Hey English learners, welcome to another phrasal verb episode.
I hope you're doing well and that you're ready to practice your English and learn some more phrasal verbs.
And in this episode, we're going to look at two phrasal verbs.
The first one is break up, and the second one is breeze through.
And we're going to look at two different usages of break up.
So first, let me define these phrasal verbs and give you an example of each one.
So, starting with break up, one usage of this phrasal verb is when we use it to mean to end a romantic relationship, specifically boyfriend and girlfriend.
We don't use it as much if the couple is already married.
And so if we want to use this phrasal verb in a sentence, we could say something like they broke up after a year of dating.
So this simply means that they ended their relationship after a year of dating.
Perhaps one of the two broke up with the other person or Maybe they both just decided to end it.
So that's the first usage.
And another usage of break up is when we use it to mean to put an end to something by interfering.
So, for example, I could say the cops showed up and broke up the party.
What I'm saying here is that the cops came and they put an end to the party.
They interfered and shut it down.
They broke up the party.
Okay, how about breeze through?
This phrasal verb means to successfully complete something very quickly and easily.
For example, I could say, he breezed through the tasks that the other programmers struggled with.
So in this sentence, what I'm saying is that Other programmers had a hard time doing the tasks.
It took them a while or they found the tasks difficult.
But this programmer actually completed these tasks easily and quickly.
So he breezed through them.
Okay, now let me talk about a couple different things, and I'm going to use these two phrasal verbs over and over again, and hopefully by the end of this episode, you'll be able to understand these phrasal verbs well when you hear them, and you might even be able to use them in your own sentences.
So first, let me talk about a relationship between two of my old friends.
And this story might be real or it might not be real.
I'm not going to tell you.
So these two friends of mine who were in a relationship, they were boyfriend and girlfriend.
They always argued.
They argued all the time.
They argued in front of other people.
So everyone knew that they argued constantly and they were both very passionate.
They got really passionate and angry and emotional when they would argue with each other.
And everyone always expected them to break up.
After every fight that they had, people would think that this was the time that they would finally break up after this particular fight, because it didn't seem like they could continue with a healthy relationship given how much they fought.
So everyone always expected them to break up, especially After fights that they had in public which created big scenes.
In fact, they had shouting matches, as we call them, like they just started screaming at each other, yelling at each other.
They would have shouting matches in public and sometimes people had to break up their fights.
They had to break up their shouting matches.
These two people would be yelling at each other in public and it would get really heated and intensified to the point that that strangers felt the need to intervene and break up these shouting matches.
They came and tried to break up the fight between the couple.
And there was one time when the police had to break up their really heated argument that they were having in public.
So you can imagine how passionately they argued with each other and you can imagine why.
Everyone assumed they would break up after each of these fights.
And on one occasion, there was a really big fight.
And this occurred at the boyfriend's house.
And the two fought really intensely.
And the woman actually called her brother and told him about what was going on and the woman's brother came over to the man's house and they actually had a physical fight.
They ended up starting a fist fight the boyfriend and the girlfriend's brother and this happened in the front yard, outside the house, and neighbors had to come and break up the fight And they successfully broke it up and they thought that things were going to cool down.
But then the two men started fighting again.
They started hitting each other, punching each other and fighting.
The neighbors had to break it up again.
And it was a terrible scene.
It really was.
And everyone assumed that this was the last straw, as we say, meaning this was the final thing that would cause them to break up.
And actually, this time it happened.
After this incident, the couple actually broke up.
And it's no surprise, because after all of their fighting and then after the physical altercation between the woman's brother and her boyfriend, it wasn't very intelligent to continue on with that relationship.
Things were just too crazy.
There was just no way that the two people would see eye to eye and actually start to get along.
They would probably have just kept on fighting and fighting.
And so it was a smart decision for them to break up after this.
And it was mutual.
It wasn't just one of the two who broke up with the other person.
They actually sat down together and talked calmly and they both came to the conclusion that this relationship was not gonna work.
They were not going to be able to move on from everything that had happened.
And they just weren't compatible.
And so they both decided that it was in their best interest to break up.
And so that's what happened.
And they finally broke up and ended their relationship.
All right, now let me talk about something else.
Let me talk about my experience in high school and college.
So I had many classes throughout my student career, and I had some classes that were easy.
Some of them were really easy, actually.
And In college, especially during the first couple of years, I found that getting good grades and at least passing the classes was not a very difficult task.
I've talked to students in other countries who tell me that college is much harder than than high school in their country.
But in the US, I don't think that college is that hard at the lower levels.
I'm not talking about getting a master's degree or a PhD.
But talking about the lower levels of higher education, for me the classes in general weren't that hard.
And some of them were pretty easy.
I didn't get too much homework and I breezed through the tests.
Even for subjects that weren't my best subjects, they weren't that hard.
And some subjects were just very interesting for me or I found that I was naturally good at them.
And so, when it came to those classes, I was able to breeze through the assignments, breeze through the homework and really breeze through a lot of the tests that they gave.
So those classes didn't really cause me much trouble.
Some classes were harder though, and they gave a lot more homework.
And the assignments were more complex.
I had to do more research or I had to really study things and perhaps learn new things on my own.
And those classes were definitely a lot more challenging. the other classes that I mentioned.
And some of these subjects, some of these classes were hard for me, simply because I was weak in these subjects.
I wasn't good at them.
And so perhaps those classes weren't that hard for the other students.
Maybe a lot of other students breezed through those classes.
No problem, but I definitely didn't breeze through those classes.
I had a hard time with them, or they were at least challenging enough that I had to dedicate more time and energy to those classes.
And when there would be tests for those subjects, I definitely didn't breeze through them.
I actually had to study a lot beforehand, and I didn't just do really well every time.
There were even times when I didn't get good grades on certain tests.
And so those classes were a different story, meaning they were completely different from the easier classes.
And to give you some examples of classes that I was good in, I was always good in English.
I think this is an obvious one because I'm an English teacher now.
I always found English to be an interesting subject for me, and it was curious because this was usually one of the subjects that most people didn't like in school.
I remember...
My friends hated English class.
I had very few friends that actually liked their English classes.
But I found them to be interesting.
I liked reading the different books that we had to read in those classes.
And I was always pretty good at writing, like writing essays and stuff.
I think that might be because my mom was an english teacher and she kind of instilled that in me.
She gave that natural inclination, that natural ability to me, i think.
So english classes were pretty easy for me.
It was more essay writing.
But whenever there were tests, I usually breezed through them.
I didn't have to study too much.
So English classes were usually the easiest ones for me.
And I also think that I did well in my different history classes.
I think that I've always been interested in history.
And when you're interested in a subject, that usually means that you do well in those classes because you actually want to study.
You want to learn. you want to pay attention.
So I think that was the case for me in these classes.
I paid attention.
I was engaged when the teacher lectured and I found those classes fun in many cases not always, but I often found those classes to be fun classes for me, and so i sometimes breezed through the tests with no problem.
I just had to study a little bit beforehand, but i didn't really have to struggle through those classes or those tests.
So I did well in most of my history classes.
However, there were a couple subjects that I did poorly in.
The worst one for me was chemistry.
So I was terrible in my chemistry class.
I was not one of the top students.
I struggled a lot and I always felt like I had no idea what I was doing and I was always frustrated when I saw other students in that class who were better than me at that subject and they breezed through the assignments.
They breezed through the tests.
Everything seemed to come natural to them and I just couldn't understand anything.
When I think back to that class, I can remember that feeling that I had of just being completely lost and it didn't matter what we were doing.
We could be doing an experiment, which we did a lot of.
We did a lot of experiments in that class and those experiments are supposed to be fun, but I just hated them because I couldn't understand what was going on.
I just couldn't get it.
And then, when it came to assignments, I always did poorly on my homework assignments, whereas other people breezed through them and tests were the worst.
I did not do well on those tests.
I did not breeze through a single test in that class.
And I passed the class, thankfully, but it was the worst grade that I ever got in any subject.
So that was my worst class.
And another class that I did not breeze through was art.
I have always been terrible at art and other people found it easy.
They breezed through that class.
I did not.
I struggled in art.
So chemistry and art were perhaps my worst classes in school.
All right, I hope that you feel more comfortable with these phrasal verbs now that you've heard me use them again and again in different sentences.
And hopefully you can use them in your own sentences too.
And I want to remind you that you can access my advanced podcast episodes by becoming a Listening Time family member.
This will be the next step for many of you.
You need to be able to understand when native speakers speak at normal speed.
So you can click on the link down below to sign up for those and also check out my US Conversations podcast, in which I talk to different people from around the country.
We talk at normal speed and it's really interesting.
And I provide the transcript for you, with the definitions of hard words or phrases that we use during those conversations.
So make sure to check that out as well.
That link is down below.
All right.
Thank you all so much for listening.
And I'll talk to you on the next phrasal verb episode.
