Listening exercises with “Bring up”
The phrasal verb to bring someone up means to take care of or look after a child until they become an adult. To raise a child.
We can use this phrasal verb to explain who brought someone up (e.g. I was brought up by my grandparents), where they were brought up (e.g. I was brought up in Scotland but I moved to London when I was 17), or how they were brought up (e.g. I was brought up to be polite….I was brought up in a traditional way).
We often use this phrasal verb in the passive (to be brought up) because we want to focus on the child who is brought up (the object of the action) rather than the people who bring them up (the agent of the action). For example, I was brought up by my grandparents would normally be more natural than My grandparents brought me up.
Sometimes, we don’t even need to include the agent, e.g. I was brought up in a small village…I was brought up to be independent. In these examples, we want to focus on where or how we were brought up, not on who brought us up.
We can also use this phrasal verb as a noun: upbringing. This is used to talk about the way you were raised, e.g. I had a very religious upbringing.
Have a go at these micro-dictation exercises to hear this expression being used in context – how much can you understand?
I was brought up by my parents in a small city. I was brought up to be a good person. I like the way that I brought up and wouldn’t change anything about it. In my opinion children should be brought up to respect rules in order to have a good relationship in society.
Excellent example!
It’s almost perfect except for one small mistake in this sentence: “I like the way that I brought up and I wouldn’t change anything about it”. Can you identify it?
I was brought up in the Baku by my parents. They were perfect.
I guess, I had to be brought up self-assured.
I think children should be brought up with some rules, for instance, supporting one each other, never be traitor, never lie and with their believing they should be free.
It sounds like you had a great upbringing Seva 🙂
A couple of small corrections:
1) We don’t need ‘the’ with the names of cities (“I was brought up in Baku”).
2) “never be a traitor”
Hi, Chris. Thank you!
I was brought up by my parents in Azerbaijan. They wanted me to be honest, fair. İ do all my best to deserve it. İ don’t think that there was something wrong in the way of my brought up. I think children should be brought up giving them some rules. As well, parents try to be friend with them.
Excellent example Gulnar. A couple of corrections:
“I do all my best” should be “I do/did my best” or “I do/did everything I can/could” (depending on whether you are talking about now or the past).
You can use ‘to bring sb up’ as a noun – ‘upbringing’ (e.g. I had a strict upbringing). So in your example, you could say: “I don’t think there was anything wrong with my upbringing”.
Have a read about ‘also’ and ‘as well’ here.
I was brought up by my mom. Sometimes she was a strict upbringing, but mostly – kind to me. To my mind, children should have some rules but it’s okey if they not follow them always and everytime 🙂 As Rag’n’Bone Man sings – I’m a human after all 🙂 A lot of strict rules create a desire to go off the rails. At the same time permissiveness makes us spoiled.
Thanks Tanya, great example and well done for using some of the vocabulary from recent exercises!
Think of ‘upbringing’ as similar in meaning to ‘childhood’, but also communicating the way you were raised (not just the time period). This means that you need to change your example about your mum to something like: “sometimes my upbringing was strict, but mostly my mum was kind to me”.
Does that make sense? Let me know if you need any more examples 🙂
Yes, it makes sense, thank you! I was wrong thinking that ‘upbringing’ is someone who raise a child.
Ah, got it. For that you could say parent, guardian or carer 🙂