Hey English learners, welcome to another phrasal verb episode.
I hope you're doing great and that you're ready to learn a couple new phrasal verbs today.
In this episode, we're going to look at two phrasal verbs.
The first one is call for and the second one is call off.
So first, let's define these phrasal verbs. and see an example of each one.
Call for means to publicly demand something.
So, for example, I could say they called for the documents to be released.
In this sentence, I'm saying that they publicly demanded that the documents be released.
Maybe They're going on the news and saying that these documents need to be released and maybe they're protesting or they're calling their local government representatives, or whatever.
They're publicly demanding for these documents to be released.
They're calling for these documents to be released.
And the other phrasal verb is call off.
This means to cancel a planned event.
For example, the attack was called off by the commander.
In this sentence I'm saying that there was an attack that was planned against the enemy, but the commander decided to cancel the attack.
He called it off.
So he called off the attack.
All right.
Now let me talk about a couple different things so that i can use these phrasal verbs again and again in different sentences and hopefully by the end of this episode you'll feel comfortable with these phrasal verbs, so that you can understand them when people use them and hopefully you'll be able to use them in your own speech.
And of course, these phrasal verb episodes are also good practice for your listening.
And so don't forget that if you need the transcript, that's down below in the episode description below this episode.
All right.
First, let me talk about political scandals.
So when there are political scandals or when politicians are suspected of being involved in some type of corruption or crime or whatever, people often call for an investigation.
They want to know what the politician or politicians did or are doing.
So when there is some suspicion that a politician is doing something they're not supposed to be doing, people often call for an investigation.
The citizens demand that the politician be investigated and that the government look into the matter, meaning they investigate the situation.
So people often call for an investigation into these matters and perhaps, if there's some suspicion of corruption that is related to money, like maybe the politician was laundering money, as we say, or they were using money in a way that they shouldn't have, or they were accepting bribes, meaning people were paying them illegally in order to have the politician support them or allow them to continue doing their crimes, or whatever.
If there's some type of suspicion of a financial problem, then people might call for an audit, like they're going to look into the financial records and see if the money that they should have used for certain things was actually used for those things.
So people might call for an audit.
They might call for some audit, other type of investigation into that politician and their career, their activities etc.
And if the politician is found to be corrupt, if when the people call for an audit or an investigation the results show conclusively that the politician is is guilty of some type of corruption, then people usually call for their resignation.
They call for the politician to step down from their position, meaning resign.
So people call for their resignation, and if the politician refuses to resign, then people might call for their removal from office.
They might demand that the government remove that person from their position.
And if the politician has actually committed a crime, then people usually call for their arrest.
People love seeing politicians go to jail when they deserve to be arrested.
So People call for their arrest.
They call for judgment and fair, just consequences for corrupt politicians.
Oftentimes politicians get away with their crimes, meaning they don't get punished for their crimes.
Or perhaps they only receive a very minor punishment.
And this isn't fair.
So people call for just consequences, meaning fair consequences.
People want corrupt politicians to face the consequences of their actions.
And of course, people constantly call for change.
They don't want corrupt politicians in office.
They want people in office who are honest.
And so they call for change.
They demand for change in their government so that there isn't all of this corruption.
And so, even though people call for in-depth investigations into different politicians because there is some type of of evidence that these politicians have acted in a corrupt way,
Often these investigations don't ever happen because of corruption, unfortunately.
I think we can all think of different politicians that should be investigated, but nothing happens.
No one investigates them because of corruption.
So even though people call for the investigation of different politicians that seem corrupt, it often doesn't happen.
So many politicians end up getting away with their corruption.
They get away with their crimes, regardless of how many people call for some type of investigation, some type of action, right?
Okay, now let me talk about something else.
Let me tell a fictional story about a week of fun plans that were ruined by bad weather.
So, this isn't a real story.
I'm just telling it so that I can use this phrasal verb.
So, A certain city wanted to host a number of different events during spring break.
Spring break is the time when people have vacation around the beginning of spring.
So during spring break, people do many things, many fun things, and this one city wanted to host a lot of different events to have a fun week for the whole city.
So they planned a carnival, a concert, a baseball tournament, and a parade.
And unfortunately, the weather forecast showed that there might be a storm.
The forecast refers to the... prediction of the weather in the future.
So the weather forecast showed that there might be a storm, but the forecast kept changing, it wasn't very clear and the city didn't want to call off all of these events.
They didn't want to call off the events and then in the end, There was no storm and they just ruined the week for no reason.
So the city didn't want to call off the events.
They thought that even if there was some rain, it wouldn't be a big problem.
They would warn people in advance and tell people to come prepared.
So they didn't call off any of the events.
And they set up everything for the carnival, which was the first event.
They had everything ready.
They had all of the different rides and machines ready.
And the workers were ready to work and sell things and operate the rides and all of that.
Everything got set up, but the city had to call off the carnival the night before because the weather forecast showed that there was going to be pretty bad weather the next day.
Of course they didn't want there to be a lot of rain, if there were mechanical machines, things that could possibly be dangerous in rainy weather.
So they had to call off the carnival the night before, unfortunately.
But they figured that this would be the only event that they would cancel and that they wouldn't have to call off any of the other events.
So it didn't seem too bad.
The next event was the concert.
There was a big concert planned and multiple musicians were going to play at that concert.
There was even one pretty famous musician who was going to play at the concert.
They were scheduled to perform and the city hoped that the weather would get better.
And it started looking better the night before the concert.
And so it wasn't gonna be called off.
But the morning of the concert looked a lot worse and the forecast showed lightning.
And so they called off the concert due to the lightning, because it was an outdoor concert and there were a lot of things that could possibly get struck by lightning, and they didn't want to have a bunch of people outside in a lightning storm.
So they unfortunately had to call off the concert the morning of the concert, the same day.
It was really disappointing.
But they hoped that they wouldn't need to call off any other event.
They didn't want to call off the baseball tournament, which was the next day.
And the rain stopped and the lightning and thunder ceased, meaning they stopped the night before.
And there was no rain even up until the start of the baseball tournament.
But after the second inning of the first game.
An inning is a one little part of a baseball game.
A baseball game usually has nine innings.
After the second inning of the first game, unfortunately the tournament was called off because it started pouring, meaning it started raining super hard, and that was really disappointing for everyone.
But of course no one was gonna play baseball in the pouring rain.
And lastly, there was still a parade scheduled and the city refused to call it off.
They didn't want to cancel this last event.
And so, even though the weather forecast showed rain, they said that they would still have this parade, and they had it, but very few people went to it because of the rain.
So, out of all the events that were planned, only one of them wasn't called off and only a few people went to that event, unfortunately.
All right, I hope that as I was talking, you were able to hear these phrasal verbs again and again, and hopefully now you can understand how they're used and maybe you can use them in your own sentences.
I want to remind you that the next step for a lot of you will be to use my advanced podcast episodes, in which I speak at normal speed, not slowly like in these episodes.
So sign up for those by clicking on the link down below and also check out my US Conversations podcast if you want to practice listening faster my conversations that I have with other English teachers from around the US.
And you can also take classes with those English teachers if you want.
So 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.
