Hey English learners, welcome to another phrasal verb episode.
I hope you're doing great and that you're excited to practice with a couple more phrasal verbs today.
In this episode, we're going to talk about two phrasal verbs.
The first one is burn off.
And the second one is burst into.
So first, let's define these phrasal verbs and see an example of each one.
So burn off refers to doing exercise because you want to lose weight that you gained from eating some food.
So we would usually burn off food or burn off weight or burn off calories.
You'll usually hear this in those contexts.
For example, I could say, I'm eating a lot now, but I'll burn it off later at the gym.
So in this case I'm saying that I'm I'm currently in the middle of a big meal where I'm eating a lot, but it's okay, because I'm going to go to the gym later and burn these calories so that I don't gain weight.
So that's burn off.
Burst into means to suddenly produce something.
Specifically, you'll hear it with the words laughter, tears, applause, or flames.
Those are the four times when you'll hear it the most.
There might be other ones that I'm forgetting here, but usually it will be one of these things.
So it means to suddenly produce laughter, tears, applause, or flames.
For example, the audience burst into applause.
This means that They suddenly started clapping all together.
They suddenly started applauding.
Okay, so now I'm gonna talk about a couple different things and use these phrasal verbs again and again so that you feel more comfortable with them by the end of this episode and maybe you'll be able to use them in your own sentences.
And overall, this is good listening practice for you.
And if you need the transcript, it's available for free.
Just go down into the episode description, press see more, I think and then you can see the transcript as well.
Okay, first let me talk about vacation, holidays, and gaining weight.
So many people have the problem when they go on vacation of overeating.
They eat a ton when they go on vacation.
So this means that a lot of people gain weight when they go on vacation.
I've seen people who have come back from their trip and they weigh several pounds more.
You can even see it sometimes.
Their belly looks a little bit bigger because of how much they ate and they did not burn it off.
They didn't do any exercise when they were on vacation and these people might think that it's okay because they're gonna burn it off later, when they get home from their trip and start exercising again.
So oftentimes they'll eat a lot when they're on vacation and they say okay, I'll burn this off later.
When we get back home, I'll burn off all of this food.
I'll burn off the extra weight when I'm go back to the gym or when I start running again, etc.
So some people indeed burn it off during the following days and maybe after a week or two it seems like they are back to normal, back to their original weight, their original size, and For some people it might take more than a couple weeks to burn off all the weight they gained, burn off all the food that they ate on vacation.
And some people simply never burn it all off.
They have that idea in mind that they'll burn it off. but in reality they don't.
They actually aren't able to lose that weight, burn off the food that they ate, and now they look a little bigger and they're a little heavier than they were when they left for that vacation.
So they just stay heavy and unfortunately this can accumulate over time.
They might gain more and more weight and so that can be an issue for people.
They're not actually able to burn off the weight that they gain on vacation, and And the same thing goes for holidays.
By the way, in American English the difference between vacation and holidays is that vacation refers to trip that you take because you have time off of work or school.
Or perhaps you don't take a trip, but you just don't go to work or school and you enjoy yourself for some days.
And a holiday refers to a special day where people celebrate, like Christmas or Easter or Thanksgiving.
In British English that's different, but I speak American English so I need to clarify when I use these words.
So when people eat a lot on holidays, because this is very common.
People eat a ton on Thanksgiving and on Christmas in the U.S.
When they do this, they simply say, I'll burn this off tomorrow.
I'll go to the gym every day this week and burn off all these calories, burn off this meal, right?
And So oftentimes you'll see a lot of people at the gym after the holidays because people intend to burn off the weight that they gained from the huge meal that they ate the day before.
And it's hard to burn off all the calories immediately if you eat a ton of food.
So usually they can't achieve this goal with just one session of strength training or running.
It's not always that easy, but people can have it in their minds that they can just burn off whatever food they eat by doing some exercise the following day.
But sometimes it can take longer than that.
And, in general, many people gain weight Not just because they eat a lot on vacation or on holidays, but because they aren't active enough in their everyday lives.
They aren't able to burn off all the food that they eat or the drinks that they drink.
Many people drink sugary drinks regularly that aren't good for them, that cause them to gain weight and they're not able to burn this off because they don't have a very active lifestyle and they end up gaining a lot of weight because they never burn it off at the gym or doing exercise like running swimming hiking, etc.
So, just in general, many people have trouble burning off all the food that they eat, all the calories that they consume, if they're not active enough.
All right, now let me talk about something else.
Let me tell you a fictional story about some teenagers who were messing around with fire.
When you mess around with something, this means that you do something or use something in a playful way, maybe in a way that you're not supposed to be doing it, depending on the situation.
So let me tell you about some teenagers who were messing around with fire at one of their houses.
So this teenager and his friends were at his house and they were lighting things on fire.
They were destroying things with fire, and every time something would burst into flames, These teenagers would burst into laughter.
They thought it was so funny to see these things burst into flames and be destroyed.
And they did things like burst. burn old stuffed animals.
The teenager whose house it was had access to some of the old toys and stuffed animals that he and his younger sister used to play with.
And so they grabbed these toys and stuffed animals and set them on fire and and burst into laughter.
So they did that for a while, and unfortunately, it kind of got out of control.
And of course, this can happen when you play with fire.
You can accidentally light things on fire that you weren't intending to light on fire and unfortunately the house caught on fire and the teenagers ran outside, but the teenager whose house it was his little sister was trapped inside and The house was on fire.
The teenagers had to call 911 so that firemen would come and put out the fire and rescue their sister.
Of course, he also called his mom who rushed home from where she was.
And upon seeing her house on fire, she burst into tears and she was hysterical.
It was hard to calm her down.
And then when she heard that her daughter was was still inside the house.
She was even more hysterical and she burst into a fit of rage, meaning she just became super angry and started getting really mad at her son who caused this fire, and she was really really upset.
Obviously, upset is not even the proper word here.
She was hysterical and she burst into tears again when she looked at the house, when she saw that the firefighters had hadn't brought her daughter out yet.
And then she burst into another fit of rage against her son, accusing him of causing all of this.
And of course, neighbors were watching.
All the neighbors came outside and watched the scene as it unfolded, meaning as it developed, as it happened.
And it was a terrible sight to see.
And finally, thankfully, the firefighters were able to get the girl out of the house alive.
And the mother burst into tears, tears of joy, of course.
She burst into tears when she saw her daughter safe and alive.
And the neighbors burst into applause as they saw the mother hug her daughter.
As they saw the two reunited, they burst into applause.
And it was a happy ending, actually.
But still, even after all this, the mother burst into another fit of rage and got really mad at the son again and yelled at him and screamed at him and his friends.
And before this the teenagers were all in shock.
They couldn't believe what was happening.
But at the end, when this mother was yelling at them, They burst into tears.
They were super embarrassed and ashamed of what they had done.
They couldn't believe that they caused all this, that they were the ones that almost killed the girl with their recklessness, meaning they were not being careful.
They did dumb things and caused the house to burst into flames.
So that's the fictional story I wanted to tell.
Hopefully as I was talking, you heard these phrasal verbs again and again.
And hopefully you can use them in your own sentences now.
And I want to challenge you to use more challenging content, higher level content in which I speak fast.
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So check out those advanced episodes so that you can take your listening to the next level.
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So that link is also down below.
Alright, thank you so much for listening to this phrasal verb episode and I'll talk to you in the next one.
