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Or visit bbclearningenglish .com Hello and welcome to 6 Minute Grammar. I'm Finn.
And I'm Catherine. And today we're talking about phrasal verbs and prepositional verbs.
Yes, we'll explain what they are and how you use them.
We'll have lots of examples and of course we'll finish with a quiz.
but first let's listen to mary she's a lifestyle coach and she has some advice for us about friends and friendship and listen out for the answer to this question what do psychologists say that it's important to do how often do you and your friends get together in our busy lives today it's easy to let our friends down by putting off social arrangements or even forgetting to ring them up.
Yet our friends are the people who stand by us when we need support.
So while it's great to keep up with people on social media, psychologists point out that it's really important to make time to meet up together too.
So that was Mary. And we asked, what do psychologists say that it's important to do?
And the answer is, they say, it's important for us and our friends to meet up.
And I think they mean face to face.
What do you think, Finn?
They do. Face to face, meeting up is the best thing, they say.
And there's our first phrasal verb, meet up.
Yes, meet up. Now, a phrasal verb is a two -word verb made of a verb plus a little word like in, on, out or up.
We usually think of in, on, out and up as prepositions, but in phrasal verbs they behave more like adverbs.
They do. In this phrasal verb, meet up, the adverb up modifies the meaning of the verb meet.
Meet and meet up are very similar in meaning, but the adverb sometimes does more than that.
Listen to this clip.
Psychologists point out that it's really important to make time to meet up together too.
Right, we heard the phrasal verb point out there, but it doesn't mean the same as the verb point.
Point out means to say something interesting or unusual or useful, and the adverb changes the meaning significantly.
It does. Now listen out for more phrasal verbs in this clip.
In our busy lives today, it's easy to let our friends down by putting off social arrangements or even forgetting to ring them up.
Now, if we let our friends down, it means that we don't help or support them.
And when we put off arrangements, we cancel or delay them.
And if we ring people up, we phone them.
And those are interesting phrasal verbs because when they have an object, we can put the object either between the verb and the adverb or we can put it after the adverb.
Like this. We can let our friends down or we can let down our friends.
You wouldn't let your friends down.
I never let my friends down, Catherine.
Or my colleagues. And we can put off arrangements or put arrangements off.
We can, but be careful.
If the object is a pronoun, you have to put it in the middle.
For example, you have to say ring them up.
Yeah, don't say ring up them.
No, don't say that.
Now, one more clip.
Can you spot any more phrasal verbs?
Yet our friends are the people who stand by us when we need support.
Well, we just heard stand by us and you're probably wondering why the pronouns at the end of the verb because we just said you can't put pronouns at the end.
But standby is a slightly different type of verb because by isn't an adverb.
It's a preposition.
That's right. In some two -word verbs, the second word, such as by, with, into or on, behaves like a preposition, not an adverb.
And in these verbs, the object or object pronoun always comes after the preposition.
OK. So, Mary said that it's great to keep up with people on social media.
And keep up with means keep in contact with and it's a phrasal verb made of three parts.
A verb, keep, plus an adverb, up, plus a preposition, with.
That's right. And with phrasal verbs with three parts, the object always comes at the end.
We keep up with people.
And it's time for a quiz.
Number one. Is this sentence correct or wrong?
She took her coat off, hung it up and sat down.
That's correct. Number two.
Correct or wrong, we keep with each other up by phone and email.
And that one's wrong.
I know. Sounds horrible.
The correct sentence is we keep up with each other by phone and email.
So, number three. I turned down the job because it was too far away.
Now, the question is, can you also say, A, I turned down it or B, I turned it down?
Well, this time you can say, B – I turned it down.
You can. And very good if you got those right at home.
There's more about this at bbclearningenglish .com.
So, join us again soon for more 6 Minute Grammar.
Bye.