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MAIRO VERGARA
ADVANCED PHRASAL VERBS COURSE

Transcript | Lesson 03
Hi, this is Melissa Falkner coming to you from Durham, North Carolina.
Today we’re going to talk about three phrasal verbs – ‘follow through’,
‘turn out’, ‘go through with’. And each of these phrasal verbs - they all
mean something kind of similar. Which is to complete or to finish
something. That could be an activity, an event, a task, a promise, an idea.
But in each case they mean to finish or to complete something until the
very end. So for each of these phrasal verbs I’m going to give three
sentences and then go through an explanation of how to use the phrasal
verb in a sentence.

So let’s get started with the first phrasal verb – ‘follow through’. Sentence
number 1:

Playing on the competitive soccer team was hard, but Sharon wanted
to follow through with the season.

So in this case, Sharon is playing on a Soccer team. It is competitive – that

meant that its hard. The players are very good, maybe the practices are
very hard. Maybe Sharon is thinking that she wants to quit this team –
that it’s a little harder than she thought it was going to be. But instead she
decides to ‘follow through’ with the season. Or she decides to continue
playing until the season is finished – until it’s over. Sentence number two:

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Kayla has not followed through on any of the art projects that she
started in class this school year.

So in this case, Kayla has started a number of projects. Maybe she started
a watercolor one and then didn’t like it so she stopped. Maybe she started
a crayon coloring but also got bored with it and so she stopped. So she
hasn’t finished any of her art projects. She’s started a lot of projects but
she hasn’t followed through until any of them are completed. Sentence
number three:

Jerry knew that he wasn’t able to throw the ball very far because he
wasn’t able to follow through with his left arm.

Now in this case ‘follow through’ means something a little bit different. It
means to complete a motion. So in this case, he’s playing baseball. He
wants to see if he can throw the ball far. But since he’s not able to follow
through, he’s not able to complete the motion like he should. So he can’t
throw the ball very far. He wasn’t able to follow through.

Let’s go ahead and move on to our second phrasal verb: ‘turn out’. Now
‘turn out’ means that something finishes or something completes the way
that you thought it would. So if something turns out the way you thought
it would, it finishes or it completes the way you had thought in your mind
that it would finish or complete. So let’s go to our sentences for some
examples. Sentence number one:

After it rained all day, Kyle new that his outdoor birthday party
wasn’t going to turn out how he hoped it would.

So in this case, Kyle has been planning a birthday party. He maybe had

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thoughts in his mind about how the birthday party was going to turn out,
how it was going to look, how his friends were going to feel, what
activities were going to happen. But then it started to rain and when it
rains and you have an outdoor birthday party you know it’s either going to
be cancelled or its going to be moved inside. So in this case, things didn’t
turn out the way that Kyle thought. They didn’t finish the way that Kyle
thought that they would. Sentence number two:

When the wedding was over, Justine felt like everything turned out
much better than her mother said it would.

So in this case, Justine is getting married, she’s been planning a wedding.

When you plan a wedding there’s lots of different things to think about –
the food, the band, the invitations, the ceremony - all of these things that
have to come together. Justine had been thinking about them in her mind
and had been picturing them and thought that when their wedding was
over she had an idea of what it might look like. So in this case, Justine was
very happy because everything turned out the way she thought it would. It
was completed the way that she thought it was going to be completed.
Sentence number three:

Jamie and Sam only invited 25 people to their house to watch the
game but 50 people turned out.

So in this case ‘turned out’ has a little bit different meaning. In this case it
means how many people show up to something. If they say that 50 people
turned out that means that 50 people showed up. So when the event was
over, when it was completed, when it was finished, they could count and

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say that 50 people had turned out. So they had only invited 25 people but
50 people actually ended up coming.

Let’s move on to our next phrasal verb: ‘go through with’. Now again, ‘go
through with’ means that something comes to completion or something
goes all the way to the end until its finished. So let’s start with sentence
number one:

Caleb decided to go through with the airplane trip to Hawaii even

though he didn’t like flying.

So in this case, Caleb is going on a trip to Hawaii, he’s probably very

excited about the trip except that he doesn’t like to fly on planes. So he
has to decide – do I not go on the trip because I don’t like to fly or do I deal
with flying because I really want to go on this trip to Hawaii. So in this
case he does decide to go through with the trip because he’s really excited
about going to Hawaii. He completes the airplane trip in order to get to
Hawaii. Sentence number two:

Even though she is nervous, Janie decided to go through with the

performance on stage because she signed up two months ago.

So in this case Janie is performing on stage. This could be – she’s playing

the piano, she’s doing a dance, she’s doing something that’s going to be on
stage in front of an audience. So you can imagine she’s feeling kind of
nervous, she’s a little bit anxious. Maybe she’s even thinking about
backing out and not doing it. She’s going to stay home because she’s so
nervous. But she decides to go through with the performance because she
already signed up two months ago. She feels an obligation to continue to

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perform. And so she goes through with the performance or she completes
the performance. Sentence number three:

Yessica was right in the middle of a terrible headache but had to go

through with the weekly meeting in her boss’s office.

So in this case, Yessica has already planned a meeting with her boss.
Maybe it’s a meeting that they have every week. She’s really feeling like
she needs to go to this meeting because it’s her boss. And probably her job
depends on it but she’s got this really terrible headache so she has decided
again – do I stay in my office and rest because I have a headache or do I go
to the meeting with my boss? So probably she decides that going to the
meeting with her boss is a better decision. So she goes through with the
meeting, she completes the meeting even though she has a headache.

So as you can see, each of these phrasal verbs: ‘follow through’, ‘turned
out’, ‘go through with’ – each of them have a slightly similar meeting in
that you are completing something or you are finishing something until
the very end. So in all of these cases you can kind of think of ‘what would
it be like if this thing was finished’ I hope these explanations have helped
you understand these phrasal verbs and I hope to have the chance to talk
to you about some more phrasal verbs in the future. Thanks.

MAIRO VERGARA ADVANCED PHRASAL VERBS COURSE