Hello and I'm here with

welcome to the English we speak, where we explain phrases used by fluent English speakers

so that you can use them too.

I'm Fay Faye and I'm here with Phil.

Hello, how are you Fay Faye, you look tired?

Oh, that's a bit rude.

Although it is true, I have a new neighbor.

Every time I try to go to sleep, my neighbor cranks up the volume of his

music. It's driving me crazy. Oh no! But that does give us a phrasal verb to learn in this program.

Crank up, it can mean turn up, but can you tell us a bit more about it?

Yes, so it might actually help if you think about an old machine. A crank is a handle that you

turn to make something happen. When we use crank up we mean to increase the intensity of something like the

volume on my neighbor's speakers. And it's not just volume it can be the intensity of

anything we often use it metaphorically so you can talk

about cranking up your efforts to do something. So if I really want to get fit, I need to crank up the level of my workouts.

Yes, that's right. Here are some examples of people using crank up. I'm doing a course at the moment and my teacher has

brought forward the date of the exam and that's really cranked up the pressure. I've got so much to study in no time at all.

I've got a half marathon coming up so I've really got to crank up my training.

I'm going to crank up my training. I'm going to Poland and need to crank up my efforts to learn Polish.

So, crank up is a phrasal verb.

Phil, what else do we need to learn about it?

Okay, with phrasal verbs, it's always important to know where to put the direct object. With crank up, you can either

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