Family Life and Life Events
Learn 20 A2 English words for family life and life events - be born, bring up, grow up, get engaged, retire - with a story and a quiz.
A1 taught you the names of family members. A2 lets you tell the story of a family: who was born where, who brought up whom, who moved, who married, who retired. Two of these words look almost identical and mean opposite things – bring up and grow up – and the tutor box below makes sure you never confuse them. Then come and look at the photograph in my grandmother’s house that nobody is allowed to move.
20 words to learn
The 20 words
/bɔːn/
Always used with be: I was born in 1998. Never I born.
She was born in a small village.
/ɡrəʊ ˈʌp/
To become an adult. The child does this. Past tense: grew up.
I did not grow up in this city.
/ˈtʃaɪld hʊd/
The time in your life when you were a child.
He had a very happy childhood.
/brɪŋ ˈʌp/
To raise a child and teach them. The parent does this. Past: brought up.
She had to bring up five children alone.
/lʊk ˈɑːftə(r)/
To take care of somebody or something.
Who will look after the cat?
/spɔɪl/
To give a child too much of what they want.
Grandparents are supposed to spoil the children.
/ˈəʊnli tʃaɪld/
A person with no brothers or sisters.
He is an only child.
/twɪnz/
Two children born to the same mother on the same day.
The twins still finish each other’s sentences.
/ˈrelətɪv/
Any member of your family – aunt, cousin, uncle.
We invited about sixty relatives.
/ˌdʒenəˈreɪʃn/
All the people in a family who are about the same age.
Four generations were in that photograph.
/ˈædʌlt/
A person who is fully grown, eighteen or over.
Every adult in the room knew about it.
/ɡet ɪnˈɡeɪdʒd/
To agree to marry somebody. You get engaged to them.
They decided to get engaged in the spring.
/ˈwedɪŋ/
The ceremony and party when two people marry.
The wedding was in her parents’ garden.
/ˌænɪˈvɜːsəri/
The same date every year, remembering something important.
It is their fortieth wedding anniversary.
/ˈselɪbreɪt/
To do something enjoyable because of a special occasion.
We will celebrate in the same garden.
/muːv ˈhaʊs/
To leave one home and go to live in another.
They had to move house twice in a year.
/rɪˈtaɪə(r)/
To stop working permanently because of your age.
My father will retire in March.
/ˈɡræntʃaɪld/
The child of your child. Plural: grandchildren.
She has eleven grandchildren.
/ˈstepfɑːðə(r)/
The man who married your mother but is not your father.
Her son calls him by his first name, not stepfather.
/ˈfjuːnərəl/
The ceremony when somebody has died.
The funeral was full of people we did not know.
Now read the story
Story · all 20 words
The Photograph Nobody Moves
There is one photograph in my grandmother’s house that nobody in this family is allowed to move. It was taken at her seventieth birthday, and it has four generations standing together in one small garden.
My grandmother is in the middle, in the blue chair. She was born in a village that no longer exists, and her own childhood effectively ended at eleven, when she left school to look after her four younger brothers while her mother worked.
Behind her are her children. She had to bring up five of them, mostly alone, in three rooms. My mother is second from the left. She says she did not grow up in that house so much as work in it, and she says it with more affection than you would expect.
Then my own generation, on the right. My brother and I are at the end; I am the tall one looking the wrong way. Next to us are the twins, Rania and Reem, who are thirty-four and still finish each other’s sentences, and my cousin Sami, an only child, who spent every summer in our house and is far more of a brother to me than a relative.
At the front, in a crooked line on the grass, are the grandchildren. My grandmother spoils every single one of them without apology or shame. She keeps sweets in a drawer she believes is secret, and every adult in this family has known about that drawer since roughly 1994.
A great deal has happened since the picture was taken. Sami decided to get engaged two months later, and the wedding that followed was the largest thing this family has ever organised. My parents had to move house the same year, and my mother cried about leaving a kitchen she had complained about for a decade. My father is going to retire in March and pretends he has not thought about it once. Rania married a man with a nine-year-old son, so we now have a small serious boy who calls her by her first name and calls my uncle Grandad, and nobody has ever had to explain the word stepfather to him, because nobody needed to.
We lost my grandfather three years ago. The funeral was full of people none of us had ever met, which told us something about him that he had never once mentioned in fifty years. That afternoon was also the last time every one of us stood in the same place at the same time.
So this September we are doing something about that. My grandmother’s wedding anniversary would have been the fifty-eighth, and we are going to celebrate it anyway – same garden, same terrible plastic chairs. Somebody has already suggested another photograph. Somebody else has already announced that this time they are not standing at the back.
Bring up or grow up? They are opposite sides of the same event, and mixing them up is one of the clearest A2 errors:
bring up = what the parent does. My grandmother brought up five children.
grow up = what the child does. I grew up in Amman.
So you cannot say My mother grew me up or I brought up in a village. Remember: parents bring up, children grow up.
Be born is always passive. There is no active version in English:
✓ I was born in 1998. ✗ I born in 1998. ✗ I am born in 1998.
Use was or were, because it happened once, in the past.
Irregular plurals in this family: child → children, grandchild → grandchildren, person → people, wife → wives.
Building family words: add step- when a parent remarries (stepfather, stepmother, stepbrother) and half- when you share one parent (half-sister, half-brother). Your husband’s or wife’s family are your in-laws: mother-in-law, brother-in-law – and the plural goes on the first word: brothers-in-law.
Prepositions: get engaged to somebody, get married to somebody, look after somebody (no preposition), retire from a job at an age.
The beginning: born, childhood, grow up, bring up, look after, spoil.
The people: only child, twins, relative, generation, adult, grandchild, stepfather.
The events: get engaged, wedding, anniversary, celebrate, move house, retire, funeral.
Now tell your own family in six sentences: where you were born, where you grew up, who brought you up, how many relatives came to the last wedding, one person who has retired, and one date you celebrate every year.
Now practise with the questions below.
Check your understanding
Answer the questions below. You will see instantly if you are right.
Want feedback from a real tutor on your reading, writing and speaking?
Book a Free Consultation