Hey English learners, welcome to another phrasal verb episode.
I hope you're doing great and that you're ready to learn two new phrasal verbs today.
The first one is crack up and the second one is crank out.
So first, let me define these phrasal verbs and give you an example of each one.
Crack up means to burst into laughter.
In other words, you suddenly start laughing.
For example, I could say he cracked up when he heard the joke.
In this sentence, I'm saying that he suddenly started laughing.
He burst into laughter when he heard the joke.
So that's crack up.
Crank out means to produce something rapidly and mechanically with no special effort.
For example, I could say, students have to crank out essay after essay in that class.
Here, I'm saying that students have to write many, many essays very frequently.
They have to produce this work over and over again in that class.
It's a very rapid and mechanical effort, like maybe it doesn't take them a lot of effort.
They just do the assignment and then do the next one.
They don't even have a lot of time, probably.
So that is crank out.
So now I'm going to use these two phrasal verbs over and over again, while talking about a couple different things.
And hopefully by the end of this episode you'll feel a lot more comfortable with these phrasal verbs.
And maybe you can even use them in your own sentences if you'd like.
This is good practice for your listening.
Remember that the transcript for this episode is in the description below.
So you can go down and click on that if you need it.
So first let me talk about a couple different shows that made me crack up the most when i used to watch them.
So there are two shows in particular that i'm thinking of.
The first one is king of the hill.
I think i've talked about this show before.
I think i've mentioned it once or twice in different episodes.
Most non-Americans would probably not find this show super funny.
I don't think they would be cracking up throughout the episode as they watch each episode.
It's a very American show and its humor sucks relies a lot on your knowledge of American culture, the US in general, all of that.
That being said, I find it hilarious.
This is perhaps My favorite TV show of all time at least in the top three but maybe my favorite.
When I used to watch this, I would constantly find myself cracking up at the different situations that happened in the show, the different jokes.
I cracked up watching this show.
Sometimes this show was very heartfelt, meaning it had very genuine emotion, sincere emotion.
There were good lessons in this show, but sometimes It was flat out hilarious.
When we say something is flat out something, it's like saying completely something, absolutely something.
So sometimes it was absolutely hilarious.
It was flat out hilarious.
I would crack up. at certain situations, and this show is very character-driven.
So a lot of the humor comes from your experience with the characters, knowing who they are and how they are, how they react, how they think.
Your knowledge of this is what makes it even funnier.
So I would constantly crack up at certain situations that were presented in the show, simply because it was a very funny thing based on that character's personality.
I would crack up when seeing certain characters being put in certain situations and seeing how they reacted.
So in other words, the situations that the character's get themselves into and the way that they respond to these situations.
This always made me laugh.
It made me crack up.
Even my wife grew to like this show, even though she's not from here.
She even started to understand the humor and she would even crack up at certain points during the show.
So it's a very funny show.
But as I said, if you're not from here, it might take a while to understand the humor.
So that's one of the shows that made me crack up the most.
The other one is Whose Line Is It Anyway?
This is an improv show.
Improvisational comedy meaning they have different games and they have to try to be funny, depending on the game, the prompt, whatever they're supposed to do, they have to improvise and try to be funny in front of an audience.
So this is not a scripted tv show, it's a live show where these improvisational comedians try to be funny.
So I like improv.
I enjoy watching people try to be funny by improvising.
I remember when I was a lot younger I knew someone that was really into improv and and I would sometimes go watch this person's shows.
So I like improv and I really appreciate when someone can make me crack up on the spot without a script.
On the spot is like right there in that moment.
So I like when I just start cracking up because someone was able to improvise something and it turned out to be hilarious.
So I cracked up a lot when watching this show.
I would constantly find myself cracking up at their jokes and the situations that they presented in that improv show.
And since it's improvised, it's not always super funny, because it's hard to be funny 100 of the time when you can't prepare.
When they did land a good joke, meaning they told a good joke in a perfect, hilarious way, it would make me crack up.
So there were always a few moments at least each episode, each show that would caused me to crack up and it was worth watching the show just for those moments.
So i constantly cracked up while watching this show and one of my favorite things from whose line is it anyway?
Was the song games.
They would sing different songs in funny ways.
Like one of them required each person to just say one word at a time of the song.
So one person would say one word and the next person would say the next word.
It sounds funny.
Very hard, right?
Well, this would result in just really ridiculous, hilarious songs that would make me crack up.
And it was one of my favorite things from this show.
So I really liked the song games. and other things as well.
I cracked up a lot when watching this show.
Okay, the other thing I wanted to talk about is examples of prolific creators.
When you're prolific, this means that you produce a lot of something.
So For example, certain authors crank out novel after novel.
There are some authors that have tons of novels written and you can't even understand how they've published so many books.
It's like they're just cranking them out every year.
I have not had success, just writing one novel which I probably still want to do at some point in my life.
I don't know if I will, but it's like a dream that I have always had.
And I have no idea how...
Other authors can just crank out novel after novel and just write dozens and dozens of books.
To me, that sounds impossible.
But some people do this.
Some authors crank out bestsellers just year after year. and it's very impressive that they not only crank out novels, but best-selling novels.
Some authors are very prolific and very talented and they have just a huge list of novels that they've written and A lot of them are bestsellers.
They're good quality.
So that's very impressive.
However, some authors crank out low quality books.
They publish tons of novels, but they're not very good.
But maybe once in a while, they come out with a good novel.
So, because they're cranking out so much work, so many books, some of them are bound to be better than others.
When something is bound to be something, it means that it is likely to happen, because they've produced so much work.
They find gold once in a while.
So some authors crank out low quality books, but there are a few that crank out great books over and over again.
So that's very impressive.
And certain filmmakers crank out movies every couple of years.
They have a huge filmography like they've made many films.
Their list of films is very long And of course, some filmmakers crank out tons of unoriginal or low-quality movies, right.
That's not quite as hard.
But there are a few really good filmmakers that can crank out high quality movie after a high quality movie.
There aren't many filmmakers that can do this, but there are a few that have been able to do this.
Every couple of years they come out with another movie and everyone wants to go watch it because typically The movies that they crank out are actually pretty good.
So that's pretty impressive.
Musicians can also sometimes be prolific.
There are some musicians that crank out album after album and there are a few musicians that crank out hit after hit, meaning like a really popular, successful song.
So that's not easy to do, but some people are able to do this and they usually become really famous.
They crank out song after song that just all end up being popular.
Maybe not all of them, but most of them end up being popular, pretty good quality.
Other people.
They work more slowly and they can't just crank out album after album really quickly, because That's very hard.
So I would imagine that most musicians take their time and they don't want to rush their music, the creation of their music.
But some musicians somehow crank out tons of music just very quickly, and again, I don't know how this is possible, but they do this.
Another example of a prolific creator is the company Apple.
This is one of the first things that comes to mind when I think of prolific creators.
Apple cranks out new iPhones like every year.
I don't know if it's literally every year, but it seems like that.
They crank out new computers every year.
They crank out new products just year after year, and it's pretty impressive that they can produce so much.
Of course, there are a lot of complaints About the fact that the iPhone from one year is almost identical to the next year's iPhone.
So why did they even need to make another one so soon?
So there are complaints there about Apple's tendency to crank out product after product every year when there isn't that much of a difference between the products.
But overall, they're good quality.
People love them.
Some people get the new iPhone every year.
Not many people do this, but some people always want the new phone.
So there's a reason why Apple can continue cranking out products year after year.
People like these products and they're willing to buy them.
So Apple is a very prolific creator.
And lastly, I wanted to mention myself.
I'm not trying to make myself sound impressive or whatever, but I was thinking about all the content I've produced and I realized that I have to crank out a lot of content.
I produce two episodes per week currently. just talking about my normal content.
And then I have to crank out a ton of content for my membership and my US Conversations podcast.
I'm constantly cranking out episode after episode, seminar after seminar.
So I have to be pretty prolific because people are expecting new content from me and I hope that it's pretty good quality content.
I hope I'm not cranking out low quality content and I know that this is helpful for all of you, because I use this type of content as a language learner.
So I wouldn't crank out all this content if I didn't think it were helpful, and you guys always tell me that it's helpful, so I'll keep cranking it out.
All right, I hope that as I was talking, you were able to hear these phrasal verbs used again and again and hopefully you're more comfortable with them now.
Remember to check out my training for listening and pronunciation.
If you need help improving in those areas, you can click on the link below to sign up for my membership.
And also check out my U.S.
Conversations podcast to practice listening to my conversations that I have with other English teachers.
So that link is also down below.
Thank you all for listening to this phrasal verb episode, and I'll talk to you in the next one.
