10 Useful PHRASAL VERBS for Any Topic in IELTS Speaking

- You are about to discover 10 phrasal verbs

that will make your English sound more natural

and that will help you get a higher score on IELTS Speaking.

Let's do it.

(upbeat music)

Hello, this is Keith from English Speaking Success.

And if you didn't know,

I also run the website the Keith Speaking Academy.

So, many students sometimes learn English

from very outdated coursebooks,

maybe a bit like.

(coughing)

A bit like this one.

So, sometimes their spoken English may not sound so natural.

And of course the key to success in IELTS Speaking

is to use natural spoken English.

You don't always need long, complicated words like this,

yeah, I am full of adoring admiration for my teacher.

I mean, that's just not natural.

And by the way, not everybody knows this, come closer.

The most natural spoken English,

often uses simple words like this,

I look up to my teacher.

You see, in spoken English,

we use lots of phrasal verbs, like 'look up to'.

A phrasal verb is basically a verb plus an adverb particle.

Sometimes you get a verb plus an adverb particle,

plus a preposition like 'look up to',

but generally speaking,

there's just two parts.

There's the verb and the adverb particle.

So, things like nail down,

pass away, drag on, run over, slip up and so on.

They are extremely common and what's more,

a lot of them are idiomatic.

Now, if you're a good student of IELTS,

you will know from the band descriptors

that using less common idiomatic vocabulary

is a key criteria of a band seven, eight and nine.

So really important, right?

Great, so, today I'm gonna teach you,

10 less common phrasal verbs.

So, you can one, sound more natural

and two, be using less common idiomatic vocabulary.

Great, two for the price of one.

(laughing)

That reminds me, oh, it reminds me

of when I was living in Malaysia, right?

There was this big cake shop next to our house.

And when I walked past,

they had these huge donuts with jam

and cream stuffed into them, crammed into them.

And one day I walked past and there was a sign outside

and the sign said, get two, get one free.

And I saw that and I looked at the donuts

and I thought, get two, get fat.

I mean, come on.

Great, so, today our calorie free phrasal verbs,

get two for the price of one, right?

Let's get into it.

Oh, before I do, I just want to add

that learning phrasal verbs is so much fun, right?

And when your learning is fun,

your learning will be deeper.

When you try these out with native speakers,

I guarantee you they will probably either smile and think,

Oh, that's cool.

Or they will smile and think, it's not quite right,

but still very cool.

The key thing, right,

when you're learning phrasal verbs is you must practice.

You must try them out and expect to make mistakes.

Mistakes are great,

because when you get the feedback that helps you get better

and to start using them more correctly.

Now, some of you may be thinking,

I don't have any native speakers.

Well, today you do, because I'd like to introduce you

to today's sponsors of this video, Cambly.

Cambly is an online learning platform

with native English speakers,

where you can go and have classes,

practice your phrasal verbs and get feedback.

You can go practice some nouns if you like

or even some adjectives.

No, but kidding aside, it's a great platform.

You can go and learn, practice your English with teachers,

get feedback, get better,

don't get fat, it's really good.

I'm gonna tell you more about that a little bit later.

Right now, let's get stuck into some phrasal verbs,

Right then the first phrasal verb is to crop up.

And I wonder if you can guess the meaning.

Here's an example,

Oh, I have to work late today, something cropped up at work.

Can you guess?

It actually means to appear,

usually unexpectedly or suddenly,

a bit like to pop up, right?

Something cropped up at work, crop up,

cropped up in the past, can you say that?

Cropped up, something cropped up.

Exactly, something cropped up at work,

maybe a problem, a new project, a new task.

Probably it was my boss that gave it to me,

but diplomatically,

I could say something cropped up at work.

Thanks boss, so I have to work late.

What things can crop up?

Problems crop up, shops crop up,

restaurants crop up in a new city.

Opportunities can crop up.

So for example, we might say in my hometown,

Chinese restaurants are cropping up everywhere.

Every week there's a new restaurant.

Notice I use the present continuous,

but if I'm talking about now or the recent past,

I can also use, in my hometown,

Chinese restaurants have been cropping up everywhere.

Both have a very similar meaning and both are fine.

Crop up, great, let's move on to number two.

Right, phrasal verb number two, to nail down.

Now, nail, this is a nail.

Hammer, look at that.

This is as old as my coursebook.

So, to nail down, right,

is literally to stick something in place.

But idiomatically, it means to identify clearly, right?

If you nail down a reason, you identify the reason clearly.

You can nail down answers, nail down the time,

nail down the date or nail down a reason.

So I'm thinking for example, in the IELTS Speaking test,

when the examiner asks you,

why do you think, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

You could say, well, it's hard to nail down the reason,

but maybe it's because, right,

it's hard to nail down the reason, fantastic.

Actually that reminds me of another phrasal verb.

It's not in my list of 10, but anyway, learning opportunity.

Let me tell you, it's to single out.

To single out something is to choose one

from a group of many, for special treatment.

So again, if the examiner says, well, why do you think this?

You could say I would single out one main reason,

and that is.

I would single out one main reason.

Fantastic, single out, we always connect L-out L-out.

Single out.

I would single out one main reason.

Brilliant, let's move on, phrasal verb number three.

Now it's not every day that you see a man ironing, right?

But when I was younger, I used to work in a restaurant

and I had to iron my shirts every day.

So I'm quite good at it.

The thing with ironing is, right,

shirts are full of creases and these creases are a problem.

So we have to iron out the creases.

That's very simple, but iron out is also idiomatic.

So iron out something,

to iron out a problem is to get rid of

or to be free of, that is, it no longer exists.

Notice the pronunciation.

We don't pronounce the R, it's /aɪən/, un, un.

/aɪən/, iron out.

Or if you link, iron out, iron out, nice,

you can iron out problems, iron out difficulties.

You can iron out misunderstandings, to be free of them.

Right, for example, if I want to use

this nail, well yes, this nail is bent.

It's no good, that's a problem.

So if I get rid of the nail, I find a new one.

Great, then I can iron out the problem.

Now then in IELTS speaking part three,

IELTS speaking part three.

Very often, you're talking about problems

and solutions and the examiner may ask you, for example,

let's talk about the problem of internet safety.

How do you solve this problem?

And what you could say is something like,

the best way to iron out this problem is to,

the best way to iron out this problem is, great, very nice.

Let's move on, number four.

Now, phrasal verb number four is to pack in.

So to pack in, can you guess what it means

if I give you an example?

Here we go, I went to the gym for three months,

but then I packed it in.

I just didn't have enough time to go.

I went to the gym and then I packed it in.

You can probably guess it means

to stop doing something, right.

You can pack in a hobby.

You can pack in a job, stop doing it.

You can pack in a course if you stop following it,

lots of different ways of using it.

Let's look at another example.

I want to pack in my job, it's not very rewarding

and badly paid, great.

You can talk about maybe a hobby, I took up,

to take up means to start, right.

I took up painting, but then I packed it in.

I didn't enjoy it very much.

So to pack something in or to pack in something.

If you use the pronoun, it, that goes in the middle,

pack it in, pack it in, I decided to pack it in.

Excellent, what a nice phrasal verb

you can use for lots of different topics.

Let's move on.

Okay, number five is to ache for,

now to ache, you may be familiar with this word

from other words, like stomachache, toothache, headache.

And it really means a pain, something that hurts you.

Now at the same time, to ache for,

means to desire or to want strongly,

similar to to long for, to long for

is to want something very, very strongly.

So for example, we might say I'm aching for a holiday.

I really want a holiday.

Notice we've got the present continuous,

but you can also say I've been aching for a holiday.

It's really the same meaning,

but emphasizing also the recent past,

not only now, you can use both of those.

Interestingly, when you're on holiday,

sometimes you ache for home because you want to go home.

In the time of the pandemic and confinements and lockdown,

maybe you can say, well, I'm aching for a beer.

I'm aching for companionship.

I'm aching for a night out with friends.

There's lots of things you can be aching for

during the pandemic.

Okay, keep practicing, let's move on.

Now, I'm just gonna take a moment to have a sip of water

and tell you all about the sponsors of today's video.

That is Cambly, Cambly is a fantastic online platform

where you can practice speaking English

with a native English speaker teacher,

and you can be practicing your phrasal verbs,

the ones you're learning today and get feedback

from the teacher so that you're using them correctly.

It's a great platform.

Some of the great things about it are the following.

You can choose your own speaker.

You can study at a time that suits you.

You decide what you want to study.

Although the teacher can also guide you.

And then you can also go back and watch the recording

of the class to check your mistakes and carry on practicing.

Cambly is a really flexible platform that has a variety

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And also, do remember, Cambly have some pre-made courses,

including IELTS courses that you get access to

once you're on one of their plans.

Now as a sponsor, and thank you very much Cambly

for sponsoring this,

you as a student, get some discounts.

If you're a first time user,

you can go on and get a free 10 minute class

to see what the platform's like.

And then if you sign up for a 12 month plan,

you get 40% discount.

It's brilliant, great.

Remember when you do sign up to use the code,

Keith-yt, get onto Cambly, get practicing,

get some feedback and you'll become a better English speaker

able to use those phrasal verbs more effectively.

Thank you very much Cambly.

Talking of phrasal verbs, let's get right in to number six.

Right, the next phrasal verb is to drag on,

to drag on, not a dragon like this,

but to drag on, to drag on.

The noun, a drag, is informal,

meaning something's very boring, right?

Oh, this class is a drag.

This book is a drag, it's boring.

To drag on means to last longer than necessary.

So you might say, for example,

if you're talking about the pandemic once more, oh,

the pandemic has dragged on for such a long time.

Dragged on, can you say that?

Dragged on, the pandemic has dragged on

for such a long time.

So here we're talking about now looking back.

So we use the present perfect.

You can also use the present perfect continuous.

The pandemic has been dragging on for such a long time,

right, both tenses are possible.

Often students ask me, well, which one is correct?

Very often, grammar is not about right or wrong.

It's about, what's the meaning you want to give?

And with the present perfect and present perfect continuous,

nine times out of 10, you can use both,

but the feeling is a bit different.

The pandemic has been dragging on, it's continuous.

There's a feeling of it's going continually going on and on.

There's a stronger feeling, but both are correct.

So, to drag on, we can talk about,

well, IELTS speaking part two, right?

Maybe you want to talk about a boring party.

The party dragged on for such a long time, right?

Or maybe a boring conversation.

The conversation dragged on for a long time.

Maybe it's a lesson or a meeting, the lesson dragged

on for ages, the meeting dragged on forever.

Lots of things you can talk about

in IELTS speaking part two.

Drag on, let's swiftly move on to the next phrasal verb.

Right, the next one is do away with something.

Now, you know, these words do away with, but all together,

do you know the meaning?

To do a way with something is to remove

or stop something or abolish something.

So it's usually talking about a law

or some kind of obligation.

So to do away with a law is to stop it,

to do away with a rule or do away with a tax

is to abolish it.

You can do away with any restriction, right?

To do away with something, to stop or abolish.

Be careful it's different from do away with somebody,

which means to kill somebody.

We're not talking about that.

We're talking about do away with something.

Now this is really good

because I think in IELTS speaking part three,

the examiner often asks you,

well, what do you think about this?

And often we talk about some kind of restriction,

maybe a law or a tax or something we have to do.

So you may say things like the following.

I wish we could do a way with face masks.

Talking about a law,

I think the government should do away with this law.

Talking about exams in education,

We should do away with exams forever.

Right, now an interesting thing to notice here

is you may be thinking, so should I say do away with

or abolish, which is better?

Well, why not use a trick of natural spoken English?

And the trick in natural spoken English is that we often

repeat the same phrase in a slightly different way, right?

Different from writing where we don't do that.

But in speaking we do 'cause the words disappear.

So we often repeat them.

So it be perfectly natural to say something like,

I think we should do away with exams.

The government should abolish them.

Great, kill two birds with one stone.

You're using the phrasal verb and a nice word,

but you're just repeating it.

Be careful not to do this too much, right?

Don't say, for example,

I think we should stop exams, should remove them.

Yes, let's do away with them.

The government should abolish them.

Which is just over the top, like it's too much,

but just two phrases, absolutely fine.

I think we should do away with exams.

The government should abolish them.

Perfect, great, let's move on.

Right, the next phrasal verb is all about well,

things that are expensive or cost a lot of money.

Now in English, there are a lot of phrases

we can use around things that are expensive.

It costs an arm and a leg, an arm and a leg.

It cost a fortune, and so on, right.

But a nice phrasal verb is, it set me back $20.

It set me back, it set me back.

Can you say that, it set me back.

Great, now notice it's not, I set back.

It's the thing I bought set me back, right?

This car set me back a few thousand pounds.

So it set me back means it cost me so much.

Normally the nuance is that it costs a lot of money.

If we use, it set me back $5.

The feeling is that $5 is expensive, it's too much.

Commonly we would say,

well, it's set me back a lot of money.

Right, I don't know, but English, people

are often reluctant to say how much things cost, right.

You know, you could say, oh,

look at this nice ergonomic mouse.

How much did that set you back?

Yeah, it set me back quite a bit.

No, but how much did it set you back?

Yeah, quite a lot.

We're just so reluctant to talk about money.

I know in some countries it's quite normal

and for some people it's fine, but for me,

I always found it strange living in China, for example,

where people would say, so how much do you earn?

Yeah, nice day, sun's coming out.

Very strange questions for me, but I got used to it.

So we can use this expression, right?

Talking about when things are expensive

or cost a lot of money.

It set me back a lot of money.

It set me back a fortune or except back a fair penny.

It's a nice British expression.

All of the meaning, it cost a lot.

Excellent, let's move on.

Okay, the next phrasal verb is to slip up.

Now to slip means to fall

because the ground is maybe smooth with water, icy,

or there's a banana peel there and you slip.

Notice the pronunciation, right?

It's /ɪ/, not /iː/ right, to slip.

If you sleep and you smile, when you smile,

then it's to sleep.

But this is to slip.

And the phrasal verb is to slip up.

Again, it's idiomatic.

It doesn't mean you fall up, which is quite difficult.

It means to make a mistake, to slip up.

Can you say, to slip up.

In the past, I slipped up, I slipped up.

Nice, so this is great because in IELTS speaking,

general conversations,

we talk about slipping up in work, in relationships,

talking about the government, right?

For example, you might say, the government has slipped up.

They've made a mistake.

I slipped up at work yesterday, I made a huge mistake.

I lost my manager's presentation.

Did you see the trick there I was doing?

I was repeating it twice, but saying it slightly different.

I slipped up at work, I made a huge mistake,

clever trick, right?

Or relationships, oh, I slipped up last week.

I forgot my wife's birthday.

So whilst mistakes are great, don't slip up too many times.

Let's move on to the last but not least phrasal verb.

Now, an extremely common topic in life,

and also in IELTS speaking,

which is a reflection of life, is books,

magazines, newspapers, photos, these topics come up a lot.

So I've got a great phrasal verb for you.

I'm gonna give you the old fashioned version

because I am a bit of a fuddy-duddy,

but also I'll give you the modern version to show you

that I'm not completely lost

or left behind in the 20th century, where I grew up.

So the phrasal verb is flick through.

Now we use that to talk about, for example,

reference books like this one, great book.

When you look through quite quickly, right?

I'm flicking through my grammar book.

Yesterday, I was flicking through this book.

You can flick through a book, flick through a magazine,

flick through a newspaper.

You can even flick through a photo album, right?

So that's nice to flick through.

So in IELTS speaking part two,

you may be asked to describe an article you read,

a piece of news or a photo.

So you could start by saying something like this.

I was flicking through the newspaper the other day

and I saw an article

about healthy eating, for example, right.

I was flicking through the newspaper the other day and,

and then talk about the piece of news

or the photo or whatever.

Nice hey, now for you digital natives out there,

I know that you read books and newspapers and photos.

You look at them on your phone or your tablet or computer.

So it won't be flicking through, right.

It'll be swiping through.

I was swiping through my Facebook feed the other day,

and I saw an interesting photo.

Let me tell you more, so to flick through

if you're a fuddy-duddy or to swipe through,

if you're a digital native, excellent.

Great, it's been a blast making this video

and I hope it can be useful for you too.

Wow, I've even managed to do my ironing at the same time.

If you've liked this, please do subscribe.

Turn on the notifications to find out about upcoming videos.

And two important things to tell you.

The first one, you can get and download a PDF

of these phrasal verbs from my website.

The links are in the description below.

And secondly, in order to use these phrasal verbs correctly

and effectively, you need to practice

and get feedback and you can do that on Cambly.

Cambly is a fantastic online platform

to practice your English with native English speakers.

And to get the feedback you need.

Remember if you're a first time user,

you can take a 10 minute free lesson to see if you like it.

And then if you sign up for a 12 month plan,

you get a 40% discount, amazing, go check it out.

Great platform, some very good teachers,

and you'll be able to practice your phrasal verbs

so that you can become

an even more natural English speaker.

Check out the links below to get the link to Cambly.

And that's it.

I will see you very shortly in the next video.

Take care my friend bye, bye.

(upbeat music)