Hey everybody, welcome to this phrasal verb episode.
I hope you're ready to learn a couple new phrasal verbs in English while you're practicing your listening.
And of course, remember you have the transcripts for all of these episodes for free.
Each one is in the description below each episode.
So go down and open that up if you need it.
And in today's phrasal verb episode we're going to look at two more phrasal verbs with the verb be.
I think I said in the last phrasal verb episode that I wasn't going to do all of the different be phrasal verbs, because a lot of them kind of feel more like adjective phrases, I guess.
But I wanted to do two more of these be phrasal verbs.
The first one is be out of.
And the other one is be taken aback.
So I think these are both useful phrasal verbs.
I want to go over them today.
Let's start with be out of.
So be out of means to have no more left.
So you no longer have more of that thing.
For example, I could say we're out of money.
That means that all of our money is gone.
We spent it all.
We're out of money.
The other phrasal verb is be taken aback.
This means to be shocked or surprised, especially by another person's actions.
For example, I was taken aback by his lack of empathy.
So in this sentence, I'm saying that when I saw his lack of empathy, I was really surprised.
I was shocked.
It's not something that I was expecting.
So I was taken aback by it.
So now I'm going to talk about a couple different things and I'm going to use these phrasal verbs again and again in different sentences and hopefully, by the time I'm done, you feel very comfortable with these phrasal verbs and hopefully you might even be able to use them in your own sentences.
So first let me talk about my grocery shopping.
And I guess I should say my wife's grocery shopping, because ever since she learned how to drive earlier this year, I'm recording this in 2024 still.
You'll be listening to this in 2025.
Ever since she learned to drive earlier this year, she has been able to go grocery shopping without me, which I'm very thankful for, because I do not like shopping.
This was one of the main reasons why I wanted her to get her driver's license.
My wife goes grocery shopping once a week.
I go with her occasionally, but usually it's just her and my kids that go while I work.
So we are those people that go and buy our food for that week, and that's pretty much it.
We run out of food by the end of the week.
So by the time the week's over, We're out of a lot of stuff.
We're out of most of the stuff that we need, actually.
There are some things that we're not out of at the end of the week, usually like butter and things like that that lasts longer than a week, right.
But usually by the end of the week we're out of fruit or almost, especially because we buy organic food and we always try to buy organic produce, meaning organic like fruit and vegetables and stuff.
So organic fruit tends to last not as long as non-organic fruit, and so we have to eat it fast and we can't really buy a lot of organic fruit and expect it to last a long time, because it's it goes bad or we just eat a lot of fruit.
So we're usually out of fruit by the end of the week.
We're usually out of some dairy products.
For example, my wife gets milk every week, and by the end of the week, she's always out of milk.
I really like kefir.
I'm not sure if you know what that is.
It's a type of fermented milk, kind of like yogurt, but it's different.
I love this and I usually buy raw kefir, so unpasteurized kefir.
It's delicious.
It's a great product.
So I buy this, but it's expensive and it lasts me a week or less.
So by the end of the week, I'm out of kefir.
So that's something we need to buy every week.
And we're usually out of meat by the time the week's over, unless we freeze it.
Sometimes we freeze our meat to make it last longer because it goes bad pretty fast, to be honest.
This is a problem that we have.
Besides being out of meat, running out of meat by the end of the week, we often see our meat go bad.
It spoils, as we say.
When meat spoils, it means that it is no longer edible.
It has gone past its expiration date, so to say.
So sometimes our meat is spoiled by the end of the week and we can't eat it, or maybe we just finish it within just a few days and then by the end of the week we're out of it.
So we usually have to get meat every week.
Actually, we always have to get meat.
And then one thing that we always run out of by the end of the week we're always out of water before the end of the week, actually.
So we don't drink the tap water here.
Tap water refers to water that comes out of the faucet.
Like your sink.
You can actually drink that.
I mean, people drink that here in the US and many places.
However, it's got stuff in it that I don't want to put in my body.
So I don't drink it.
We buy water from the store.
So because we have to just buy our own water and drink it, we run out usually.
And we always need to buy more bottles of water.
I think soon we're going to buy a water filter again.
And that will make our lives easier.
I don't know why we haven't bought one yet, but I think pretty soon we're going to get a water filter, because I'm tired of always running out of water and needing to buy a lot more every week.
But yeah, at the end of every week we're usually out of water, or actually we're almost always out of water.
So what do you think?
Is it better to shop like we shop once a week and then by the time you go shopping again, you're out of everything, so you have to buy all the food for that week and you go shopping every week?
Or do you think it's better to go shopping like twice a month or something like that, and then buy more food?
Or maybe you go shopping once every three weeks and you buy a lot of food and so you're not out of food by the end of the week?
I know people have different preferences, but we like to go every week and yeah, it's more gas, but we're able to have fresh food, fresh organic fruit, things like this.
That's not something that we can just get every three weeks.
We're not gonna freeze all our fruit, right?
So for us uh, i think we prefer to go every week, even though there are some downsides to that.
All right, let me talk about something else now.
Let me talk about some things that surprised me recently.
The first one that I want to talk about is the treatment that we received by the airline that we were flying on when our flight was canceled.
Most of you probably know what I'm talking about.
I think that I have already talked about this canceled flight in an episode or two.
I'm forgetting when that this phrasal verb episode will be released, but I think it will be released after those episodes in which I talked about my recent trip.
But just to recap when you recap something, it means you summarize something again that the person has already heard.
Just to recap, we were supposed to fly back from Puebla to Tijuana on a Wednesday and we got to the airport.
They told us our flight was canceled and the next available flight was going to be on Saturday, three days later.
So it was a disaster, of course.
Thankfully, we got on another flight from Mexico City the next day.
But I was really taken aback by the treatment that we received from that airline and its representatives.
And it was really surprising to me how little empathy they showed.
I was really taken aback by how little empathy the representatives showed.
Because think about it.
Yes, we were just returning from our trip and so our trip wasn't ruined or whatever.
We just had this huge inconvenience and we had small children with us who were sick and no place to stay.
But Other people probably had it worse than us in the sense that they were flying to take their trip to Tijuana or maybe they were going to cross to San Diego.
And their trip was ruined because – think about it.
If you're planning to go on a Wednesday – and the airline is telling you that you can't fly until Saturday, that's probably going to completely ruin your trip.
That probably changes everything for you.
So a lot of people had their trips ruined And I was just really taken aback by the attitude of the representatives.
They didn't show any sympathy, any empathy.
They just acted like robots, like, all right, the next flight Saturday.
Is that OK?
It was really off putting.
When something is off-putting, that means it really gives you a bad feeling about that person or whatever.
They didn't offer any help.
They didn't even apologize.
Can you believe that?
Imagine you are representing a company that just completely messed up your vacation, your travel plans.
Everything is ruined because this airline canceled its flight.
And they don't even apologize to you.
They don't even show the least bit of embarrassment or remorse or whatever.
They just kind of act like robots.
That's how they were acting.
And I was also taken aback by their lack of organization.
It was just like not well structured and organized how they were dealing with everything.
And I was just taken aback by that.
And I don't think I'm going to fly with that airline again.
I was just really disappointed.
And I've had other bad experiences with them as well.
So I think I'm gonna choose a different airline in the future.
Another thing I wanted to mention something that sometimes surprises me is the praise of my content, meaning when people write me messages or comment on my videos and they talk about just how fantastic My content has been for them.
And I'm really thankful that they feel that way.
But sometimes I'm taken aback by just how much gratitude they have for me or just how much they claim that my content has changed their whole English learning experience.
I'm really glad to hear that.
But I'm just taken aback because I don't necessarily think that I make the best English content in the world or whatever.
But it's cool to receive those comments.
Sometimes they'll talk about how, like they passed some test or they got a job thanks to something, the practice that they did with my content, and I'm always really taken aback by that because Honestly, I can lose sight of Maybe, the effect that my content has on people.
When you lose sight of something, that means that you kind of forget it.
It is no longer in your vision, right?
I can lose sight of the impact this content can have on people, that people can use my podcast and my videos, my membership, my US Conversations podcast, use all of that to prepare for whatever it is that they need to prepare for.
And it's just really cool when I receive comments where people talk about just what an impact my content has had on their lives.
So I'm taken aback by a lot of the nice comments.
However, I'm also taken aback at times by the negativity that I sometimes receive.
I don't receive many negative comments.
Don't get me wrong.
There are very few.
However, there are some negative negative comments that I receive.
People might tell me things like I'm boring or worse things than that.
And sometimes I'm taken aback, like whoa, i'm just making content for people who want to practice their english listening or whatever, like it's surprising to me that people have a negative reaction to what i'm doing.
My content doesn't seem that uh, let's say polarizing or controversial, right?
So i am taken aback when i receive negative comments because I don't know what people have to complain about in terms of my content.
And so some people don't like me, obviously, that's normal.
But sometimes I can forget that, oh, I'm on the internet.
And of course, people on the internet don't always say nice things.
That's the last thing I wanted to mention is that I'm taken aback by the behavior of a lot of people online.
People online will say horrible things.
They'll say things that they would never say to your face, because that could cause a real problem, an actual fist fight.
A fist fight means a physical fight where you're throwing punches at each other.
So people online will say horrible things.
I'm taken aback by how vicious and nasty people can be online.
People attack other people without mercy and they get just super angry in the comment section of YouTube videos or Instagram or whatever.
I'm not uh, the person that really spends a lot of time in the comment section of social media or youtube, but when i do scroll down sometimes uh, it's surprising.
Just you know how vicious people can be to each other.
I'm always taken aback by The stuff I see in comment sections, and people will get pretty nasty when talking just about things that aren't that important.
Right.
Just like minor differences of opinion.
Like one thing is the differences of opinion there.
When it comes to diet, when it comes to what food people consume, like people will just say just awful things to each other online just because they disagree with that person's diet and what they think is good to eat.
Like I've noticed that recently and I'm taken aback by that just the behavior of people online.
I'm sure a lot of you can identify with this feeling that i have.
So i hope that as i was speaking, you were able to hear those phrasal verbs used over and over again, and i hope that you feel more comfortable with those phrasal verbs and you should try using them in your own sentences if you can, and i want to encourage you to check out my pronunciation training.
A lot of you have probably never trained your pronunciation with a professional teacher before.
And so you can get my pronunciation seminars if you become a Listening Time super member or any of the higher tiers of my membership.
This training is really helpful for a lot of people.
People usually love it.
It kind of opens their eyes to the different sound patterns in English and I encourage you to check it out.
So I'll leave the link down below, as always.
And, of course, you can access my advanced episodes if you become a Listening Time family member or VIP.
And check out my US Conversations podcast, in which I talk to many different people from all over the country.
We have interesting conversations at normal speed. and I provide the transcript for each episode.
So that's great practice for you.
That link is also down below.
All right, thank you so much for listening to this phrasal verb episode and I'll talk to you in the next one.
