This is the Business English Podcast Episode 93.
Let us help you out with three phrasal verbs for work.
Welcome to the Business English podcast from All Ears English.
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Offer ends August 10th. Hey, Aubrey, how's it going today?
How you doing? I am great. I have a funny question for you.
As technology updates, I'm curious, what's the last thing you printed out?
I just printed out my tax forms to pay my taxes today.
That makes sense. But a lot of people don't.
Don't have to print anything out, right?
You fill out everything online. You might not have to print print any forms.
Maybe you're printing to a PDF. We don't really print things out that much anymore.
We really don't. I think the fact that I have a printer means I print out more things, right?
That's sort of the chicken and egg thing.
Absolutely. I was fascinated when we purchased our home.
The first time we purchased, they had to print out stacks and stacks of documents that we had to sign.
And then recently, it was all online. We just had our virtual signature.
We signed everything online. It's crazy how much that's changed.
That is so much better. Things have changed a ton.
And printers are bulky. They're ugly. They take up space in your office.
It's just better to be paper free. Yes, I'm excited that we're moving that direction.
But the reason I asked, is this verb print out?
I could have just say, what's the last thing you printed?
And it would mean the exact same thing. Why are there two?
That's true. Why is there a phrasal verb?
Who even knows? I mean, that's why we did a similar episode on All Ears English.
We'll let our listeners know which one it was.
But today's the good news for business English is that today we're going to give you guys these three phrasal verbs that are essentially redundant when you add that extra preposition.
Right? Exactly. Right. So the good news is you don't have to worry about these.
They're very interchangeable in a lot of situations.
So we're going to share three that you can lower your stress level by knowing that these mean the same as the base verb.
Yes, we can take a deep breath and relax.
Exhale, right? Exactly. I mean, what does it mean, right?
We did a similar episode. Like we said, that one was 1984 in all ears English.
So maybe go over and listen to that one first, guys, then come back to this one.
But the difference today, we're giving you different ones, of course.
And we're also going to apply this more to the business world.
The examples are going to be all about business, right, Aubrey?
Yes, because when I was looking at, there are lists online of unnecessary or useless phrasal verbs, meaning they have the same meaning as the base verb.
If there's any slight change, it just makes it a little more informal, usually.
And these three are used the most commonly in business English.
I guarantee you guys use these. all day, every day, or we all do.
Yeah, it's true. Around the office stuff, right, Aubrey?
And it does matter. I mean, why does it matter for connection?
I think it matters, the things that happen sort of in between the work.
What do you think about that, Aubrey? I mean, we're not in offices anymore, but it still matters what happens when we hop on the call, how we catch up, things like that, right?
Exactly, right? The language that we're using When we're on a video call or just a telephone call or in our emails, it does still matter.
And there's plenty to stress about when it comes to a phrasal verb.
And the good news is for these, you can know that you can use them both interchangeably.
You're not going to accidentally use an idiom that means something else.
Yeah, 100%. I love it. So the first one we know is already the printout.
Let's give a few more examples of that one, shall we?
Yeah. So you could say, can you print this please?
Or can you print this out please? And they both mean the same.
And this is separable. You saw that direct object.
This went in between printout in the second example.
Can you print this out? So this is one that can be separated.
Okay, perfect. And then just more examples.
I need to print a few documents or I need to print out a few documents.
Yes. Exactly. And they both, right, mean the exact same thing.
You can use them both interchangeably either or no change in meaning.
Yes, 100%. I love it. So nice to know we don't have to worry about that one because we could spend our time learning the other 100 and, you know, 1,012 phrasal verbs, right?
I know, exactly. There are so many tricky, really difficult phrasal verbs, many of which do have idiomatic meanings, right?
There's some crazy meaning that makes no sense with the words that you're actually reading.
These don't have that. Yeah, or 12 other idiomatic meanings.
The same verb with five extensions, right?
With different prepositions that change the meaning.
You don't have to worry about that with this.
So the second one is help out. Okay, let's talk about this.
Yeah. So if you ask someone, can you help me out?
Which just means the same as, can you help me?
You can also say that, can you help me? They both mean the exact same thing.
Yeah. I think broadly, and we said this on 1984 of All Ears English, it does make it a little bit more casual, but it's so nuanced, the difference that we put these into the redundant category, that it doesn't add a lot of value, right?
Right. And it's usually that with the phrasal verb version, it's just the tiniest bit more informal, but really not different enough that you need to put these in categories of learn this phrasal verb and this base verb.
They're so similar. You can use them interchangeably.
Yeah, it can't be categorized. It can't be a straight line here.
Another example, guys, I'm going to help out at the fundraiser this weekend.
Or Aubrey, what could we say that means the same thing?
Yeah, I'm going to help at the fundraiser this weekend.
Same meaning. I love that. So good to know that we don't have to worry.
Yeah. Exactly. And we do use these all the time in business English, right?
To let someone know we're going to help them or we need help.
And this is one case where you can decrease that stress a little bit.
You can use either the base verb help or that phrasal verb help out.
Yes, for sure. And there's one more that our listeners can relax around.
What is that? send out, which we use all the time.
You might say, can you send out that email today?
But what has the exact same meaning, Lindsay?
Yeah. Can you send that email today? Exactly.
I mean, again, there's a slight difference, but it's not important.
It's negligible, right? Bonus phrase for today.
Negligible. What does that mean? Yeah, just so slight that it doesn't matter at all.
Yes. And we talk often about how phrasal verbs make something a little bit more informal.
This is the case for a lot of other phrasal verbs, much more than these, right?
The difference here is, like you said, negligible.
It makes it this tiniest bit more informal that you don't need to worry about it.
You can use either one. No one's going to blink an eye.
Yes. And here's another. Did we give this example yet?
Did you send out the contracts? Right. That's one example.
What's the second one? Or same meaning. Did you send the contracts?
Right. So like you said, the tiniest bit more informal to say send out.
You can use both of these in all of the same scenarios because it's not enough more informal that it's changing when you should use which one.
You don't have to stress about it. You can use either.
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Exclusions apply. See details online. OK, Aubrey, now that we know what the three phrasal verbs are that we essentially they're redundant when you add that preposition.
Let's do a role play for our listeners. What do you think?
All right. This is a fun one. You and I are co-workers planning an event.
I'll start us out. Thanks for helping me out.
There's so much to do. Oh, no problem. I printed out a to do list so we can cross things off as we finish them.
Good idea. I sent out an invitation email this morning so you can mark that off.
Awesome. So how can I help? Actually, can you print the name tags?
For sure. Send me the guest list and I'll take care of it.
Nice. So this is interesting. I used all of them here.
The first three are the phrasal verbs and the last three sentences are with just the regular verb.
So if you go back and look through this role play every time, you could switch it out for the other one, except the very last one.
We'll get into that and why. I love it. Okay.
So let's go through the first one. So first you said, Aubrey, thanks for helping me out.
And again, you could have said what? You could have said...
Thanks for helping me. Yeah, same meaning, right?
This tiniest, tiniest bit more informal to say, help me out.
Thanks for helping me out, but not different enough that you have to think about which one should I use.
Either works. Right. Not different enough that the connection will change or the meaning will change dramatically.
So don't worry about it, guys. Exactly.
And then you said, I printed out a to-do list.
You could definitely just say, I printed a to-do list.
100%. You could. I totally agree with that.
And then you said, good idea. I sent out an invitation email this morning.
So you can mark that off. And I could have said, I sent an invitation email this morning.
Means the same thing. Exactly. And then you said, how can I help?
And you could say, how can I help out? Yeah, 100% you could.
And then you said, actually, can you print the name tags?
So you could have said, can you print out the name tags?
Exactly. And this last one's a little different.
You said, send me the guest list. And here's the difference.
You can't say send out here. If you're using that pronoun, right?
Send me something has that different meaning of I'm asking you to send me something.
Send out means the same as send by itself, right?
You're sending something without specifying who it's being sent to.
Right, right. So this is where, so usually it's going to mean the same thing.
Send in, send out. In this case, I think send is more about a one-to-one, like me to you.
Send me the email. As opposed to send out the invitation, like did you send them out to everyone?
Yeah, this is a tricky thing about where that base verb send changes depending on the context of the sentence.
If you're saying send me something, that's a different meaning than send the guest list.
You're just saying like send it out into the universe.
Yeah. And that, I mean, how do we get these nuances, Aubrey?
How do we, you know, how do we know what's the best strategy from a language learning perspective to figure this all out?
Should we be studying the dictionary? What should we do?
No, right. Don't study the dictionary. Don't study textbooks.
It's all about context. The more like you're listening to this podcast where we break it down, when something like this comes up, we're going to share that so that you understand why, what's the difference.
This is where real language learning happens and And then also don't stress about it, right?
If you say one or the other here, what a relief that they're going to mean the same thing.
Yeah, I mean, that's the key. That's what we want you to leave you guys with today is these three, usually like 95% of the time mean the same thing.
So you can put these ones aside and focus on the others, but don't worry about come back to connection with your colleagues.
Exactly. Yes, that's what's so vital when you're at work with coworkers, colleagues, it's so much more important that you are making the attempt to speak and connect instead of taking that time to sit and think about which phrasal verb should I use that can really destroy that connection.
Well, it's so true what you said, Aubrey.
I mean, there's a moment, you know, the connection moment's there and then it's gone.
The window's closed and you'll have to wait till the next one tomorrow.
And so if you don't just move into that space and come into connection with that person, you lose the opportunity, right?
So take advantage of those moments. Absolutely.
Yes. And it will come as you're listening to English, listening to our podcast, practicing, putting yourself out there to make those connections, to have those conversations with coworkers.
It just starts feeling right. You know, you wouldn't say, send me out the guest list because you've heard a lot of English.
You know that like, wait, no, I would just say, send me the guest list without having to really break down why.
You know, like, no, there's a different context here.
There's a different meaning that I'm asking you to send me something rather than send something out.
Yeah. And that's actually a really exciting place.
A lot of our listeners are in that place where they're starting to trust themselves.
Right. They know what comes next. They know it as opposed to kind of being at the beginner level where I am with my Arabic, for example.
I don't know what comes next. I have no idea.
I'm trying to learn the alphabet. It's not easy.
Right. But for our listeners, you guys are in that place.
So you can start to trust yourself more as long as you're consuming all there's English, consuming a lot of native material all the time, trusting yourself and then coming to that higher goal of connection, not perfection.
Right? Yes. And I love that we were able to dive in today to something that you don't have to worry about so much because you guys know there are plenty of phrasal verbs that are pretty tricky that you do have to worry about when it comes to business English.
You're wanting to use the right language, make sure your message is clear and professional.
So it's kind of a relief that we have three here that you can basically ignore completely.
You can use either the base verb or the phrasal verb.
You got it. I love it. And guys, don't forget we are on YouTube.
So if you would rather watch our episodes, you can go over to YouTube and hit subscribe on our channel and catch this episode.
Aubrey, fun to be on the podcast with you as always.
Yes, absolutely. I'll see you next time, Lindsay.
Talk to you soon. Take care. Bye. Thank you for listening to Business English, a podcast just for you, the high achieving global professional.
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