning of each word and give it a new meaning with the
two words combined.
For instance: "pull up".
When we pull up it means to get closer, so when an English-speaking person says to you:
"Please pull up a chair", it means get a chair and sit close with us.
"Pull up" means closer, move closer.
"Pick up".
"Pick up" has several meanings but I'm not going to go into all of them.
I'm going to give you one that you can use now.
If you say: "I will pick you up at 4 o'clock or 5", it means I will come to a place you
are at, meet you, and we will go together.
A lot of times when someone says "pick you up" it means they will either have a taxi
or a car, and they will take you, transport you with them.
That's why they're picking you up, or they would say: "I would come to your house".
"Close up", when you close up a store it means to shut, finish, and you end the work, so
you close the door and go home.
"We going to close up at about 6 o'clock."
We will finish working about 6 o'clock.
"Lift up", well, this pen, lift it up.
We could say it more, and I should have added "move", right?
Because when you lift something up, you take it from a lower position, you put it to a
higher position.
"Brighten up".
"Brighten up" means to go bright, so we go from...
Well, let's look here: Purple, this is brightened up.
It's not clean, it's not perfect, but it's brighter.
Right?
So "brighten up" means to give more light.
Or it could mean make happier.
"He brightened up at the prospect of going out."
He got happier.
"Hold up" means to make wait.
If you're saying: "What's holding up the train?"
It means: "Why is the train staying here?
Why is it waiting?"
"Shot up", it means to go straight up.
"The rock got shot up into the sky".
"Clean up" means to clean.
"Let's clean up the room."
Let's clean it up, make it better.
In this case, improve the condition of the room.
"Take up" means review.
So, when you take something up it means to review or discuss.
So: "We're going to take up the homework once we've finished the class."
Cool?
Or: "We'll take up this conversation at a later time."
We will continue it and come back to it later.
So now I've given you a quick overview of these nine phrasal verbs, let's play a game,
shall we?
I will be blue and you will be red.
So, an example of this is when you call out the phrasal verb, let's just say: "Okay, I
want to go to this square", then you'd have to call it out and say: "Okay, the phrasal
verb is 'pull up'", and then in order to get my mark, because I'm going to be blue, I would
have to say what "pull up" means.
My friend was having dinner out with some other co-workers, and they asked me to pull
up a chair.
Correct.
Woo.
I get this square.
Now it's your turn.
You might want to say: "Hmm, I bought some flower..."
So: "brighten up".
"Brighten up", okay, good.
What's the sentence?
I bought some...
Oh, you know what?
Let's have E play for you because he's here.
E could say: "I bought some flowers to brighten up the room."
Good for you, E, you get a square.
I think you could see how the game would go.
Now I could go here, but maybe "shot up" is too difficult.
Yeah?
And I might go: "Oh, I can't do that one, so I will go here: 'take up'".
Okay, past tense.
Past tense.
We took up the homework in the morning, we took it up.
Take up, remember?
So, "take up" is the present tense, but because I had to use the past tense, I had to change
it a bit.
So remember when I said you have to say it?
You have to use the sentence correctly.
We have to use the right term, right?
So it would be past tense: We took up the homework in the morning.
I would get my circle.
You guys want to try one with E?
So what's E saying, he says: "Pick".
Want to try "pick"?
Okay.
"Pick up".
I'll pick you up at 8 tonight...
At your house.
Good, thanks, because that gives more explanation is just words, but: "I will pick you up at
your house", I will meet you.
You're good at this.
It's my turn.
Let's try "clean up" to do, you know, I reviewed "clean up", "clean up".
There was a cleanup yesterday.
What?
What do you mean that's not a phrasal verb?
What do you mean "a" is an article?
Oh, you're right, I clean up, oh, that's not a phrasal verb because it's got to be a verb
plus a preposition, and I used a phrase.
Damn it.
Your turn.
"Let's clean up his mess because he doesn't know English."
That was mean, but you know what?
You're correct.
So you would win the game.
And in this we have talked about the prepositions, we've used them in sentences, got a deeper
understanding, and then a little competition.
Cool, huh?
Well, I have another way to make it...
Because I mean right now this is kind of easy and that's one.
So, how about we learn how to do a few of them.
You ready?
[Snaps].
Okay, so the first time we did this I made it easy.
I gave you...
Well, what did we do?
We had many words and we used one preposition: "up", and we went through nine examples.
Right?
That was easy.
That was fun.
This is a harder version.
You'll notice here that I'm using nine different prepositions, and you're probably going to
say: "What are these numbers beside?"
Well, once you've learned to master the preposition "up" and its meanings, you can go on: "to",
and "on", and so on.
It sounds like it's a lot, but trust me, when you look at the preposition...
Sorry, the phrasal book, phrasal verb preposition book, it's about that thick.
Here you're going to learn maybe 30, 40, or 50, and you'll become a master of them by
playing a simple game, especially when you play with your friends, you'll learn even faster.
So how do you play this game and what makes it different?
Well, this time when you play with your friend, you won't be able to just say: "Okay, 'pull
up', make a sentence."
If the number says 4 and it says "up", you're going to have to come up with four phrasal
verbs, so in this case what we're doing is we're just giving the preposition and you
actually have to remember: What are the verbs that go with this?
Sometimes the same verb can go, like: "shut", "down", and "shut up" can go together, right?
Which is great.
Sometimes you cannot put them together.
You just can't do that.
So, you're going to learn which ones go from the meanings we talked about earlier when
we did "up", and I did tell you to go check the website for the other ones where I know
I've done phrasal verb videos on "down", "up", "in", and "out", check them out.
Anyway.
So in this case when you play the game, if you want to get an X here, you would have
to say: "Okay, first off, 'up'.
There's 'pull up', 'close up', 'shut up', and 'take up'." Okay?
And when you're looking at that, you'd say that, but you'd still have to say four sentences.
Whoa.
Look, I am making this a bit challenging, but I know you can do it.
The first game will get you practice for each individual one and you'll get very good at
it.
And then in order to speak English like a fluent speaker, you're going to have to master
the other ones.
And if you follow this method, you'll be able to do it.
I promise.
Okay?
So we've come up with four phrasal verbs, we go: "Okay, I know four.
We'll go to the ones we learned earlier, so 'pull up'."
The car pulled up to the house at night.
The car pulls up close to...
Pulled up on my driver, closer to.
Right?
"Close up": We like to close up early on Saturdays because we like to go to the beach and finish work.
"Shut up", okay, I didn't do that one but I think it's universal, it means close your
mouth, stop speaking, shut up, but it means shut up now or stop speaking now.
And "take up": We're going to take up the homework after we have lunch.
Now that I've used all four of these, they are correct, first of all.
Then I use them in sentences, now I can leave my mark.
A lot harder work, but well deserved.
Because when you win a game from doing this, you'll go: "Whoa, I really know."
Well, look anywhere from 10 phrasal verbs, 20 phrasal verbs, not bad.
Huh?
All from playing Xs and Os or tic-tac-toe.
Now, before I wrap up this particular video, I would like to give you some homework.
"Oh. What?" Yeah.
Now, where are you going to take up this homework?
Saying we did this, or it means review.
On the website.
We've got a thriving community, a lot of people come down after they do the quiz, they talk
to each other. I'm inviting you to join them. Okay?
Share your knowledge, share your wisdom.
Help other people.
Maybe play the game with them online, too, yeah?
See how it goes.
Anyway, your homework for this particular video is, number one: Remember what we did
before with the first one, with "up"?
Take one preposition, "up" as an example, I've helped you with that.
I've even told you what it means.
Take that, okay?
Play the game.
Play it with a friend, play it by yourself, see what you can remember.
Play it with other people, play it engVid.
This is the harder version, and this is where we take nine prepositions, so you might want
to wait for a bit and work on some other prepositions first.
Okay?
And then play with the prepositions.
Now, to make...
To give you a little bit of a hint on what to do, the easy version of this game is if
you have the numbers, one, so that would be like across.
Okay?
You just need one preposition to go this "up", right?
"Walk across", that's it, easy enough.
And we have "down", you need to do two: "tone down", "go down".
Right?
You need two.
And so on and so forth.
With each one you need more in order to get your point.
So, if you do one, it's easy.
You can think of one, okay?
Two to three is what we call medium.
So when you see a game and you say to your friend: "Hey.
You know what?
I'm not really good at it, but I want to challenge myself, I'm going to do two to three."
So no more of these numbers should never be higher than two or three, that's medium.
Now, when you're an expert or let's say native, dunh-dunh-dunh-dunh, you're native, you're
going to go four to five in every square.
Every square, you can have five in every square.
I mean, seriously, having to do five of these, five sentences, doing it three times - oh
my god, that's so much work. Right?
But you're good enough to do it, I bet you are.
Anyway, I got to get going, it's time to go.
Enough with the games.
What I'd like you to do, though, is go to www.eng as in English, vid as in video, so
www.engvid.com to do the quiz, visit, and meet up with your other friends to do homework.
And as always, thank you for watching.
See you soon.