As I had planned a holiday in Spain, I decided to brush up on my Spanish before I went, and I enrolled on a local evening course. At first I had to rack my brains to remember anything, and l couldn't make sense of the grammar, so it was very hard to keep up with the other students. Then, after a while, things started coming back to me, and I realized there were lots of words on the tip of my tongue. But some of the new vocabulary wouldn't sink in - words just went in one ear and out the other. When you work hard all day, it's not easy to keep your mind on a difficult subject in the evening. But I stuck at it and I began to pick things up mole quickly. All I have to do now is keep it up.
brush up on something / brush up something
to practice and improve your skills or your knowledge of something that you learned in the past
improve your knowledge or skill in something, especially when you have not used it for a period of time
I must brush up on my French before I go to Paris.
去巴黎之前，我要好好温习一下法语。
rack your brains
to try very hard to remember or think of something
绞尽脑汁；冥思苦想
I racked my brains, trying to remember his name.
我绞尽脑汁想记起他的名字。
make sense of something
to understand something, especially something difficult or complicated
manage to understand something
Can you make any sense of this article?
你能看懂这篇文章吗？
keep up with somebody / something
to move, make progress or increase at the same rate as somebody / something
make progress at the same speed as others
come back to somebody
to return to somebody's memory
If information comes back to you, you remember it.
It's all coming back to me now.
现在我全都回想起来了。
on the tip of your tongue
-
If a word or name is on the tip of your tongue, you are sure you know it, but you can't remember it at that moment.
What is her name? It’s on the tip of my tongue. Joan. Joan Simpson. That’s it!
她叫什么？就在我嘴边。琼——琼•辛普森。就是这名字！ -
If something is on the tip of your tongue, you really want to say it, but then you decide not to.
sink in
if information, facts etc sink in, you gradually understand them or realize their full meaning
（信息、事实等）逐渐被充分理解
He paused a moment for his words to sink in.
他停顿了片刻，好让人充分理解他的话。
go in one ear and out the other
If information goes in one ear and out the other, you forget it as soon as you have heard it.
左耳进，右耳出
Everything I tell them just goes in one ear and out the other.
我无论对他们说什么都只被当作耳边风。
keep your mind on something
to keep paying attention to something, even though it is difficult
He could hardly keep his mind on what she was saying.
他无法集中心思听她说话。
pick something up
learn something without making a big effort
She picked up Spanish when she was living in Mexico.
她旅居墨西哥时顺便学会了西班牙语。
keep something up
to continue doing something
I don’t think I can keep this up any longer.
我觉得我再也无法坚持下去了。
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