How to use LOOK in English - Not as easy as it looks!

Look, you've got to stop whining.

No wonder your wife left you.

I'm paying you to help me, not attack me.

Wipe your tears.

You look pathetic.

Look is one of the most common words in the English language.

The reason why it's used so frequently

is that it's got more than one meaning.

In today's lesson, we're going to look at the main uses of the word.

Look.

Let's get started.

Watch this scene and pay attention to the different ways the word look is used.

So I went inside my house.

I closed the door and I stayed in for six days.

I don't know what's wrong with me.

Look, I'm going to show you some images.

Tell me the first thing that you think of.

What does this look like?

I see a wolf.

It looks scary.

Okay. Hmm.

Now, what do you see here?

It looks like my face.

Interesting.

Look at this.

What does this look like?

It reminds me of a family holiday when I was a kid.

It looks as if my mum has just sat in wet paint.

Hmm. Look,

you clearly have some issues.

The first meaning of this verb is to direct your eyes

in order to see something.

Look at this.

Notice that it is commonly used

with the preposition ‘at’ if it's followed by the object.

But you can follow ‘Look’ with many prepositions that indicate a direction.

So here Jay is looking forward.

Now he's looking back.

Here he's looking up.

Now down.

And finally he's looking away.

The second

meaning of this verb is to appear or seem.

What does this look like?

I see a wolf.

It looks scary.

Notice that the verb look is followed directly by an adjective.

Jay looks very serious.

He looks cross or angry.

But when we have a noun or pronoun, we say look like.

What does this look like?

It looks like my face.

Jay looks like a superhero.

We can also say look or looks like before a phrase.

In this case, we can also use look as if or look as though.

They all mean the same thing.

It looks as if my mum has just sat in wet paint.

Jay looks like he's been in a fight.

He looks as though he got beaten up.

And finally, we also use the verb

look when we want to tell someone to be careful or pay attention.

Look, you clearly have some issues.

In this case, we don't want the listener to physically look at something,

but we want them to pay attention to the point we're making.

Quiz Time.

Watch this scene and decide which form of look is correct.

And now I don't know if they even want me there at all.

What should I do?

Are you listening?

Wh...

What are you___ What are you looking at?

Look, you've got to stop whining.

No wonder your wife left you.

I'm paying you to help me, not attack me.

Wipe your tears.

You look pathetic.

But my life is a mess.

Oh, it's lunch time.

It____ we're done for the day.

See you next week.

It looks like we're done for the day.

See you next week.

Did you get everything right?

Let us know in the comments if you can think of more ways to use the word look.

This is still only a few uses of the word look.

If you want to know more, check out our next video.

We're going to show you lots of ways to use the word in phrasal verbs.

Definitely something to look forward to.

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Bye now.