Download English lesson podcast and transcript

Introduction

Hi! Lori here, welcoming you to another episode of Real English Conversations from BetterAtEnglish.com. In today’s conversation, my English friend Michael and I talk about how much we use and depend on the Internet in our daily lives, particularly Google. In our conversation, which was completely unplanned and spontaneous, we ended up using quite a few phrasal verbs. I have highlighted these phrasal verbs in the vocabulary notes, as well as some idiomatic expressions. As always, you can find the full transcript and vocabulary notes on our website, www.BetterAtEnglish.com.

Here we go!

Conversation Transcript

Lori: Can you imagine what life would be like without the Internet?

Michael: Without the Internet?

Lori: Yeah

Michael: Like in the good old days? Way back and…

Lori: Yeah, the Dark Ages! [Laughs]

Michael: Oh goodness! Yeah. It’s…it’s funny I mean, that…that’s we joke about it but, umm… Thinking about that yeah, it would be like the dark ages because we’re so…people are so reliant on the Internet.

Lori: Yeah, I know I am.

Michael: Yeah, oh me too, for sure. Umm…

Lori: Yeah

Michael: Ahh…Yeah, aside from obvious things like…email, umm…and, ahh, Skype and, aah, MSN and these sort of things, just for chatting with people, umm, it would just be…it would be crazy not having all that information at your fingertips.

Lori: Yeah, yeah.

Michael: Because for me, that’s the main thing, with the Internet, is looking things up.

Lori: Oh yeah, can you imagine me going even one day without my precious Google?

Michael: Err…I think you’d crack up!

Lori: Yeah! [laughs]

Michael: I think…

Lori: I’d be outside talking to lampposts.

[laughter]

Michael: Yeah that’s…

Lori: Going crazy!

Michael: Umm… No, I really hope that you don’t get a power cut this winter because you’ll go…err…going cold…errr…what is it?… cold turkey without—

Lori: Yeah I won’t be able to google things! Oh my God!

Michael: Oh no!

Lori: No, I love Google so much, it’s so useful; it’s such an awesome tool.

Michael: Sure, I mean it’s…it’s funny I was just thinking recently umm…that apart from the usual websites that I would go to, to get news or perhaps some of the music websites where I’ll just log on and have a look and see what’s new in the world, umm, the vast majority of the time that I’m on the Internet is actually going to Google and then looking something up.

Lori: Oh yeah, yeah.

Michael: Because if there’s some information I need to know about, then it’s straight to Google.

Lori: Yeah.

Michael: Umm…You know, it’s unlikely that I would go to some other site, I’d just let Google do the finding for me and then see where it takes me…

Lori: Yeah.

Michael:…and…

Lori: No, it’s amazing.

Michael: It…it’s like having umm…just the biggest encyclopedia [laughs] at your fingertips you know, it’s quite amazing…

Lori: Yeah, sometimes I would say I use Google hundreds of times a day.

Michael: I’ve seen you do it! [laughs] I’m sure…

Lori: Yeah, you know constantly googling things and checking things and it’s…

Michael: Right.

Lori: I don’t know what I would do without it; it puts you in touch – you know, the Internet in general and…and email and chat and the different social networks – it just puts you in touch with people all over the world.

Michael: Well, absolutely, I mean I know of at least one fantastic relationship that came about through the Internet!

[laughter]

Lori: Yeah, and no matter what your niche interest is, you can find other people all over the world who are interested in…in that same thing.

Michael: Absolutely!

Lori: You know, it’s underwater basket-weaving, or whatever it is, you’ll be able to find forums and…

Michael: Rolling around…rolling around naked in dog food, whilst barking, umm…

Lori: Yeah, I guess! I’m sure! It wouldn’t surprise me!

Michael: I’m sure there’s a whole community out there.

Lori: Yeah, yeah, who are…who are into that.

Michael: Yeah.

Lori: Umm, and it’s…that’s really cool that you can connect with people all over the world and…

Michael: Sure

Lori: Share the things that you love, it’s…I think it’s really cool.

Final Words

Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Real English Conversations at BetterAtEnglish.com. And to those who have donated since last time, thank you very much for your support. We really appreciate your generosity. These casts take a lot of time to produce, and your continued donations are an enormous help. But donations aren’t the only thing that make us happy; we love when you email us or record messages for us, like this: Thanks so much Rocío, messages like yours make all our effort totally worthwhile! See you next time!

Vocabulary notes

the good old days
When people talk about the good old days (sometimes spelled the good ole days), they are referring to a previous time period that they remember fondly and preferred to the present. This phrase is often used whimsically (as Michael does here), or even ironically, as in “Back in the good old days when children were thrashed and women were bashed.”

the Dark Ages
The term Dark Ages refers to a period of European history stretching from about AD 400 to 1000. Lori’s reference to the Dark Ages here is a form of hyperbole, or extravagant exaggeration.

looking things up
To look something up (or look up something) means to search for information in a book or other source. For example, you can look up words in a dictionary, or look up information on Google.

going even one day without
To go without something means to not have something that you usually have, or not use something that you usually use.

crack up
To crack up (informal) means to become mentally ill or experience severe mental distress.

cold turkey
To go cold turkey means to abruptly stop using an addictive substance, such as narcotics, alcohol, or other drugs. This informal phrase is often used when talking about abruptly stopping any habitual activity, rather than taking a gradual approach.

awesome
The adjective awesome is Am. E. slang meaning excellent, superb, impressive, and related synonyms. Some usage experts react very negatively when awesome is used in this way, and prefer that awesome be used in its traditional sense of “inspiring great awe.” Lori thinks Google is awesome in both senses of the word.

at your fingertips
If something is at your fingertips, you can access it and use it very easily. For example, “Google and the internet put all the world’s information at your fingertips.”

I would say
Used as Lori does here, I would say means “I estimate” or “I believe.”

puts you in touch with
To put someone in touch with somebody means to make direct contact between them possible.

came about
To come about means to happen, start, or occur.

niche
In this context, a niche is a small area of specialized interest. You often hear about niche markets, i.e., smaller, specialized markets for particular products or services.

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Copyright 2008 L. Linstruth - www.betteratenglish.com.

Real English Conversations: The pre-Google Dark Ages

Download English lesson podcast and transcript

Introduction

Hi, Lori here welcoming you to another episode of Real English Conversations from Better at English dot com. In today’s episode, Michael and I exchange some opinions about television, particularly with respect to commercials and advertising. In this conversation we discover some differences between British and American English vocabulary, and use some everyday phrasal verbs. As always, you’ll find the full transcript and vocabulary list on the website, www.betteratenglish.com.

Before listening to the conversation, you might want to pause and think about the following questions:

1. Are you influenced by TV advertising?
2. If so, then how are you influenced?
3. Do TV commercials attempt to appeal to people’s logic or to their emotions?
4. Is watching TV is a constructive activity, or is it more a waste of time?

OK, without further ado, here is the conversation.

Conversation Transcript

Lori: TV is so evil.

Michael: [laughs]

L: I mean, don’t…don’t even get me started on TV – what a time waster and a time sucker it is, and…and all of the horrible…all of the horrible messages that you’re bombarded with if you are, you know, just one of these people who comes home in the evening, turns on the TV and just has the TV on kind of in the background until you go to bed at night. Some people even fall asleep in their bedrooms with the TV on.

M: Yeah, well I don’t know…I think people would perhaps use this for different reasons. If you just want some background noise, maybe they just regard it the same way they would do putting on a piece of music…

L: Yeah

M: …in the background, just to have some ambiance…

L: Yeah.

M: …as they’re going about their evening, but I do know what you mean. I think that a lot of programs are a complete waste of time.

L: Well see, that’s the thing. I don’t think people should be limited to watching things that are educational. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with watching something that’s just entertaining. [It's just] that there’s so much…umm…just really negative stuff out there.

M: Yes. I…But I think that’s…that’s the commercial side of it, and unless you have something like in England for example – the BBC – they don’t have advertisements.

L: [laughs]

M: They… they get their…

L: Ads!

M: …revenue from…

L: Do you really say that, advertisements? You don’t say…?

M: Yes! That’s right, well we would say adverts but, or advertisements, yeah.

L: Even for the ones that are on the TV? You don’t call them commercials?

M: No, no! We wouldn’t…I mean, I know…we know what commercials are, but no, we would say the adverts.

L: Really?

M: “I’m going to make a cup of tea whilst the adverts are on,” that’s what we would say.

L: Oh that’s funny because as…I can’t speak for all Americans, but for an American we would definitely call those things you see on TV commercials.

M: Right, right that’s… that’s what I hear Americans calling them but we…

L: Yeah.

M: …we call them adverts.

L: OK, interesting

M: But that’s, umm, with the BBC they don’t get their money from adv-…advertising, they get it from the TV license, which you have to pay just for owning a TV every year, and that’s what… you know, they keep it free from adverts.

L: OK.

M: So you don’t have to put up with that, which is really quite nice because all the satellite channels and the independent TV channels in England are umm…full of adverts, all the time, and you really get that impression that people are trying to sell things to you all the time and it’s, err…all the things showing you that you have to be young and beautiful and all this kind of…

L: Yeah.

M: And “If you buy our products. you will be like these people in these… perfect people…”

L: Yeah, the myth of transformation.

M: Yes, exactly, exactly.

L: Yeah it’s like, “let’s create things that make you feel bad about yourself and then show you the things you need to buy to…”

M: That’s it!

L: “…improve yourself so you will feel better.”

M: That’s it, and I think that’s… that’s mean, that’s… that’s not nice.

L: It’s horrible!

M: So, but I… that’s… that’s what I see when I see the adverts, I… I see through it so…

L: Yeah.

M: But I… I don’t watch much TV either, so umm…

L: Uh huh. No, it’s horrible – horrible time waster.

Final words

Thanks for listening, and thanks to those of you who have donated since last time. I can’t tell you enough how much Michael and I appreciate your support. Remember, your continued donations make Better at English possible. Bye for now!

Vocabulary list

Don’t even get me started
If someone says, “Don’t get me started (on X)” it means that they have strong feelings and a lot to say about the current topic. The idea is that if they start talking about it, you won’t be able to get them to stop. You can say it about other people, for example “Don’t get him started on butterfly collecting…he’ll bore you for hours!”

going about
In this context, to go about something means to continue an activity for a period of time. If you are going about your evening, you are engaging in your typical evening activities.

revenue
Income (money) that a business, organization or government receives regularly. TV licenses generate revenue (money) for the government.

to put up with
To put up with (something or somebody) means to tolerate it, even though you don’t like it.

mean (adj)
Mean in this context means unkind (or even cruel). In Br.E, the adjective mean can also mean being selfish and ungenerous (particularly about money).

see through it
In this context, to see through something/somebody means to understand the truth about a person or situation that is intended to deceive or manipulate you.

Copyright 2008 L. Linstruth - www.betteratenglish.com.

Real English Conversations: TV adverts, advertisements and commercials

Transcript

Hello and welcome to another edition of 2-minute English, here at Better at English dot com. This post is in response to an email question from E.G. (who I think comes from Greece).

I have a question about a phrasal verb that I read in a will. What exactly does
pay over mean and what does survivorshipmean?

Thanks very much for your question, E. Unfortunately, to give you a really great answer I would need to have a lot more context. And because I am not a lawyer, you should probably take what I say with a very large grain of salt. Legal documents use language in very special ways, and it’s easy to be misled if you apply everyday English knowledge to legal texts. So with that disclaimer out of the way, here is what my research has turned up for to pay over (I’ll cover survivorship separately).

Put very simply, from what I can tell “to pay over” just means to pay. To transfer money from one person (or entity) to another. In the context of a will or testament, it means that whoever has the deceased’s money or property would transfer ownership of it to the person it was bequeathed to in the will. For example, if I had left 1000 dollars to you in my will, and then I died, then whoever had the money (probably my bank) would “pay it over” to you once all of the complicated legal processes were finished.

Here are some (very scary) example legalese sentences using “to pay over” in the context of wills and testaments. I warn you, these sentences are not for the faint of heart, so you might want to go to the website and actually read the transcript because it will be a lot for you to process aurally.

If such child shall have then attained the age of 30 years, my trustees shall transfer, pay over and deliver to such child outright the following amount: link

Nevertheless I empower by trustees to advance and pay over to my said sons any part not exceeding one half of the amounts ordered to be retained for their own respective absolute use and benefit if my trustees shall deem it to be for their advantage and expedient so to do link

Oh man, that was a mouthful.

And I hereby direct my executors, the survivors or survivor of them, within six months after my decease, to pay over the sum of two thousand pounds sterling to such persons as shall be duly appointed by the Selectmen of Boston and the corporation of Philadelphia, to receive and take charge of their respective sums, of one thousand pounds each, for the purposes aforesaid. link

Heavy sigh. That last one actually made my brain hurt.

I’m definitely not a legal expert, so those of you with more expertise in this area are welcome to help me out on this one if I’ve gone astray. Part of being a responsible teacher is being able to admit it when you don’t have all the answers!

Thanks for tuning in to this edition of 2-minute English. And thanks to everyone who’s sent questions and feedback about the site over the past few days. I’ll be recording a bunch of new podcasts for you all this weekend, taking your feedback and questions into account. Maybe by then I’ll be over this darn cold that I caught on my trip to Mexico…

As always, the full transcript of this podcast is available at our website, Better at English dot com.

Bye for now!

Copyright 2008 L. Linstruth - www.betteratenglish.com.

phrasal verbs: to pay over (wills and testaments)

Transcript

Hi and welcome to Better at English!

Do you ever have to pay for things that you wish you didn’t have to spend money on? For example, if you get a parking ticket, do you enjoy paying the fine? If your computer breaks, do you enjoy buying new parts for it or having to pay to have it fixed? If it’s been a really hot summer, do you like paying for that huge electric bill you got because you had to run your AC so much just to keep yourself from melting in the heat? I sure don’t like having to pay for those things. In fact, it’s a real drag to have to fork over my hard-earned cash to pay for boring things like that.

Today we have an upper intermediate lesson for you, and a slightly different, longer format than our normal two-minute English podcasts.

We’re going to look at a group of phrasal verbs that all have the meaning of to unwillingly or reluctantly pay for something. What do reluctant and unwilling mean? Well, if you’re reluctant or unwilling to do something, it means you don’t want to do it.

I’ll say each phrasal verb twice slowly so that you can listen and repeat:

to shell out

to cough up

Meaning

All of these phrasal verbs have the idea of reluctance or unwillingness built into them. You can use them when you have to pay for things that you aren’t happy about.

For instance, buying a sexy new laptop because it’s super cool, you really want it and don’t mind spending the money on it is one thing. But buying a new laptop because you spilled coffee all over your old one and ruined it beyond repair is something you probably wouldn’t be too happy about.

If you use an attitude-revealing phrasal verb like to cough up or to fork out instead of a neutral verb like to spend or to buy or to pay for, you let the listener know not only that you spent some money, but also how you feel about spending the money: in this case, it made you feel unhappy, unwilling or reluctant.

To fork over and to fork up are a bit broader in meaning than the other three in this group. We mainly use to fork over and to fork up about spending money, but you can also use these two to talk about having to give people things in general. For example, if your annoying little brother Nigel has taken something of yours, you want him to give it back, and you know he won’t be happy about it, you can tell him:

Hey Nigel, that’s mine! Fork it over!

This means, “Hey Nigel, that’s mine. Give it to me.” Of course, you could also ask him a bit more politely: “Excuse me, Nigel. Would you mind giving that back to me?” But sometimes the more direct approach works better with annoying little brothers.

Usage

These five phrasal verbs are all separable. That means that you can put objects between the mighty VERB and its cute little adverb or preposition friend. So you can say, for example,

to shell out money or to shell money out

to fork over 50 dollars or to fork 50 dollars over

to cough up a lot of cash or to cough a lot of cash up

to fork out two billion dollars or to fork two billion dollars out

Just remember that when you have separable phrasal verbs and pronoun objects, you always put the pronoun between the verb and adverb or preposition. So you say

Cough it up! Shell it out! Fork it over! Fork it out!

But not

Cough up it. Shell out it.. etc. [Your can find a concise overview of the do's and don'ts of phrasal verbs here link ].

Even though you can separate these verbs and still be grammatical, native speakers prefer to keep them together. It’s far more frequent to say something like “Darn! We’ll have to shell out 500 dollars for a new printer” than to say “Darn! We’ll have to shell 500 dollars out for a new printer.” It’s definitely not WRONG to separate, but it’s more common not to.

Authentic example

Here are seven authentic example sentences for you to investigate. Do you notice any usage patterns, like which prepositions are used?

1. So, the tax payer is asked to shell billions of dollars out to try and fix this mistake of a war and Bush decides to go ahead and throw a party? [ link] [this is an example of a rare separable use of this phrasal verb]

2. In June, BT said it owned the patent to hyperlinks and wanted ISPs in the US to cough up hard cash for the privilege of using them. [link ]

3. The county is facing the prospect of having to cough up well more than $2 million to renovate the dilapidated facility, which has been decertified by the Tennessee Corrections Institute for failing to comply with the state’s minimum standards for local jails. [link ]

4. Five big Wall Street brokerages coughed up $8.25 million in fines in December for failing to preserve electronic messages, as securities rules require. [ link ]

5. Employees in some U.S. metropolitan areas may soon be forking over nearly 10% of their salary for gas needed to commute to and from work. [ link ]

6. …he doesn’t have any money because he’s had to fork it over to all his ex-wives [link ]

7. No way am I forking out $100 or whatever insane price they want for it. [ link ]

Finally, the phrasal verbs we’ve looked at here today are often used in combination with to have to for obligation — when have to means must. Like in example 3:

The county is facing the process of having to cough up…

or in example 6: He doesn’t have any money because he’s had to fork it over…

Combining phrasal verbs like fork over or cough up with have to really emphasizes the idea of unwillingness, don’t you think?

Thanks for tuning in to this edition of Better at English! Here’s hoping that you won’t have to fork over any of your hard-earned cash on anything dull or boring in the near future; only fun things, cool things, things that make you happy! See you next time!

Look up these phrasal verbs in the dictionary
to shell out
to fork out
to fork up/over
to cough up

Note: The opinions expressed in the authentic example sentences do not necessarily reflect our views here at Better At English. They are provided in the sole interest of giving learners a variety of examples of real-life, authentic English usage.

payday loans when money is tight

Copyright 2008 L. Linstruth - www.betteratenglish.com.

phrasal verbs: spending money unwillingly for boring stuff you don’t want

Transcript

Hello and welcome to 2 minute English, brought to you by Better At English dot com.

Today’s phrase is to ramp something up.

To ramp something up.

To meet the demand for our widgets, we have to ramp up production to 100 000 units per week.

We need to ramp up our customer service if we want to stay competitive.

To ramp something up.

Meaning

To ramp something up means to increase it or do more of it. A business can ramp up an activity, such as production. It can also ramp up things in general, such as speed: Intel has ramped up the speed of its processors yet again (surprise, surprise!).

Usage

To ramp up something or ramp something up is a separable phrasal verb that follows this pattern — you can say:

We ramped up our production by 100%.
We ramped our production up by 100%.
We ramped it up by 100%.

But you can’t say

We ramped up it by 100%. [incorrect]

Authentic example

Today’s authentic example is from CNN:

"The fourth-quarter demand is higher than anticipated so we have to ramp up holiday production," said Harold Chizick, spokesman with Ontario-based toymaker Spin Master. "But because of the labor issue in China, it could be difficult to increase production [of some products] the further we get into the holiday season."

Thanks for tuning in to this edition of 2-minute English. We’ll see you next time!

Look up to ramp something up in the dictionary.

Investigate how to ramp something up is used.

Would you like us to ramp up anything in particular here at Better at English? Just get in touch and let us know! Remember, the squeaky wheel gets the grease!

Copyright 2008 L. Linstruth - www.betteratenglish.com.

Phrasal Verbs: to ramp (something) up