Learn phrasal verbs to improve your conversational English! I "call on you" to learn these common expressions that you can use in your personal, social, and professional life. I'll teach you these phrasal verbs in a fun way, with many examples, so that you remember them and will be able to start using them right after the lesson.
Looking for more phrasal verb lessons? Watch my lesson on phrasal verbs with 'set' next:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EJqq9hBQjs
TRANSCRIPT
Hi. Welcome back to www.engvid.com. I'm Adam. Today's lesson is, again, a phrasal lesson, a phrasal verbs lesson. We're going to look at the verb "call". And again, a phrasal verb is a verb plus a preposition that together sometimes have meanings completely different than the words themselves. Okay?
So, which ones are we going to look at today? We're going to look at "call on". Sometimes you will hear people say: "Call upon". More or less the same usage. "Call up", "call back", "call for", "call in", "call off", "call to"-and this is a little different because you always need something else here, but I'll show you that-"call into"-also you need something at the end here, because by itself it doesn't really work-and "on call".
Now, "on call" is not a phrasal verb. In fact, it's not a verb at all. This is actually a situation. So, I'm going to start with this one. So, for example, "on call" is when you're available at any time for a certain position. So, for example, if I'm a doctor or a nurse, at some point in my career, usually at the beginning, I will have a lot of on-call work, meaning that I have to be ready. Anytime somebody calls, I have to go to the hospital and do the work. A lot of jobs, for example, waitresses or even retail jobs, they give you an on-call position. It means it's not part time, it's not full time, it's on call. When they need you, they will call you, you will go to work right away. When they need you again, you'll go back. So, it's... Could be used as an adjective or a noun. A noun as the situation, "on call" to describe your position.
Okay, let's get to the verbs. "Call on". So, if I call on you for help, that means I'm asking you for help. So, you call on someone to help you do something. You also "call upon", but this is not necessarily a person. You can call upon your wits, you can call upon your intelligence. It means you want to draw. So you're asking your brain to give you the tools you need to do something. So, this job is going to... Is going to call on all our energy, all our brains, all our confidence to do this job. So that's "call on". Okay?
Okay, let's go to the next one. Excuse me. "Call up". A few meanings to this one. One is just telephone. "Oh, yeah, I'll see you next week. I'll call you up sometime and we'll go out for a drink." Okay? So you can say: "Call someone" or you can "call someone up", basically means the same thing. But in sports or in the military, it has a different use. In sports it's a promotion. So, many professional teams, they have the amateur teams or the semi-professional teams that their youngest... Their young athletes play there, and when they get good enough, they're called up to the big team, to the professional team. So, for example, in hockey you have your NHL teams, your professional league teams, you have your farm teams. This is the... We call these the "farm teams". Okay? That's the ones that are just learning, they are young guys, they are trying to get up to the major leagues or the major teams. So, you call them up. They've done well, they're called up to the next level. In military, some countries, they have a draft. It means that they pick out young people to become soldiers and go to war. So, when they draft them, they're calling them up. Okay? They're out of high school or college, or whatever the situation, and they're called up to serve. It means they're going to the army. Okay.
So now we're going to look at "call back". So, of course, there's always: "Hey, come back." So you're calling out to somebody, asking them to come back, to return. And the same thing you can do with a telephone call. I call somebody at their office, let's say, the person is not available, out to lunch or away from the office or in a meeting, and I leave a message and I say: "Can you please ask him or her to call me back?" Basically, return my phone call. Okay. Now, another common use of "call back" is when you have an interview or audition. So, an "audition" is when an actor goes to try to get a part in a movie, or a TV show, or a play, whatever. So they go for an audition, they go to show what they can do. Now, if they are called back, that means they are invited to a second audition. Or in an interview, they're invited to a second interview.
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