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?
Nowadays, parents are more lenient when bringing up their children. It implies positive and negative consequences, as It is true that you shouldn’t be too strict with your sons in order to allow them to discover the realities of life. But It is also true that being too much tolerant or permissive might affect their behavior later on. After all, parents want well-mannered children who behave at home and work well at school that will give them lifelong positive values
Great example Cristian.
– Careful with ‘sons’ – I think you mean ‘children’.
– ‘too much tolerant’ should be ‘too tolerant’.
Hi Luis,
Thank you! I’m really glad you think so. Feel free to ask if you have any questions, I’m happy to help 🙂
Chris
I’m sure that I had a very good upbringing. I was brought up by my parents and grandparents. I won’t change anything about my childhood and about the way I was educated. As for children, in my opinion they should definitely have some rules to obey. They should help and respect their parents and obey curfew hours. This will help them to become responsible and
intelligent people in the future.
Great example Svitlana – your English is fantastic. I would make one small correction: it might be better to say, “I wouldn’t change anything about my childhood”. Can you explain why this would be better?
Because will is used for future action which may happen and would is used for past actions which we can not change now because they have already happened.
Yes – more generally, would is used for hypothetical/imaginary present situations. As you say, we can’t change the past, so this makes the question of changing the past hypothetical. Basically, it is half of a second conditional: [If I had the power to change the past,] I wouldn’t change the way I was brought up.
extremely useful for your lesson
Thank you Kit!
Can I use “bring up” instead of ‘grow up”? They are sinonims? When is better to use one instead of other? Thanks. I love microenglish.
Thanks Nicolas! I’m really glad you find MicroEnglish useful 🙂 You’ve asked a very good question. ‘Grow up’ and Bring sb up’ are not synonyms. The most important difference is grammatical. ‘To grow up’ has no object, so “a child grows up”. You can’t ‘grow somebody up’ – this doesn’t exist in English. The person who does this action is the child. ‘To bring sb up’ has an object, so “parents bring up their children”. The person who does the action is not the child. The child receives the action. Because of this, the two phrasal verbs have different meanings.… Read more »