Swat

Fill up.

Slam

In this English lesson, I'll help you learn over 30 action verbs.

And in order to make them easy to remember, I'll act them all out.

So sometimes Jen will ask me to wheel a cart like this out to the field so she can plant these plants.

In English, when you push something like this cart with wheels, you can use the verb to wheel to talk about it.

You can also use the verb to drive.

So I can wheel this cart out to the field for Jen, or I can drive it out to the field.

So as you can see, there's a bare patch in my lawn right here.

So I have some grass seed.

I'm going to sprinkle some grass seed here.

I'm going to spread some grass seed.

Sprinkle is more like this, where you do a little bit spread is more like this, where you do a bit more.

But I'm going to sprinkle some grass seed here.

I'm going to spread some grass seed here and hope that it grows.

It's really handy to have this tap out here, if I need to fill this pail with water.

I can turn the tap on and I can fill this pail with water.

We also have the verb to fill up and it means the same thing.

I don't know why we have two verbs, but if I want, I can fill this pail with water or I can fill up this pail with water and then I can take it over there and Jen can use it to water the flowers.

Now I have water in the bucket, but what if I want the water out of the bucket?

I can dump the water on the ground, or I can use the verb to dump out.

I can dump the water or I can dump out the water.

I'm not sure why I did that, though, because we kind of need that water.

Now I'll have to fill this pail again.

I'll have to fill up this pail again.

So I know you know the verbs to open and to close when we're talking about a door, but we have another verb that we use when we close a door really, really quickly.

And it's the verb to slam.

I can slam this door shut.

Usually people slam doors when they're feeling a little bit annoyed.

Maybe I'm really annoyed about something and I slam the door because I'm really annoyed.

I'm not using full force here because I don't want to break anything, but sometimes when people are annoyed, they will slam a door.

So there are a few things I can do with this tire. I can roll the tire.

So if I wanted to move this tire over there, I could roll it over there.

That's an easy way to move a tire.

I could also spin the tire so you can see the other side.

I could also use the verb rotate.

I can rotate the tire so you can see the other side.

And if the tire fell over, I could then pick it up again.

Or if the tire was just laying here, I could flip it.

Or I could also use the verb to flip over.

I could flip over the tire.

Sometimes you just need to move something.

If I needed to move this brick, I could lift this brick.

I could lift up this brick.

Or I could pick up this brick.

Then I could carry this brick over here.

And then I could set down this brick.

Or I could put down this brick, or I could just say, I'm going to put this brick here.

I could also, if I wanted to, slide the brick.

So let's put it back here.

If it was too heavy, I could just slide the brick along instead of lifting it up.

So sometimes in the early spring, it gets really cold at night.

Sometimes we have frost.

That's when the temperature goes below zero.

And then the night before, we might cover some of our plants.

Some of the plants don't like cold weather, but if we cover them with a little pot like this, they will stay warm.

In the morning, we come out and we uncover the plants so the sun can shine on their leaves and they can grow again.

So sometimes you need to cover something, and sometimes you need to uncover it.

So this is a chicken tractor, and it needs to go out into the field.

Our chickens are going to live in here this summer, and hopefully they'll eat lots of insects in the flower field.

In order to move it, though, I need to first lift up this end, and then I need to pull, but it doesn't seem to be moving.

I think that it might take two people to move this. One person at the front to pull and another person at the back to push or to shove.

You can use either verb.

So maybe Jen will lift up the front and pull later, and I will come to the back and I will shove the chicken tractor.

I will push the chicken tractor out into the field.

So sometimes there's flies or mosquitoes around and you try to swat them.

You swing your arms like this to try and swat the fly or mosquito.

But if you're lucky, you have a fly swatter, and then you can swing the fly swatter and use it to swat the fly or mosquito.

So notice there's two verbs there.

You can swing something.

You can swing a baseball bat.

You can swing a cricket bat.

You can swing a fly swatter.

But when you actually hit the fly, we call that swatting.

So I can swing this really hard and try to swat a fly.

So sometimes on the farm, we have to put posts like this in the ground.

So we use a hammer to hit the post.

I don't want to do it.

It's actually really loud.

Or we can use the verb to hammer.

I can hammer this post into the ground.

Or we use the verb to pound.

I can pound this post into the ground.

In fact, that's how we normally do it.

We use something called a post pounder.

A post pounder is a special tool that you use to pound posts into the ground.

So a number of years ago I built these stairs.

And I remember when I built them, I needed to measure a lot.

I took out my tape measure, my measuring tape. It has two names.

And I measured every single board, so I knew where to cut the board.

So whenever you build something or make something you need to measure.

Maybe you need to measure fabric before you make clothing.

Maybe you need to measure wood before you build something like these stairs.

So I have some landscape fabric here and it's kind of a mess.

I need to flatten this before I fold it up.

So when you flatten something, you make it all nice like this.

I can even say that I'm going to smooth it out.

Once that's done, I can nicely fold it.

Or I can use the verb to fold up.

So I can flatten it. I can smooth it out. I can fold it or I can fold it up.

So I can't reach this branch here.

But if I set up my stepladder,

then I can reach this branch.

So I can set up my stepladder so I can reach this branch.

When I'm done, though, I should take down my step ladder after I use my step ladder.

I take it down when I'm done using it.

Well, hey, thanks for watching this English lesson where I hope you were able to learn over 30 action verbs that you can use in your next English conversation.

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