Hey English learners, welcome to another phrasal verb episode.
I hope you're doing well and that you're ready to learn some more phrasal verbs today.
In this episode, we're going to look at three phrasal verbs, dawn on, delve into, and die down.
So, let me define these phrasal verbs and give you an example of each one.
Dawn on means to suddenly become known or obvious to someone.
For example, I could say, it suddenly dawned on me that I had left my wallet at home.
In this sentence, I'm saying that it suddenly became known to me.
It became obvious to me that I had left my wallet at home.
This information dawned on me.
So that's dawn on.
And then the next phrasal verb is delve into.
Delve into means to examine something carefully in order to discover more information about it.
For example, I could say we never delved too deeply into that subject.
Here I'm saying that we never examined this subject in great detail.
We never did a lot of research into this subject.
We didn't delve deeply into it, in other words.
And lastly, we have die down.
This means to gradually decrease in intensity until becoming calm.
For example, I could say the pain finally died down later in the day.
In this sentence I'm saying that I had pain, And as the day went on I still had pain, but finally towards the end of the day, later in the day, the intensity decreased gradually.
And then finally the pain was very minimal or maybe even gone by the end of the day.
Okay, so now I'm going to talk about a couple different things and I'm going to use these three phrasal verbs again and again so that you can hear them used in different sentences in a natural context and hopefully you'll feel a lot more confident with these phrasal verbs by the end.
And if you need the transcript for this episode, it's in the description below.
Okay, let me first talk about a fictional police investigation.
So the police were looking into a crime that had been committed.
And as they delved deeper into this crime story and what had happened, they uncovered a lot of interesting information.
So there was a group of suspects that investigators believed were involved in this crime.
And as the investigators started delving into their past, as they started researching more into the past of these suspects, After a while it dawned on them that these people sounded very similar to the profiles of people who were wanted for another bigger crime.
So they were delving into the past of these suspects and looking into their background, and that's when it dawned on them that these people were probably the same people who were wanted for the other crime that I just mentioned.
So it was a big realization that dawned on them.
So they delved deeper into these suspects' criminal records because they had been involved in other crimes before.
So they delved into that and they found some pretty important information, some interesting facts and And they were able to delve deeper into the timelines of when they committed certain crimes.
And after a while it dawned on the investigators that they were dealing with very organized and highly intelligent and dangerous people.
It seemed that these were criminals who weren't just ordinary thieves or robbers.
They were highly organized and intelligent and dangerous, and They came to these conclusions as they were delving into their criminal records.
After that, they delved into their childhood, their upbringing.
They delved into the family history of these suspects and after a little bit of research it dawned on the investigators that they were dealing with a big criminal organization.
This was an entire organization who these people were involved with, and it was a dangerous organization and they didn't know a lot of information about it, but it seemed to be something very organized.
Like I said, not just random criminals or thieves who were just trying to commit crimes to make some money.
They were involved in a big organization and, And as investigators delved deeper into these different subjects, they developed a plan to expose this criminal organization, to bring light to who these people were, and so they developed a plan to do this, and they were succeeding for a while.
They were getting closer to the truth, but before they were able to do so, it dawned on these criminals that they were being investigated.
These big, powerful criminal organizations have ways of finding out if the authorities are onto them, meaning they are suspecting them, and they can usually find out when law enforcement is getting closer to finding the truth about them.
And so this organization was aware of the fact that the police were starting to suspect some of their members, and they thought that The police were not going to be able to have much success.
However, but then one day, it dawned on some of the leaders that they were being spied on by the authorities.
They found different equipment and other things that the police had planted to spy on them, and so once they found that, it dawned on them that the police were very close to exposing them, and so they all went into hiding.
So they all fled, they disappeared, they went into hiding and then the police were not able to arrest anyone.
So this organization was very organized and they had plans for how to disappear if they were suspected.
And so, once it dawned on them that the authorities were onto them, they disappeared completely, and investigators were not able to arrest anyone.
Okay, let me talk about something real this time.
Let me talk about some of the worst storms that I've been in.
So the first one that comes to mind was a recent experience, just a year and a half ago or something, when I was in the state of Puebla in Mexico and we were in the town of Atlitsko, I think it was called.
And we were going to the top of this big hill, where we were going to have amazing views of the surrounding landscapes, and it became clear that a storm was rolling in.
And when we got close to the top of this hill, there was a terrible downpour, like a bunch of rain, And it was heavy.
It was a big storm.
And it took forever to die down.
It was really stressful because i had my kids with me.
It was my dad, my wife and my two kids.
And my daughter was just a baby at that time.
She wasn't even a year old, so she was very young, and it was cold and wet and it was pouring rain and there was nowhere for us to go.
And we took shelter in a bathroom, in the men's bathroom, I think it was.
And we just stayed under the roof there while we waited for the storm to die down.
But it took forever to die down.
It was a really stressful thing.
Thankfully, my kids were okay.
They weren't really complaining too much.
They were just amazed to see all this rain falling and hear the thunder and see the lightning and all of that.
And it took a long time. for everything to die down.
And we didn't know how we were going to get down the hill.
But thankfully there was a person who was able to Give us a ride, or give me and my kids a ride, while my wife and my dad had to walk down the hill on their own in this terrible storm.
It was not fun and it didn't die down for hours.
So that was the recent experience that I can think of when I think of big storms that I've been in.
There was another storm that I wanted to mention.
Even though I don't remember it because I was a small child, but it's significant because it was a snowstorm and it was right at the time when my grandmother was terminally ill, I think.
If I remember the story correctly, I think it was very close to the time when my grandmother, my dad's mother, was close to dying.
And we got stuck in this snowstorm in Lake Tahoe.
This is a big lake in the US.
And it didn't show any signs of dying down and my parents were receiving updates on my grandmother and it was really stressful.
We were just trying to wait for the storm to die down so that we could leave, but...
It wasn't dying down.
And so I don't remember how the story ended exactly, but Of course we ended up leaving once the snowstorm died down.
I don't know how long it took or whatever, but I wanted to include this because it was the only snowstorm I've ever been in.
But I don't remember it because I was really little.
And I remember another somewhat recent storm.
This was maybe two and a half years ago and it was a hurricane that came to Southern California, but it died down a little before hitting Southern California, so it wasn't classified as a hurricane once it actually arrived to Southern California, but it was a hurricane before that and it was a huge storm.
It was one of the heaviest I can remember.
It died down after a day, I think it was.
But during that day, it was an extremely heavy storm.
I remember that people were preparing for it, as if they were preparing for a disaster like a tornado, a hurricane or something like that.
I remember people were trying to get supplies and different things that would help them.
We weren't taking it that seriously.
I didn't think it was that big of a deal.
But it was a heavy storm and we were thankful when it finally died down because it was not a very comfortable experience being in that much wind and rain and all of that.
It was very heavy.
And after it died down and we went outside, we could see all of the flooding and the different things that had happened because of this huge storm.
So this was one of the biggest storms that happened recently.
And then there were some pretty big rainstorms I remember as a kid.
And specifically the memory I have is that I had to help my parents push the water out of our side yard, like the little passageway on the side of our house outside, because the water would flood there and we didn't want the water to get into the house.
And so we took these big brooms out and tried to push the water out of the side yard into the front yard while we waited for the rain to die down.
I have vivid memories of doing this as a kid.
It was kind of fun to be honest as a kid.
But it was stressful for my parents because they didn't want any water damage in the house and they just wanted the rain to die down.
As a kid, I didn't really have these feelings, but my parents did.
And so my memory is just pushing the water out with these big brooms and having fun with that.
All right, I hope that as I was speaking, you were able to hear these phrasal verbs used many times and hopefully you feel more comfortable with them now.
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It's great practice for your listening.
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Alright, thank you for listening to this phrasal verb episode, and I'll talk to you in the next one.
