Hey everybody, welcome to another phrasal verb episode.
I hope you're all doing great.
I hope that you've enjoyed these phrasal verb episodes so far.
And I want to remind you that these phrasal verb episodes are really extra listening practice for you, because you're doing the same thing that you're doing with my normal episodes.
You're listening to me speaking completely in English in a natural way, just a little slower and a little more clearly.
But you're listening.
You're doing your listening practice.
And, of course, the link to the transcript for English.
Each of these episodes is in the description below the episode.
So just treat these phrasal verb episodes as extra listening practice, just like the normal episodes.
And the bonus element of this type of episode, these phrasal verb episodes, is that, in addition to practicing your listening, you're also getting some phrasal verb practice.
You're hearing me repeat these different phrasal verbs many times.
So you're practicing your listening while also learning phrasal verbs, without even really realizing it.
It's just in a natural way.
All right, so in today's phrasal verb episode, we're gonna look at two phrasal verbs.
The first one is amp up. and the second one is answer for.
So amp up, what does this mean?
Well, when we amp someone up because we usually use this with a person when you amp someone up, you make that person feel excited and energetic.
So, for example, the performer amped up the crowd.
We like to use this phrasal verb in situations where there's a crowd of people, for example.
It doesn't need to be in that context, but That's probably the most common context in which you'll hear amp up.
And another important thing about this phrasal verb is that it's often used as an adjective.
So, for example, you can say, he was really amped up.
So that's a very common way to use this phrasal verb.
So that's amp up.
And how about answer for?
So when someone has to answer for something, this means that that person is held responsible for a problem or they're punished for a problem.
So it's like saying that they take the responsibility for the problem and and the consequences or the punishment for having caused that problem.
So for example, it seems like corrupt politicians never have to answer for their crimes.
So this sentence means that it seems like these corrupt politicians never really face the consequences of having committed crimes.
They're never held responsible for them.
They just get away with committing these crimes and nothing happens to them.
Okay.
So that's answer four.
All right.
Now I'm going to talk about two different things.
I'll give like two different stories almost.
And I'll include these two phrasal verbs.
And you'll hear them repeated.
Okay?
So the first thing I wanted to talk about is a really important high school basketball game.
So...
This is kind of fiction, but kind of not.
I did go to many basketball games when I was in high school, but I'm kind of using a little bit of fiction here to tell the story better.
So this was a varsity basketball game.
Varsity refers to the highest level of high school sports.
I never played on a varsity team when I was in high school.
I only played on JV or junior varsity when I played basketball.
But I'm talking here about a varsity basketball game that I went to.
Our school's varsity basketball team was playing against our rivals for the league title.
This just means that we were competing with them to see who was going to be number one in our league.
And we had never won this title before.
So for that reason...
Everyone was super amped up for this game because it was our first opportunity to win a league title.
And it was against our rivals, meaning the team, the school that was like our enemy, our worst enemy.
So you can imagine that situation.
Everyone was super amped up for this game.
It's the only thing that people could talk about for the couple weeks leading up to this game.
When we say the time leading up to, an event, we're saying the time right before this event.
So in the couple weeks leading up to this game, people were super amped up.
People were really excited for this basketball game and this is the only thing that people talked about.
During this game, the cheerleaders were doing their best to get the crowd really excited.
Get us going, as we say, get us excited and energetic and get people amped up.
They had a lot of new cheers, as we say.
Kind of like mini songs that they sing while they dance, and we kind of chant these words with them.
So all these things that the cheerleaders did were getting the people amped up and, In all honesty, I had never seen my peers.
The word peer refers to, in this context, your fellow students, the other students that are with you.
Or, in another context, it could mean your colleagues or people in your field, your domain, who are with you.
So I had never seen my peers so amped up about a sporting event.
This was probably the most excited and energetic that I had ever seen my classmates and my peers experience.
So it was a really big deal.
And one of my favorite parts about basketball games in high school.
I really liked this when I played basketball.
I loved the warm up music.
This music that gets people amped up and gets people ready for the game and it gets the players ready for the game.
So it's music that has a very energetic rhythm to it.
It just gets people amped up.
So it amps up all the spectators, gets us ready to cheer for the players and it amps up all the players to get ready to actually play.
Well, and so the game was very hard.
It was a difficult game against our rivals and most of the game We were trailing behind.
When one team trails or trails behind another team, this means that they are losing to them.
They are behind.
They don't have as many points as the other team.
So we trailed them for most of the game.
There were a few instances when we kind of closed the gap, as we say.
We got closer to them in terms of points, but we trailed behind for basically the whole game.
But then towards the end we went on a 15 point run, which means we scored 15 points and they didn't score any points during that time period.
So we were able to catch up And then in the last couple of minutes we were tied, basically.
And everyone was amped up.
We were all cheering our team on.
And thankfully, we were able to win in the last couple of minutes.
We were able to score more than them.
And it was an amazing victory overall.
It was our first league title, the first time we won our league.
So it was an amazing experience, that high school basketball game.
All right, that was the first story.
Now let me talk a little bit about another experience that I had in school.
And this one is also kind of fiction, but kind of not.
It's based on real events or possible events, but I'm adding some fiction here.
And that is the time that some students, peers or classmates of mine got in trouble in our eighth grade science class.
And that class was not very interesting, to be honest.
And I think for that reason, many students misbehaved.
And this is common in middle school.
Eighth grade is usually middle school in the U.S.
I think that this is the time when students are maybe at their worst in terms of behavior.
Eighth graders misbehave all the time in the U.S. at least.
So I remember one student had really disruptive behavior in that class.
He disrupted the class and distracted people.
And he had to answer for his behavior, right?
It's not like he was able to just do this and get away with it.
By the way, when you get away with something...
This means that you don't get punished for something.
You're able to do it without consequences.
So it's not like you can just get away with this behavior, not have to answer for your behavior when you act like that.
No, he had to answer for his behavior and he would constantly get in trouble and the teacher would constantly scold him, meaning that he would talk to him in a harsh way and tell him that he was being bad, etc.
He was made to answer for his behavior and the teacher would actually ask him in front of all of us why do you act like this?
Why are you like this?
Why do you constantly cause so many problems in this class?
And the teacher would always look for an explanation from the student, and the student could never give a good explanation.
But, of course, he was made to answer for his bad behavior and he had detention a lot.
This is where you have to stay after class and stay there for maybe 30 minutes or an hour, while everyone else is already gone.
That's detention.
So he got in trouble, but he always acted like this.
I don't know why.
Another student in that class broke a microscope when we were doing a science project and he had to answer for this for sure.
And he... actually had to work to pay for this microscope.
So that microscope was expensive.
And so when he broke it, it wasn't like he was just able to get away with it and not have to answer for that action.
No, he actually had to do some work for that teacher in order to earn the money to pay for that broken microscope.
He had to answer for that.
When you're careless in those situations, you usually have to answer for your carelessness.
You have to answer for those mistakes.
So that was the case with that student.
And then another student broke his classmate's phone.
I remember this during a science project we were doing.
He was being careless, just like that other student, and he ended up breaking his other classmate's phone and he was made to answer for that damage that he caused.
And I think this is always the case in these situations.
People are made to answer for damage that they cause.
If you cause damage to someone's property, their possession, you have to answer for this.
You face the consequences and you often have to pay that money to repair the device or whatever.
You don't just get away with it, right?
That student was being reckless.
Reckless is like another way of saying like you're careless, you're not thinking about the consequences, you're doing things that are irresponsible without thinking about the consequences.
So he was being reckless while he was doing the science project.
It was completely his fault and so he had to answer for his recklessness.
He had to actually pay for a new phone for his classmate and of course he was only in eighth grade so he didn't have a lot of money, but he had to work so that his parents would give him that money to pay for his classmate's phone.
So So he also had to answer for his behavior and he also had to work to pay for that damage.
Okay, that was the second story.
I hope that while I told these stories, you were able to hear these phrasal verbs repeated again and again, and that you feel more comfortable with them now.
And I want to remind you that you should start using my advanced podcast episodes on So you can practice with real English spoken fast.
If you want those episodes, the link to sign up is down below in the episode description below this episode.
And you can also sign up for my U.S.
Conversations podcast in which I talk to people from all over the country.
And you can use that to start to practice listening to two people talking in and not just one.
So it's really important to eventually be able to understand conversations that other people have in English.
So both of those links are down below.
All right, thank you for listening to this phrasal verb episode and I'll talk to you in the next one.
