TEST Your English Vocabulary with These Common Phrasal Verbs

Welcome to JForrest English. I'm Jennifer.  And today, you're going to add 10 very common  

phrasal verbs to your vocabulary that  you can use every single day. But first,  

i'm going to test you to see how well you know,  these phrasal verbs and then I'll explain each  

one in detail. Let's get started, question  1, we should the party with some karaoke.

Now I'm only going to give you three seconds  to answer. So feel free to hit pause,  

take as much time as you need, and when  you're ready, hit play to see the answer.

We should kick off question to you. Don't need  to your team, I've heard great things about them.

Talk up question, 3. Make sure your  team doesn't while the CEO is here.

Horace, the round question for it, really,  when Jeremy took credit for my work,

Ticked me off question five. He's  been since he lost the contract.

moping around questions thinks we're on  a tight budget, but we have enough to

To get by question 7. The expense  reports have been since Sarah left.

Piling up question, eight. I've learned to my  mother when she gives me relationship advice.

Tune out. Question 9. She used to  be very serious but she's a bit.

Loosened up question, 10. My boss is going  to when she learns we lost the account.

Flip out. So how did you do with that quiz? Don't  worry if it was difficult because now I'm going  

to explain every phrasal verb in detail. Let's  get started. Number one to tune out. This is  

a very useful phrasal verb because is used  to say, you stop listening to someone, you  

stop paying attention to them because you don't  like what they're saying, basically, so you to

Someone out, this is something that kids do all  the time with their parents, right? If your parent  

is giving you advice and you don't want to hear  it, you just tune them out. So your parent is  

talking but you're just not really listening. So  you might say, I always tune out my mom when she  

gives me relationship advice. Now, this can also  happen a lot in a workplace situation. Let's say

The co-worker that sits beside you is just a very

negative

person and complains a lot. You might just  simply tune them out so you stop listening  

to them because you don't want to hear  all that negativity and complaining. So  

you just tune them out there talking  but you're not listening. Number two  

to take off. This is a useful one because  it means to annoy to anger or to irritate

Now, we use this into very specific  sentence structures. It ticks  

someone off. It takes me off  when my coworker doesn't help,  

so it takes someone off and then you explain the  situation that causes the anger, the frustration,  

or the irritation. Now, the other sentence  structure is just to say someone or something.

Ticks me off. John really ticks me off. He's  so - John really irritates me. Frustrates me,  

annoys me John really ticks me off.  He's so - but I just tune him out.  

Number three to talk up and you  talked someone or something up.  

And that means you speak in a way that makes that  someone or something sound really beneficial.

Really positive, really amazing, maybe  even more so than the reality. So,  

let's say you're in sales and you're  trying to sell this piece of software to a

company.

Will you're going to talk up that software?  You're going to talk about that software in  

a way that really highlights. All of  its positive features and you probably  

won't mention any negative features.  You're going to talk it up or let's say

Say that you're really close friend applied for a  job in your company. Well, you're probably going  

to talk up your friend. You're going to speak  about your friend, very enthusiastically, very  

positively because you want your friend to get the  job, you're going to talk up your friend number  

four to pile up. This means simply to increase in  amount and we generally use this with work. So,

General. You could say work is really  piling up. Work is increasing in amount.  

You can use this with specific work so you  might say my expense reports are piling up  

or even with household chores you might  say the laundry is piling up the dirty  

dishes are piling up they're increasing  in amount number five to mope around.

You to mope around. This is when someone moves  from one location to another but they do it in a  

very unhappy way, a lazy way, a disappointed way.  And it's generally because something is wrong,  

something specific is wrong. So maybe  they just lost their job or they just

broke

up with their girlfriend. So they'd mope around  

the house. All day. They go  from the couch to the kid.

Shin back to the couch but they look really  upset and lazy and no energy. So this isn't  

really a positive thing. We generally  say stop moping around. You need to  

stop moping around and start looking  for a job. If that's the reason why  

you're moping around because you lost your  job, stop moping around and look for a job.

Number six to loosen up. This is a  great one. It means to be more relaxed,  

more comfortable, or less serious. So,  you might say she was very shy at first,  

but then she loosened up. So she  became more relaxed. More comfortable.  

Now, we often use this as advice to someone,  if someone is just being too serious, you

Might say loosen up loosen up, it's  similar to sing. Relax a little relaxed,  

a little loosen up. You need to  loosen up. Oh, just loosen up.  

Number seven to kick off. This is a great  one because when you kick something off,  

it means you start. But we use this in the  context of a sports event. A meeting, a con,

Friends or even a party. So some sort of

event

with people. So, when Sports is very common to say  the game, the match kicks off at and then you say,  

the time the match kicks off at 3:00,  the game kicks off at 7:00 and that's  

just when the game starts. Now you could  also say let's kick off the meeting by

Bye. And then you can explain how you're going to  start the meeting. Let's kick off the meeting by  

introducing the new CFO or let's kick off the  meeting by sharing. The good news number 8,  

this is a fun one to horse around  when you force around you behave  

in a silly or noisy way. So basically what  children do all the time they Horse Around

You might say, the kids were horsing around and  they broke my favorite vaes now. Although, this  

is commonly used in children, it can, of course,  be used for adults as well, because adults act in  

silly and noisy ways all the time, right? Even in  workplace context. So, you might be talking about  

how your team is constantly horsing around.  And as a bonus, you can also say goof around

round. It's an alternative but they're both  very commonly used so horse around or goof  

around number 9 to get by. This is when you  have just enough money to live on but not

very

much extra. So you can basically pay  all your bills and that's about it.  

So you might say sense, our Twins were  born, it's been more difficult to get by

You have two new babies in the house.  Well, first congratulations. But of course,  

that's very expensive. So now you only have  enough money to pay your bills to buy the  

food by the diapers by the groceries,  pay your mortgage things like that,  

we're getting by, we're getting by, you're  just surviving so if someone knows you're  

going through a tough time financially maybe  you lost your job and they ask you, how's it?

Going is everything okay? You could say well  I'm getting by I'm getting by which lets them  

know you're surviving, you have enough to pay all  your core expenses and finally number 10. So flip  

out. Now this can mean to become very excited  but it can also mean to become very angry or  

agitated so is when you have a very strong  emotion, but that emotion can be positive.

Excitement, or it can be negative anger, and  it will be obvious based on context. So if  

you just won a competition or a prize or the  lottery, you might flip out and become very,  

very excited, right? The sports team  flipped out when they won the gold

medal

or the team flipped out when

When they lost the game, the team became very  angry so you can use it in both situations and  

for this expression, you can also say, freak out,  freak out flip out, they mean the same and again  

positive excitement or negative anger. So now  that you're more comfortable with these phrasal  

verbs. How about we do that exact same quiz  again so you can see how much you've improved

Proved. So here are the questions hit pause,  

take as much time as you need. And when  you're ready, hit play to see the answers.

Here are the answers, go ahead and  hit pause and figure out how you did.

So was your score a lot higher the second time,  I'm sure it was and make sure you download your  

free speaking guide where I share six tips on how  to speak English, fluently and confidently, you  

can download it from my website right here and you  can get started with your next lesson right now.