18. 10 More Phrasal Verbs

Learn 10 more phrasal verbs in this episode. These ones are all particularly useful in business English when you have meetings.
Listen to the meeting I had with my staff members (Robert DeNiro, Al Pacino and Sean Connery) about ideas for the next podcast on passive verb forms. Can you find the 10 phrasal verbs?
Full transcript available below

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Transcript of the meeting (A full transcript of the whole episode is also available below)

“Good morning everybody, hello. Yep, hi, hi Rob. Yep, hello Al. Good morning Sean. So yep, excuse me! Hello, sorry could you just listen… thank you. Err, Sean? Thank you. Ok so good morning to everyone, I’d just like to kick off by saying I hope you had a good weekend, and that you’re rested and ready to get down to some good work on the podcast this week. So, there are a few matters I would like to bring up in this meeting, but before we get on to that I’ve got a couple of messages here to read out.

I’ve got one here from Barack Obama. He says ‘Thanks Luke for the interesting podcast on Michael Jackson. It was educational, entertaining and informative. Well done.’ Well, I think we knew that already, didn’t we? Another one here from Yoda. Yeah, you know, Yoda? The Jedi Master? From Star Wars. Yeah, that’s right… and Yoda said, ‘Your Susan Boyle podcast I enjoyed. Listened to it 3 times I have. Very useful for my English the podcast is.’ Well, thanks Yoda. Erm, Bob – is he still going to grammar lessons? His sentence structure hasn’t improved much. Look, ‘do’ or ‘do not’ okay Bob? There is no ‘try’. Okay? Right, thank you. Thank you very much.

Now, Al asked me recently, yep that’s right Al, if we could upload a new video onto YouTube soon in order to compete with other YouTube teachers like MrDuncan and that guy with the stupid hat, yeah. Well, I’d like to put that aside for today and come back to it later. I’m not too worried about those guys really, and I’d like to focus on the audio podcast rather than the YouTube videos at the moment. I’m sure I don’t need to spell out how important it is for us to just concentrate on audio podcasts. You know, people can listen to them anywhere, or while they’re having a bath or driving or on the toilet or whatever. I really don’t need to spell it out for you, do I? The main thing for us to deal with is, at the moment now, is the grammar rules for our next podcast on passive verb forms. Bob, can I ask you to deal with that? Ok, check it in the grammar book, read the main rules, and then just sum them up on paper for me. Ok, great.

So, now I’d like to just run through the diary for this week. Now, Al, on Thursday you’re going to interview somebody about the weather, okay? For our British weather podcast. Okay Al? Great. Now Bob, you’re doing the grammar research. I’m going to interview Keira Knightley on Thursday as well. Sean, let’s see… Sean could you perhaps just erm, go down to Tescos and get some biscuits and some coffee for us? That’s great, thank you very much. Okay, so, any questions? No? No? Great. Okay, let’s get started then…”

Here are the 10 phrasal verbs from the meeting:

1. to kick off / to kick something off
2. to get down to something
3. to bring something up
4. to get on to something
5. to put something aside
6. to come back to something
7. to spell something out
8. to deal with something
9. to sum something up
10. to run through something

Here are some definitions (check the meeting for examples):
1. to kick off = to start something
2. to get down to something = to start doing something seriously and with a lot of attention and effort
3. to bring something up = to say something, mention something, to start to talk about something (especially in a situation like a meeting)
4. to get on to something = to start talking about it after you have discussed something else
5. to put something aside = to not discuss something now so that we can discuss something else, to leave it until later
6. to come back to something = to return to something later
7. to spell something out = to clearly describe or explain something
8. to deal with something = to discuss something, give attention to it, fix it, do it, solve a problem
9. to sum something up = to summarise something, to put it in a short and basic way
10. to run through something = to repeat something to make sure it is correct, to check each point one by one

That’s it!

Here are some pictures of my production team:

Full Transcript
18. 10 More Phrasal Verbs

You are listening to Luke’s English podcast. For more information visit teacher Luke.podomatic.com

Hello, welcome to Luke’s English podcast. Today I am going to teach you some more useful phrasal verbs and it’s going to be done like this:
First I am going to play you a recording of a meeting. Okay? In that meeting recording there are 10 phrasal verbs. I’d I like you to try and find the phrasal verbs. So, listen to the recording and try to find ten phrasal verbs. I’d like you to imagine that I am having a meeting with my production team for Luke’s English podcast.
Now, actually I just produce the podcast on my own. But I’d like you to imagine that maybe I have got a production team of people who work together to produce episodes of Luke’s English podcast. Okay?
So, imagine I am talking to my production team on Monday morning. We are having a little meeting to talk about ideas for my next podcast. Okay?
So, in the production team I have got some actually, some people you might know.
There is me of course. I am the project manager and then you’ve got …then I have got Robert De Niro. He is one of my members of staff and I’ve got Al Pacino, as well. And also I’ve got Sean Connery working for me, too.
So, it’s a small team. It’s just me, Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Sean Connery together working on the podcast. Okay?
So, I’d like you to listen to the meeting that we have on Monday morning and try and find 10 phrasal verbs. I will explain all of them, after you have listened to the recording, okay?

“Good morning everybody, hello. Yep, hi, hi Rob. Yep, hello Al. Good morning Sean. So yep, excuse me! Hello, hello, just sorry, could you just listen… thank you. Err, Sean? Thank you. Ok so good morning to everyone, I’d just like to kick off by saying I hope you had a good weekend, and that you’re rested and ready to get down to some good work on the podcast this week. So, there are a few matters I would like to bring up in this meeting, but before we get on to that I’ve got a couple of messages here to read out.

Let’s see! Well, I’ve got one here from Barack Obama. He says ‘Thanks Luke for the interesting podcast on Michael Jackson. It was educational, entertaining and informative. Well done.’ Well, I think we knew that already, didn’t we? Another one here from Yoda. Yeah, you know, Yoda? The Jedi Master? From Star Wars. Yeah, that’s right… and Yoda said, ‘Your Susan Boyle podcast I enjoyed. Listened to it 3 times I have. Very useful for my English the podcast is.’ Well, thanks Yoda. Erm, Bob – is he still going to grammar lessons? His sentence structure hasn’t improved much. Look, ‘do’ or ‘do not’ okay Bob? There is no ‘try’. Okay? Right, thank you. Thank you very much.

Okay, now, Al asked me recently, yep that’s right Al, if we could upload a new video onto YouTube soon in order to compete with other YouTube teachers like MrDuncan and that guy with the stupid hat, yeah. Well, I’d like to put that aside for today and come back to it later. I’m not too worried about those guys really, and I’d like to focus on the audio podcast rather than the YouTube videos at the moment. Okay? I’m sure I don’t need to spell out how important it is for us to just concentrate on audio podcasts. You know, people can listen to them anywhere, or while they’re having a bath or driving or on the toilet or whatever. I really don’t need to spell it out for you, do I? The main thing for us to deal with is, at the moment now, is the grammar rules for our next podcast on passive verb forms, okay? Bob, can I ask you to deal with that? Ok, check it in the grammar book, read the main rules, and then just sum them up on paper for me. Ok, great.

So, now I’d like to just run through the diary for this week. Now, Al, on Thursday you’re going to interview somebody about the weather, okay? For our British weather podcast. Okay Al? Great. Now Bob, you’re doing the grammar research. I’m going to interview Keira Knightley on Thursday as well. Sean, let’s see… Sean could you perhaps just erm, go down to Tescos and get some biscuits and some coffee for us? That’s great, thank you very much. Okay, so, any questions? No? No? Great. Okay, let’s get started then…”

Okay, what a very successful meeting that was. But did you manage to hear the 10 phrasal verbs? Well, here is a list of the phrasal verbs that I used there. I am just going to read the list to you now:
Here we go.

to kick off, to kick off by doing something
to get down or to get down to something
to bring something up, to bring something up
to get on to something, to get on to something
to put something aside, to put something aside
to come back to something, to come back to something
to spell something out, to spell something out
to deal with something, to deal with something
to sum something up, to sum something up and
to run through something, to run through something.

Okay? So now I’d like to …just go through or run through those 10 phrasal verbs one by one. I’ll explain what they mean, I’ll explain how they are used and I’ll give you some examples, okay?
So, let’s start with the first one: So, the first one I used was to kick off, to kick something off. In this case to kick off a meeting and it means to start something.
It’s just a phrasal verb which comes from football, actually. At the beginning of a football game, one team kicks off. They kick off the game.
So, we can use that expression in other things like, for example, in a meeting.
And I said: I’d just like to kick off by saying good morning to everyone. Okay? So it’s very common in a meeting. We say: I’d like to kick off by running through the agenda, okay?
So, to kick of by doing something!
I’d like to kick of by saying hello.
I’d like to kick of the meeting by saying hello to everyone, okay?
To kick off!
You could say to kick the meeting off. I’d like to kick the meeting off by asking you a question, for example. So, to kick off!

The next phrasal verb was to get down to something. Now I’ve talked to you about this before. To get down to something, it means to start doing something seriously and with a lot of your attention and effort, okay? To get down to something!
In the meeting I said: I hope that you are rested and ready to get down to some good work on the podcast, okay? That means I hope you are rested and ready to seriously start with concentration and effort some good work on the podcast.
An example for you as a learner of English might be something like: I had a free evening, so I managed to get down to my homework. I managed to get down to doing my homework. Okay?
Unless you are students in my class, because for some reason many of them can’t be bothered to do their homework at the moment and keep giving me these funny excuses like: Oh sorry, Luke, I did my homework, but my dog ate it, right, okay, yeah!. Yeah, sure, your dog ate it, right.
Actually, I can’t really blame them for using that excuse because I taught it to them. So, I suppose they are learning something even if it’s just the ability to come up with ridiculous excuses.
Anyway! The phrasal verb there is to get down to something. I need to get down to some work or let’s get down to some work on the podcast, okay? Okay!

The next phrasal verb was to get on to something, to get on to something. And that means to do something after you have done something else. Okay? Now in the meeting example there I said, there are a few matters I’d like to bring up in this meeting but before we get on to that, I’ve got a couple of messages to read out, okay? So, that’s to get on to something, meaning to do something next.

After that we had to put something aside. To put something aside!
Well, that means to not talk about something, so that you can discuss something else, okay? It’s a bit like saying I’d like to leave it until later or I’d like to wait until later before we discuss it. So, I’d like to put that aside for today and come back to it later, okay?
So, in the meeting that’s exactly what I said. I said: Well, I’d like to put that aside for today and come back to it later, okay?

Come back is the next phrasal verb, okay? Come back. And it’s quite clear I think that ….I expect most of you know that expression. It means to return to discuss it later, okay? To come back to it later, return to discuss it later.
Those are very, very common expressions that people use in meetings for example. It might be, well, I’d like to put that aside for today and come back to it later. It means I don’t want to discuss it now, I’d like to discuss it later, okay?

Okay, so after that, next phrasal verb was to spell something out. To spell something out! And that means to explain something in detail, to explain it in detail. Now, in the meeting I said: I am sure I don’t need to spell out how important it is for us to just concentrate on audio podcasts, okay?
I don’t need to spell it out for you, right?
So, what I meant was: I am sure I don’t need to explain in detail how important it is, okay? I don’t need to explain it in detail. I don’t need to spell it out for you. We used the word spell, as well, when we are talking about how to write a word. How do you spell it? Yeah? How do you spell that? We also use the expression to spell something out to mean to explain it in detail, as well. So it’s quite common in a question. If you don’t understand what someone is saying, like if you don’t understand a suggestion that they have made, you can say: Sorry, I don’t quite understand that. Could you spell that out for me, alright?
Maybe could you explain that to me in detail. Right!

The next phrasal verb was to deal with something. To deal with something! And to deal with something means to discuss it, to give all of our attention to it and to fix it or solve it, okay?
So, in the case of the meeting, I said, the main thing for us to deal with is the grammar rules for our next podcast on passive verb forms. Okay?
So, that means the next thing for us to talk about, discuss and solve or fix is the grammar rules for our next podcast. Okay?

And then I said: Bob, can I ask you to deal with that? So that means I want Bob to do it, to fix it, to solve that problem, to work on that task, to do that job. I want him to deal with that. Okay?
Again, very, very common expression, that one!

Okay, the next phrasal word was to sum something up. To sum something up! Obviously that means to give a summary of something, okay? To sum something up, to give a summary of it, to summarise something, okay?
In the meeting, I said …I said to Robert de Niro: Read the main rules and then sum them up for me on paper. So, I am asking Robert, or Bob, as I call him – most of his friends call him Bob – actually, I said to him: Read about the grammar rules for passive verb forms and sum them up, so summarise them, write them in a simple way, in a simple form, right? Just the basic points, to sum something up.

Next phrasal verb was to run through something. To run through something! And that, that means to repeat something in order to make sure it is correct, to repeat it in order to make sure, it’s correct. Or to talk about it step by step in order to make sure it’s correct. So, I said: Okay, now I’d like to run through the diary for this week. So, you can imagine that means I am going to talk about each day, step by step in order to make sure that everybody understands it. To run through it! You can run through a lot of things. Run through dates in a diary, run through the points on an agenda for a meeting, run through comments for your customers, for example. So, run through something.

And that is it!
That’s the end of this little podcast about phrasal verbs. 10 useful phrasal verbs for you!
Don’t forget you can visit the web page: teacher Luke.podomatic.com and there you can read the phrasal verbs. You can also read a transcript of the meeting that I had with Bob and Al and Sean.
You can read a transcript and you can also read definitions and examples of the 10 phrasal verbs.

That’s it!
I hope you enjoyed that. I hope find it useful. If you want me to leave a message for Robert De Niro or Al Pacino or Sean Connery, just send me an email. The address is Luketeacher@hotmail.com. I’ll be glad to leave them a message for you. They are very nice people and I am sure they will be very happy to hear from you.

That’s the end of this short podcast. Thanks very much!
Bye, bye, bye, bye, bye

Thanks for listening to Luke’s English podcast. Don’t forget to email me at Luketeacher@hotmail.com.