Vanessa teaches three phrasal verbs that contain “up”: look up, keep up, and make up. She follows the memory strategy from her previous video: learn a few expressions with the same particle, then attach each one to a concrete story from your own life. She reminds viewers that the shared word is only a study aid. It does not make the three expressions mean the same thing.
The first expression, look up, means to search for information and find an answer. Vanessa describes writing an email in French, where she sometimes needs to check how to spell a word. She keeps a French verb book and a small dictionary on her desk so she can look up unfamiliar words while writing or speaking. In everyday use, the object can come between the verb and particle: “look it up.”
Next, she explains two related uses of keep up: staying with something mentally or physically. In Korea, she sometimes watched Korean dramas that were spoken quickly and often lacked English subtitles. She found it hard to keep up with what the actors were saying because she did not yet know enough Korean vocabulary. She then recalls being a fast runner as a child. During an elementary-school field day, no one could keep up with her in a long running race. The phrase can therefore describe following information at a sufficient pace or physically staying alongside someone.
The third expression, make up, means to invent something using your imagination in this lesson. Vanessa notes that it can have another meaning related to resolving a disagreement, but she focuses on inventing. She remembers making up silly stories with her sister and two neighbors. One story featured a clever bear that made its shadow look enormous against a rock and frightened a hunter away. Because they had invented the story rather than read it in a book or seen it in a movie, it gave Vanessa a memorable example of make up.
Learners can practice each meaning with a personal or imagined example: look up a fact, keep up with a conversation or a runner, and make up a story. When studying phrasal verbs, record the complete example sentence and situation; a particle such as up does not predict a single shared meaning. The video closes with an invitation to find more examples on Vanessa’s website.