[160] Take A Look and Take a Photo (Plus More Phrases!)

Take a Look, Have a Look

 

 

Hey guys, today you will learn some new phrases using the word TAKE. Take a seat, Take a Look and Take a Photo. Enjoy :)

Episodes mentioned

[159] To Make A Fool of Yourself (Plus More Phrases)
[158] Speak Like A Native Speaker (Collocations Revisited)

 

Transcript

You are listening to the English Made Simple Show this is episode number 1-6-0, one hundred and sixty, numero ciento sesenta.

Welcome to the English Made Simple show, my name is Milena from www.englishmadesimple.net, www.englishmadesimple.net

How have you been guys? Hope you guys are doing well… keeping out of trouble, hope you had a great weekend. Excellent.

I’ve got some great news to share with you guys for the month of December. Let me share the good news first.

The good news is that it’s the month of December, and I am looking at my calendar for the month of December, I got a few places available in the month of December, if you would like to refresh your English, if you would like to improve your speaking, if you would like to have a conversation with me, have a chat. If you would like to have a conversation with me, just go to Englishmadesimple.net, send me a message and I will find a space in my calendar and we can connect. The great news is that you can record and you can save the conversation for later and you can always go back to it and replay it at your own leisure! It’s a great way to learn.

So what are we going to cover today?

In today’s show I want to teach you more phrases and collocations that are often used by native speakers. Remember, collocations will make you sound more natural when speaking English.

If you don’t know what a collocation is, just go back to the last episode and the episode before that and you will learn more about collocations.

Today I want to teach you collocations to do with the word TAKE.

By the way amigos y amigas, TAKE is an irregular verb and past tense is TOOK, participle TAKEN. Just like the movie, TAKEN! (with Liam Neeson)

I will share some examples in the present and past tenses so you can recognize them when you hear them in real life.

So let’s take a look at the first phrase.
Ha!
And that’s your first phrase, TAKE A LOOK!

Let me take a look.

Sounds similar to: Let me have a look. And you can use them both. You can use them interchangeably.

Let’s imagine you have a sore throat (it is really painful) and you need to go to see a doctor. Doctor Jones haha he is back.

The doctor will ask you: Carlos, TAKE A SEAT.

Dr Jones will then proceed to ask you some questions about your sore throat. When he or she is ready to inspect the throat he will ask you to open your mouth (and say AAaaa). This will help them take a closer look at your throat.

The doctor needs to take a look at your throat to see what could be wrong with it.

Have you noticed something here: I used 2 collocations with the word TAKE in this example? Before you even open your mouth, the doctor will ask you first to TAKE A SEAT. The doctor can also tell you to HAVE A SEAT.

TAKE A SEAT and HAVE A SEAT can be used interchangeably. You can use either of them!

Also, TAKE A LOOK and HAVE A LOOK can also be used interchangeably. You can use either of them….

We just a learnt two collocations: Take a look, have seat

Let me use another example of Take a look.

The other day, I had an issue with my phone. I couldn’t take a photo. The camera was broken…for some reason, probably cuz I took too many photos at once.
So I asked my husband to have a look at it. And my husband said to me: Sure let me take a quick look.

So my husband had taken a look at the phone and managed to fix the issue.

Just so you know, before I had approached my husband for help, I went to a shop and asked the shop assistant to take a look. The guy took a look at it but couldn’t figure out what the problem was.

Took a look – in the past tense.

Ok I used another phrase here, another word that collocates with the word TAKE. I said I couldn’t take a photo with my phone camera.

To take a photo.

In order for you to sound more natural when speaking in English you should say: Take a photo. You shouldn’t say Make a Photo or Do a Photo.

I would imagine you were a tourist once in your life, you travelled somewhere and wanted to take photos of beautiful sceneries and landscapes. Or maybe you were approached by a tourist, someone being a tourist in your country, you have probably been asked once before, by a tourist…something like: Excuse me, could you please take a photo of me?

Sounds familiar? To take a photo. Remember this one! Easy peasy lemon squeezy!

Take a photo of yourselves! This is called a selfie.

Hmmm let me see, I said something just before in my example earlier, being at the Doctor’s.

The doctor, Dr Jones, also asked you to TAKE A SEAT or HAVE A SEAT.

Let me elaborate on this one a bit.

You have probably heard a variation to this phrase…. You’ve probably heard the phrase Sit down.

In this case SIT is spelled differently – 3 letters – Sit. Sit down.

Let me ask you this: Do you have a dog as a pet? You would tell a dog to SIT. Sit down. The dog will obey the command and sit.

But if you said to someone – someone like a person – to ‘Sit down’, it can sometimes come off as arrogant or impolite. It would be considered rude.
Unless that person had really deserved it haha. But don’t do it. I am here to teach you nice manners.

There is an exception here….

If you were with your friends… you could get away with saying Sit Down. Let’s consider my friend Ana. So Ana broke up with her boyfriend…. Again. Haha I used her as an example before. This Ana doesn’t have much luck with guys. haha

Ok so she broke up with her boyfriend and she needed to talk with someone. She wants to see me and chat about her problems. You know how girls are, they like to talk things out, and then they feel better afterwards. [Us girls, we get it.]

So I say to Ana: Sit down Ana, let’s have a little chat. What’s happening? Tell me everything.

Here, in this example, the phrase SIT DOWN sounds a lot (‘flendlier’ – doesn’t exist, I got tongue tied) friendlier.

There is no rule to which phrase you should be using, HAVE A SEAT, TAKE A SEAT OR SIT DOWN – you can still use all 3 – If in doubt and if you are not sure which one to use in the moment, just remember to add the word PLEASE. That’s your magic word, Please!

Remember, it is more friendly (friendlier or more friendly) to say Take a Seat than Sit down. And you can make the phrase Sit Down sound more polite if you add the ‘PLEASE’ at the start – Like for example: Please sit down.

But you can also say Please have a seat. Or please take a seat, let’s chat.

Great. I hope I didn’t confuse you even more. Awesome! I hope that was clear, clear as mud.

So we’ve reached the end of today’s show.

Today you’ve learnt the following phrases: TAKE A SEAT, HAVE A SEAT, SIT DOWN, TAKE A LOOK HAVE A LOOK and TAKE A PHOTO.

Now I want you to go out into the real world and practise these expressions. And start taking photos of yourselves, share it on Instagram! Why not, I’d like to see you guys!

Remember guys, you can download all episodes of English Made Simple from Itunes, Soundcloud, Stitcher Radio for Android phone, Podcast Republic and I hope Spotify soon. I hope they approve my application to feature English Made Simple on Spotify. Fingers and toes crossed for good luck. It can take a couple of months.

Let’s not forget about YouTube. You can also listen via YOUTUBE. Go to Englishmadesimple.net and subscribe to watch on the Youtube channel. Just click on the youtube icon at the top.

Thanks for joining me today. You’ve been an amazing audience as always. Let’s “keep the conversation going” and learn more English – I will be sharing more examples with you very soon.

I have more great phrases to teach you!

You’ve been jamming with Milena from English made Simple, you’ve been an amazing audience, let’s do this again. Have a great rest of the week! Until next time, hasta la proxima!