Phrasal Verbs for Everyday Conversation My Tips to Learn Use Correctly

Well hey there I’m Emma from mmmEnglish!

Today I’ve got ten phrasal verbs that I want to share and practise

with you. They are going to help you in general conversations,

general conversations that we all seem to be having

at the moment relating to the pandemic.

So the phrasal verbs we’re practising today are going to be useful

in lots of different situations

not just conversations about the pandemic.

They’re phrasal verbs about health, illness,

financial or money problems and the way that we offer

help and support to each other.

There are lots of interesting ways to expand your vocabulary

in this lesson and it will certainly help you to understand

more native speakers when you’re listening to podcasts or the TV

and it will definitely help you to speak more fluently about

these things yourself so let’s dive in!

Now phrasal verbs are often informal ways of expressing ideas

in English though they are really common in conversations,

extremely useful for you to learn and practise today.

Before we dive in, there are a couple of things,

little reminders that I want to share with you about phrasal verbs.

Tips to help you to understand them and also how they function

in English sentences.

So you know that phrasal verbs are a standard verb like get or go

or take with one or two particles.

Particle?

A particle is just a preposition or an adverb, sometimes both

and they follow the verb in a phrasal verb so we have get over,

get away,

get on with,

get up to,

right? Each of these phrasal verbs has a meaning that is different

from the original verb get, right?

They mean something else so when you’re learning

and you’re practising phrasal verbs,

you need to learn them together in little chunks right

and learn their different individual meanings

just like you would a list of verbs right and that is exactly

what we’re doing today in this lesson.

Now it is important to keep in mind that like some English verbs,

lots of phrasal verbs have multiple meanings which is why

learning them and practising them in context is so important.

It’s really important but also keep in mind that if you want to use

a phrasal verb correctly in a sentence and I’m pretty sure you do

well you need to know if it’s transitive, intransitive, separable

or inseparable.

Don’t worry if all of these grammatical terms kind of have you

scratching your head a bit and thinking

I’m sure I’ve heard that somewhere before

but I have no idea what it means.

Well they’re really important things that you need to understand

as you are learning phrasal verbs.

So if you’re really clear on what these things are then jump

straight ahead to this timestamp.

That’s where I’ll start teaching about the phrasal verbs

in this lesson but if you need to go over what some of these things

mean then hang out for a second.

A transitive verb is just a verb that needs an object to express

its complete action so the phrasal verb look at is transitive.

Now that means it needs an object, right?

Without one it doesn’t make sense.

Hey, look at…

Look at what?

So it’s transitive, right? It needs an object to make sense.

Hey, look at that bird!

That makes better sense.

Now intransitive verbs are the opposite. They don’t need

an object to express their complete action or their thought, right?

What time did you get up? is a good example.

So get up on its own expresses a complete thought or idea

without needing the object.

I don’t need to say:

What time did you get up from your bed this morning?

Right the meaning is already clear in that phrasal verb.

It can stand alone.

Now whether a phrasal verb is separable or inseparable

will tell you exactly where you can place that object

in your sentence so it will either be after the phrasal verb

or between the verb and the particle.

So the phrasal verb look at is inseparable

so the object must come after the particle.

You can’t separate the phrasal verb.

We can’t say:

Hey look that bird at!

Right it doesn’t make any sense in English

but the phrasal verb take off

as in take off my hat

is separable which means we can separate

the elements within the phrasal verb.

The object can come straight after the phrasal verb.

He took off his hat.

Or it can come between the verb and the particle.

He took his hat off.

Both of these sentences are correct. The meaning is exactly

the same and really if you’re ever feeling unsure, any

good English dictionary is going to tell you

whether it’s transitive or separable and that kind of thing

but throughout today’s lesson I’m going to be using these symbols

on the screen just to help you to learn

a little bit more about the phrasal verbs that I’m sharing

and make sure that you’re using them accurately.

Okay now that that’s out of the way,

let’s get stuck into the lesson.

You’re going to hear me use each of the ten phrasal verbs

that we’ll study today as I’m talking so right now I want you to grab

a pen and a paper and write them down as you hear them

or maybe type them into the comments

if you don’t have one handy.

But then we’re going to go a little deeper and focus on each

of these phrasal verbs and help you to use them in everyday

English conversations. Are you ready?

2020. The year the world ran out of toilet paper and hand sanitiser

and face masks

but toilet paper shortages were just one of the more

ridiculous things to happen in 2020.

The first breakout of COVID-19 happened to be in China

but before long people all over the world were coming down with it.

At this stage, almost two and a half million people

have passed away from the virus

but, incredibly, over sixty million people

have successfully fought it off so far.

People have lost their jobs,

businesses have been impacted, all of which has created

so much financial uncertainty.

While some people are lucky enough to have savings to dip into

in order to get by,

other people have had to go without essential items just to survive.

On a positive note, we really have seen people step up

and help out their local communities where they can.

People have rallied around health workers offering them

all kinds of support to make their daily lives easier.

Collaboration between scientists and researchers has led to the

development of multiple COVID-19 vaccinations.

They’re rolling out in many countries right now.

So be patient. Stay safe.

We’ve all got our part to play in this and it’s not over yet.

Did you hear all ten of those phrasal verbs?

I said run out,

come down with,

pass away,

fight off,

dip into,

get by,

go without,

step up,

rally around

and roll out.

So now let’s take a closer look at these

phrasal verbs so that you can focus on how to use them accurately

in your everyday sentences.

So let’s start with the ones that relate to illness.

Come down with.

So when you come down with something, you are starting

to show the signs of an illness.

They both came down with a terrible cold.

So it’s the same as saying catch, you know, we say

to catch a cold or catch an illness. It has the same meaning.

They came down with a cold.

They caught a cold.

Same thing.

Now usually come down with is used with non-serious illnesses

like a cold or the flu,

a stomach bug or even just

something when we’re a little unsure. We might say

I feel like I’m coming down with something.

Now notice that come down with is transitive and inseparable

so that means that we always need an object to complete that

thought or that action, right? We need that object.

But it’s also inseparable which means that the object needs to go

after the phrasal verb and not in between it.

You can also fight off a cold, can’t you?

When you free yourself of that illness and your body

overcomes that illness by fighting against it.

She came down with a cold

but luckily she was able to fight it off quickly.

She overcame the cold quickly so the fighting

here in this phrasal verb is figurative,

not literally fighting a cold or punching that virus in the face.

No.

It’s inside her body, her immune system is working hard

to fight off that virus you know, until she’s feeling well again.

So this phrasal verb is transitive. We need an object

but this time it is separable

so that means that our object can either go between the verb

and the particle or it can go after the phrasal verb.

She fought off the cold.

She fought the cold off.

She fought it off.

There is one little tip here that I want to share about

separable phrasal verbs so when that object

is a pronoun like in this sentence here. So we’re not saying

that cold or that illness. We’re saying it.

Then the object always goes between the verb and the particle.

She fought it off.

Not:

She fought off it.

Okay?

That’s something to keep in mind for separable phrasal verbs.

Now sometimes it’s not as simple as finding something off

and I’m sorry to anyone who is experiencing loss at the moment.

People don’t always overcome an illness, do they?

They become more and more unwell until eventually

they pass away.

So this is a polite and respectful way of saying to die.

Now it’s just a little bit softer and more indirect to say that

someone has passed away rather than saying he’s dead

or he died which sometimes it can sound

quite direct and maybe a little disrespectful as well.

So be careful with your word choice when you’re talking about

someone dying. Often this phrasal verb is a much better choice.

When I talk about my dad I don’t say: He died.

I say: He passed away.

Notice that this time the verb is intransitive and inseparable

so we don’t actually need an object

to express this idea, do we?

To pass away, we know what that means. It’s complete.

And because there’s no object, it also means that we

can’t separate the verb and the particle, right? So

that’s kind of obvious.

Okay so let’s move along a little and talk about some phrasal verbs

that relate to money and finance because this year has definitely

seen a lot of disruption for many of us.

Maybe your job

has been affected or the local businesses around you

have been struggling throughout the pandemic.

Well let’s talk about it. Check out this phrasal verb here, to dip into.

If you dip into something, you are spending some of your money

but usually, it’s money that you are saving for a specific purpose.

They have dipped into their savings to pay for their renovation.

Now interestingly, the object of this phrasal verb always describes

a sum of money so it’s a specific noun. It could be

savings or a pension or a retirement fund for example.

You get the idea. It’s a specific type of noun that you would dip into

Now maybe you’ve heard this phrasal verb in a line from a really

famous Beatle’s song

with a little help from my friends

I get by with a little help from my friends.

Get by means to manage to live or to do a particular task

using just the money or the knowledge that you have  

at that time and nothing else.

Even though Tim has been without work for six months,

they’ve been getting by.

They don’t have as much money as they usually do

but they manage to live with what they have.

They don’t need anything else to survive. They’re getting by.

But if you go without

that means that you know, you’re living without the things

that you need or you’d like to have.

If you think about the storms in Texas a couple of days ago,

people have been going without power for five days or more.

There was no power. They just had to find a way to live

without that power.

They went without power for five days.

I’m sure you can think of a time when you went without something

for a little while. Did you go without

sugar? Did you go without

a break? Did you go without..

Hey I’m not going to finish that sentence for you.

See if you can write your own sentence down in the comments  

below. I’ll be down to check them.

So next I want to talk about some phrasal verbs that express ideas

of support. So when you’re taking care of someone

or you’re doing something for someone else.

I’m sure you can probably think of a few.

Can you think of any phrasal verbs that express these ideas?

I’m sure you can but I don’t know if this one would be the first one

that you’d think of, to step up.

So when somebody steps up, they’re taking action and

succeeding in meeting a challenge or improving

their performance in some way.

In the context that we’re using step up today,

the community offered their help or their services

when they saw that someone needed it, right?

We have really seen people step up

and help out their local communities.

So in this example, step up is intransitive

but when I use this verb transitively so when I use it with an object,

actually the meaning changes.

The people stepped up their fundraising efforts.

So here the meaning’s a little different. It means to increase.

They increased their fundraising efforts

so this is common. Some phrasal verbs have multiple meanings

but to step something up means to increase something

but to step up means to

come forward and to offer help or a service.

So you can really see how important it is to understand

what these symbols mean but also

you know, how you can accurately use

that phrasal verb depending on the meaning.

You’ve got to pay attention to these things.

It can change the structure of a sentence

but it can also change the meaning of a phrasal verb as well

and that is where things can get a little bit confusing if you’re using

your phrasal verb in the wrong way.

Hey so now let’s talk about rally around.

It’s an interesting phrasal verb.

It’s a little more general. When you rally around someone

you help or you support them.

When her husband passed away, the neighbours rallied around her.

Okay so maybe those really kind neighbours of hers

brought food so she didn’t need to cook

or they offered moral support or just spend some time

with that lady showing her that she cared.

So when you’re rallying around someone, there isn’t

necessarily an exchange of labour or money or anything like that.

It could just be that you

showed someone that you care about them or you let them know

that you were there for them

and there are a couple of last phrasal verbs now that are a bit more

general. They don’t really fit into these categories

and just by chance, they actually both have the particle out.

Run out.

So we say run out if the supply of something runs out

or it’s finished.

We’ve run out of milk.

The milk’s finished. There’s no more milk. We’ve run out of milk.

Now you might be thinking that one’s a little easy

but there is a couple of things that I want to explain further

because with the preposition of, run out is transitive.

We run out of something.

Okay so we need an object to express that complete thought.

We’ve run out of milk. We’ve run out of toilet paper.

We’ve run out of power. Energy.

The hot water ran out while I was washing my hair.

So it’s really just a matter of

what you want to highlight in the sentence.

You can say I ran out of hot water.

So I’m highlighting

that the action happened to me.

But if we look at that sentence in a slightly different way.

The hot water ran out.

So we’re highlighting the action that happened.

The hot water running out is the most important thing in this

sentence. It doesn’t matter that it happened to me.

So the last phrasal verb that I’m going to share with you today,

I hope it’s a new one, is to roll out.

To roll something out, it means that you’re making something new,

maybe like a product or a service or a system.

So to make that new thing available for the first time. It’s like

launching or introducing something new or starting it

for the first time.

The train company is currently rolling out a new ticketing system.

So they’re launching this new ticketing system or introducing it.

And you know, you can use this phrasal verb in that way to,

it’s quite useful to talk about a process that is happening over

a period of time. It’s not instant.

They’re rolling it out over a period of time.

Now to make that even more relevant.

Lately we have been hearing a lot in the news about governments

rolling out the virus vaccine. Right? It’s not instant.

It’s a process. In fact, you may have also heard if you’ve

been listening to English speaking news

that governments have been talking a lot about their vaccine

rollout all right?

It can also be used as a very specific noun in this way.

So to roll out is the phrasal verb but a rollout

is the noun that we use to talk about exactly what that thing is.

So you just learnt ten phrasal verbs that will help you to talk about

the pandemic and the various ways that it’s been impacting

our lives.

Hopefully, you’ve taken lots of notes as you’ve been watching

through the lesson. I have one final challenge for you.

I want you to write a comment down below that uses a lot of these

new phrasal verbs that you’ve learned today in a paragraph.

Specifically, we’ve been thinking about how they relate

to the pandemic so maybe that’s the easiest way to get started

here but to talk about your experience or what’s happening in

your country using some of these phrasal verbs.

I’ll be down there to check out your answers over the weekend.

Make sure you’ve subscribed to the mmmEnglish channel

if you haven’t already, just down there.

Turn on notifications because we’ve got some awesome speaking

practice imitation lessons and a phrasal verb quiz

coming up over the next couple of weeks

so I’m looking forward to doing some more practice with you

using phrasal verbs.

See you soon!