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Please note that there are probably a few mistakes in the transcripts. There is a lot of text to look through and its very time consuming. You can use it as a guide to practice your English but not everything is necessarily perfect. If you have any questions you’re welcome to ask me.00:00In today's episode, we are going to be talking about phrasal verbs and one advanced phrasal verb that I have been thinking about recently is to cotton on or to cotton onto something. Do you have any idea what this means? Stick around until the end of this podcast episode and I will tell you the meaning.00:32Hello and welcome to the English with Michael Podcast, the best place to come to study English as a second language as well as the practice, the British accent with me, Michael Lavers as your teacher. Hello and welcome back to the English with Michael podcast. First of all, my voice may sound a little bit different today. I'm not sure. It sounds different to me, but this is because I've just recovering from a cold. I had a kind of a sore throat the past few days,01:11so maybe my voice sounds very deep now, but hopefully it's not too annoying or maybe, maybe it's even improvement. I don't know. Um, but yeah, so I've had two weeks kind of break, two-week holiday. So I'm happy to be back and happy to be back on the podcast again.01:31Today I want to look at a topic that I really enjoy, but also it's a topic that many people have difficulties with. It's a really difficult area but also very important. And that is phrasal verbs. So I always talk about phrasal verbs because there's so much to learn and I think it's quite a fun part of the English language. It's not good to have the kind of mentality opinion that you want to master phrasal verbs that you can learn all of them because there were just too many. I mean, I don't know all of them. You will definitely not learn all of them and that's fine. But we can learn the kind of main ones used in conversation and that will help all aspects of your English. So I thought I could start by explaining what a phrasal verb actually is.02:36So a phrasal verb is a phrase, it's a group of words, usually two words, sometimes free words. And it is made up of a verb and a preposition. So a common example would be grow up to grow up means to get older, to change from a child to an adult. So grow is the verb up is the preposition. They each have their own individual meaning, but together the meaning is a little bit different. Sometimes it's very different. So to grow up. Another example could be turn down. If someone is playing music very loudly, if they're playing very loud music, you could ask them to turn the music down, turn down the music, and that means make it quieter, make it quieter. You might also be aware that phrasal verbs have you are. They usually have more than one meaning. So let's look at ton down again, turn down, meaning 1: make quieter.04:04Meaning 2: is to reject. For example, I applied for a job at a bakery, but they turned me down. That means they rejected my application. So there's another reason why phrasal verbs are so difficult because they have so many meanings. So it was a really important part of the language. One last thing to talk about before we look at some specific details is what we call inseparable and separable phrasal verbs. So separable comes from the word two separate to make something apart. So for example, to turn down is a separable phrasal verb. And that means we can separate turn and down. So we can put something in the middle. We can say turn it down, turn the music down. You could also say turn down the music. So often both are possible. Turn the music down, turn down the music. So that's quite easy. You know that it's harder to make a mistake.05:26Inseparable phrasal verbs. Maybe you can guess these are phrases that cannot be separated. So they always come together. One example of this is to think about, for example, I am thinking about what to make for dinner. So we say thinking about, but we would never say I am thinking dinner about and that doesn't make sense. So think and about always stick together. Think of them like best friends. They don't want to let each other go. So that is the basics of phrasal verbs and what you need to know about them. Secondly, we should also look at how to learn them because there are so many, it can be overwhelming. So as I always say, my first piece of advice is to learn them in context. So it's very difficult to remember them if you are just learning from a list. There are many websites, I have actually been guilty of this in the past. There are many websites where they just kind of have a list of all phrasal verbs beginning with get like get out, get in, get over, or something similar to that. Now these websites can be useful for reference, but maybe not so useful for learning them for the first time.07:05So try to learn them in context. Try to find stories or something like that about phrasal verbs or learn them in your everyday life. But also as I just said, remember to also establish if it's separable or inseparable because this is a mistake many people make. So when you learn a new phrasal verb, look it up in a dictionary. That's another phrasal verb. Look it up. I mean it's research in a dictionary and find out if we can say for example, look up or look it up, you know? So in this case that is separable, we can put it in the middle. And then of course a great way to practice would just be to make your own sentences. So try to write stories or like a diary or just any example sentence would be great, you know, experiment with different tenses too. For example, I looked it up, I am looking it up, I will look it up. So lots of experimentation and practice in your writing and you're talking all of that kind of normal stuff.08:25Okay, so I will stall no longer. Now I've got a story for you. It's a short story, but of course maybe you can guess there will be some phrasal verbs in this story. This is a story I have used in my lessons before. So we have a student, this is something that I might look at something similar to this and yes, I'm not a very good storyteller so it's not a really exciting story, but hopefully it will be useful for learning. So what I will do is I will read the story and listen carefully, practice your listening skill, see how many phrasal verbs you can hear in the story. Then at the end I will tell you the meanings and also give you maybe another example as well. Here we go. Let's start. I turned up to the hostel late on a Friday evening. I had a lot of things to think over before my trip, so I was glad to have finally arrived. I sorted out the money with the receptionist in my broken French and then went to my room.09:47I wasn’t expecting much from a €10 hostel, but to my surprise, they had already set up the room for me with fresh sheets and bath products. I had been through a lot so I collapsed into the bed and napped for a while. After my nap, I came across a great restaurant online so I had dinner there while enjoying the mountain views. Okay. That was the story. It's just a very normal story of a person traveling in France presumably, and just talking about their day. So maybe it's like their diary entry. So how many phrasal verbs did you count if you were counting in total there were six phrasal verbs. So let's have a look at these and see if we can practice them. All of them are really, really common and useful. The first one at the very beginning was to turn up, turn up, and we usually follow this by (should be "with" not "by") "to".11:04So again, this is why it's so important to learn them in context because you need to know kind of the prepositions to use with the phrasal verbs. I turned up to the hostel turn up is very similar to the word arrive. Arrive. For example, last night I visited my mum's house, my mother's house, and this morning I returned home on the train. I turned up to the train station with just one minute until my train is very, very stressful. So I arrived at the train station. So maybe you could make your own sentence about where you have turned up to this week. Have a think. I should also mention that turn up is an inseparable phrasal verb. So we would say I turned up to the hostel, but we would not say I turned to the hostel up. That would not make sense.12:14The next one is to think over to think over. This is really similar to think about. Think about something. It really just means to think carefully about a plan before you make a decision. For example, I want to think over what to make for dinner tonight, and this one is separable. So we could say, think my plans over or think over my plans. Both are correct. So again, think of another way you could use this that applies to your own life. In the first sentence I mentioned to sort out, I sorted out the money with the receptionist. This is a really, really common one and again, it's separable so we could say sorted the money out or sorted out the money. If you sought something out, it means you organise something, you fix a problem, you solve an issue, anything like that. So in this case, I had not paid the money.13:39That was the problem. I fixed the problem by simply giving her the money. I sorted out the money. One more example, I needed a plane ticket to go on holiday next week. So I sorted it out by buying one online. So what have you sorted out recently? Have a think about it and if you can let me know in the second paragraph, the first phrasal verb there is to set up to set up again, this is a very, very common one and it is again separable. So we could set up the room or set the room up. Both are acceptable and it kind of means to organise, to prepare something to get something ready. So soon I will have dinner, but before dinner I need to set up the table, I need to prepare the table with plates, a knife and fork, water, that kind of stuff. So maybe for this one you could think about what do you need to set up for work? Do you need to set up your laptop, your computer, your notebook? Do you have a lot to set up or is it a simple set up?15:15Next one was a bit harder, and this was been though. I had been through a lot, so I collapsed or fell into bed. So the base form of this would be to go through and in the past, perfect tense or the perfect tense we could say been through or gone through. Both are correct and this is inseparable. Always put them together. If you go through something that can mean to experience something difficult. For example, you can go through a lot of pain. You can go through depression, you can go through an illness or even just like an embarrassing time of your life. So last week I had been through a difficult time with my cold or my flu, whatever it was. But how about you? What kind of bad things have you been through recently?16:26Finally, the last paragraph came across to come across. I came across a great restaurant. This means to find something by chance without planning. Another example was I was walking around town and I came across a very cute dog on the street. I didn't plan on finding him, but I just happened to see him there. And this is inseparable. We can come across a dog but we can't come a dog across. We would never say that. So tell me, what have you come across this week? Anything interesting? I'm sure you can think of some example to use. So I think we'll stop it. Therefore today I won't talk too long because it might make my voice worse again. But I hope you enjoyed this kind of little mini lesson, podcast episode. Hope it was useful and as always, feel free to reach out to me and let me know if you've heard any cool phrasal verbs recently or maybe you want to share a story with me where you can use the ones we learned today. That would be great.17:52But also I have a resource to share as well. So if you want to improve your phrasal verb knowledge, I have created a free five day email course. If you sign up to this course, you will get a new lesson sent to your email every day and in the email that will be a video of me explaining stuff. There will also be a story and maybe some activities and free resources, lots of things like that for five days. And it's a really good way to improve your conversational English. So I will put a link to this in the show notes or you can go to phrasal so that's phrasal and if you sign up to that course, you'll also have a chance to kind of email me and I'll give you my feedback on how you're doing as well. So thank you so, so much for listening to yet another episode of my podcast. If you're new. Thank you so much. I hope you enjoyed it. And if you're listening again and you've been a listener maybe from the beginning, then I really appreciate your support so thank you and I will see you next week. Bye Bye.19:29You have been listening to the English with Michael Podcast to view the podcast notes for this episode and to listen to previous episodes. Head over to podcast19:53at the beginning of the show, I asked if you could guess the meaning of the phrasal verb to cotton on. I would be very impressed if you know this one to cotton on means to begin to understand. For example, I had a secret, but my friend cottoned on to the secret, so he began to understand what my secret was. ................
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