Learn 23 Essential English School Phrasal Verbs

Welcome to English class. In today's lesson, you will learn 23 important phrasal verbs that are related to school but can be helpful in other situations in your daily English conversations as well. Let's get started. Drop out. Another way we say this is to flunk out. If you drop out or flunk out of a class or school, it means you have failed. It means you are no longer enrolled in the class. And that you have basically quit or gotten such bad grades that you are no longer in the class. Tim dropped out of school after the 11th grade. Her grades were so bad that she flunked out before the end of the semester. Fall behind. If you fall behind in a course, it means that you are not on track. You do not have up-to-date assignments. And maybe you haven't learned as quickly as the other members of your class or your course. Sometimes in the United States, children will fall behind so badly in school that they will need to repeat a grade or repeat a year of school. Donald fell behind in his math class because he was sick for two whole weeks. Call on. If you are sitting in a classroom, oftentimes the teacher will have you raise your hands if you know the answer. And he or she will call on a person in the class to speak and say their answer. When you call on someone, it means you ask them to speak. The teacher called on Mark, but he was not paying attention and he did not know the answer. Turn in. If you take a class online or in person, you can use the phrasal verb turn in to mean that you have given your assignment to the teacher to be graded. If you turn in an assignment online, oftentimes you will attach a PDF. If you turn in an assignment in person, it means you will give the teacher your paper that you have written on. Cynthia turned in her assignment early. It was not due until Friday, but she brought her paper to the teacher on Thursday. We use two different words to say that a teacher is giving you a piece of paper or giving you the assignment that you need to take. We either say hand out or pass out. Now, these phrasal verbs can be used in different ways, but in this context, if a teacher hands out an assignment, it means he or she gives the papers to the class that have the assignment on it. We also sometimes call that piece of paper that has been given to the entire class a handout. I had to print handouts for my entire English class. Another way that we say this is the teacher passed out all of the papers. Now, don't confuse this with passing out and falling on the ground if you are ill or if you suddenly become sick. The teacher handed out safety goggles for every member of the class to use during the science experiment. After the teacher passed out the papers, the students began the test. This phrasal verb, skim through, is useful in many different contexts. If you are reading something quickly but not entirely, you are just skimming through it. If you want to say that you looked at a few pages or just a few different sentences of something you were supposed to read, you can say, I just skimmed through it really quick, but I'll read it entirely later. Jonathan did not do well on the test because he had just skimmed through his notes without actually studying them. Sometimes we will not say this full phrasal verb. Sometimes we'll just say, I skimmed the reading last night. That means you read it quickly, but again, not entirely or thoroughly. As a language learner, you will oftentimes have to look up a word. If you look up something, you go research it. So if you're unsure of a word, you will often find a dictionary and look it up. If you need somebody's phone number, you might go to your address book or go to your cell phone and look up their phone number. So anytime you are trying to find information, you are looking it up. I had to look up the capital of Germany because I was unsure. I had to look up the capital of Spain because I didn't know if it was Madrid or Valencia. Go over. To go over something means to review it. Oftentimes, teachers will go over concepts that students have already learned. It's a good idea to go over your notes before you have to take a test. So to go over something means to read it again, learn it again, or do it again. Students will go over the safety procedure in case there is a fire. If you need to learn something, you need to study up on it. You can also say read up on it. If you have a conversation with someone and they say, have you heard of the Hubble telescope? And you don't know much about it, you can say, no, I need to study up on it. Or you can say, no, I would like to read up on it. Our teacher made us study up on all of the planets in the solar system. To wise up. To become wise means to become smart. Oftentimes, we'll use the phrasal verb wise up to mean that someone has gotten smarter or they've learned more about things in life. So now they make better decisions. In college, there were people that would take the tests from the years prior and give them to other students so that they would have the answers. Oftentimes, the professors wise up and they change the test. So this means that they learn from students that were cheating and they did something better. They wised up. Go over. Go over means the exact same thing as to review something. I will often go over common grammar mistakes with my students because even though they've already learned them, it's important to go over them. This means it's important to review them. A common way to ask a teacher to review something for you or to explain it again is can you go over that? That means can you review that concept? If you want to say that you have just explained something very briefly or you've just given a short explanation, even though there's a lot of information about something, you can say that you touched on something. We only touch on world history when we're in school because there are so many different countries in the world that it would be impossible to go in depth about every single subject. So we only touch on Russian history. We only touch on the French Revolution. Topics like this have so much information that we can only touch on them. Slack off. If you have slacked off, it means that you are too relaxed and you are being lazy. I was supposed to study for a test yesterday, but I was just slacking off and watching Netflix. This means that I was being lazy and not doing what I was supposed to be doing. Teachers will often get irritated with the students that slack off and do not study hard. Put off. If you are slacking off, you are often putting off what you are supposed to be doing. Procrastinating and putting off something mean the exact same thing. If you don't want to do something, so you keep saying you're going to do it later, you are putting it off. It's never a good idea to put off your homework until the last minute. This means that you should do your homework early rather than the day before it is due. If you are sick and you miss a day of school or you miss a day of class, you will often have to make up the work that you missed. If you make up something, it means you do it at a later date. Oftentimes, if you have missed a day of school or a day of class, they will have something called a makeup exam. This means a test that you can take that replicates the test that was in class, but it's at a later date because you missed it for an important reason. I forgot to do my homework, so my teacher made me make it up during reset. If you fall behind in a class, you will often have to catch up on the work. So it's kind of like making up the work, but instead of doing it at a later time, you're just trying to work faster so you can be at the same point that the whole class is at. Oftentimes, if you need to learn something very quickly, you could say, I fell behind on my reading, but tonight I am going to spend extra time and catch up with the book. This means you are going to catch up on the pages that you are behind on. If you are in a class and a teacher wants you to start writing something, the teacher will say, take down notes or take down this sentence into your notebook. To take down something means to write it on paper. If there is a topic in school that the teacher is going to skip and they're not going to teach you about, they can use the phrasal verb skip over. We are going to skip over this chapter in the history book because you will not need to know it for the test. So to skip over something means to take it out completely and not do it. If you've ever read a good book and you want to know what happens at the end of the book, you might jump ahead to the last page. Or if you are waiting in a line, you might jump ahead to the front. This means you, you know, walk to the front of the line and skip everybody who was waiting in the line. So oftentimes when we're reading and learning, we'll jump ahead, meaning we'll start learning more advanced topics. Or you can physically jump ahead by moving forward. It's important if you go to a class or a school to sign up for extra things. If you sign up for something, it means that you register for the event or the club and you give them your information so that you can be a part of it. When I was in school, I signed up for many different sports within the school. Instead of getting bad grades or choosing to leave school, you might get kicked out if you have bad behavior. So children with very poor behavior or children who do something bad in school will get kicked out. If you are at a restaurant or a bar or a club and you have bad behavior, you might get kicked out of that club or that restaurant. Finally, oftentimes in school, when we think of things in our head and we mistake two things, we mix two things up. So you could say, I always mix up the two words dessert and desert when I'm spelling them. This means that you mistakenly use the wrong word when you're spelling. Thank you so much for watching this English lesson with me. My name is Kayla. I'm an American English teacher. Please subscribe for more lessons that will help you speak like a native English speaker. And make sure to check out one of the lessons on screen to practice your conversation skills with me in English. I'll see you in the next video. Goodbye.