1 - back away, run up against

Lesson 1 - back away, run up against

Hi everyone. It’s Jennifer and I’m very excited to start a new phrasal verb challenge with you. Hopefully, you’ve completed my original 20-day phrasal verb challenge. If you haven’t, you can click on the link to watch that other playlist. This time we’re still going to study 20 phrasal verbs, but we’re going to do it a bit differently. We’ll have ten lessons and in each lesson we’ll study 2 phrasal verbs.

There will be time in between lessons for review. Follow me on Facebook and visit my YouTube community tab for additional practice. As we did in the last phrasal verb challenge, we’ll pay attention to what each phrasal verb means, if the phrasal verb takes an object, and if the object can separate the phrasal verb.

Are you up for this challenge? Let’s start. If you’re accepting this challenge, it means you’re the kind of person who doesn’t back away from difficult situations. That’s good. Because in life were always going to run up against new challenges. We can’t avoid problems. Life is partly about learning how to overcome them, right?

“To back away from something” means to put distance between you and something that’s dangerous, scary, or unpleasant. “Backing away” is often literal, like taking steps away from something or someone. But “back away” can also have a figurative meaning. I can back away from a commitment.

“Back away” is intransitive. No object. But we can also back away from something. “To run up against something” means to encounter it. You meet it unexpectedly. We only use this phrasal verb for undesirable things. You can run up against a problem, a difficulty, a challenge, an argument… “Run up against” is transitive.

You run up against something. Here’s a practice task Give me an example from your life or from history when someone ran up against a lot of opposition, but didn’t back away. Was this person successful in their fight?

I was thinking of Amelia Earhart, who ran up against a lot of opposition as a female pilot, but she didn’t back away from the many challenges. Amelia Earhart became the first female pilot to fly solo over the Atlantic Ocean. So that’s my example. I look forward to reading yours in the comments.

That’s all for now.