[167] 4 Phrasal Verbs to Use At Work – Deal With | Fill In | Fill In For | Kick Off

New Phrasal Verbs At Work

 

 

We kick off today’s episode with a new jingle! Hope you like it! We also cover 4 or 5 phrasal verbs that you can use at work. And I share some phrasal verbs we use at home (a bit of a laugh! :)) The verbs you can use at work are: Deal With, Fill In and Fill Out, Fill In For Someone and Kick Off. Enjoy :)

Episodes mentioned

[134] Difference Between Moving and Relocating
[136] Woohoo! I am back! (My Trip from Melbourne to Adelaide)
Learn With Me

 

Transcript

Hey guys, I am going to play a new jingle for you…. It’s about 20 seconds long. Let me know what you think. Here it is!

[Introduce the new jingle]

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

Right, so you have tuned in to the English Made Simple show, you are listening to episode number 1-6-7, number one hundred and sixty seven, numero ciento sesenta y siete.

You have been greeted with my new jingle. A jingle is like a short tune, music used at the introduction of a show, podcast or commercial.

What did you think? Did you like it? Let’s keep it for now, I will use parts of it, it’s kind of too long to be used as a complete jingle.

Anyways, welcome to my new listeners who have just tuned in for the very first time… where have you been all this time? Where have you been hiding? Finally, you’ve decided to join us! Thank you for joining us.

And also welcome to my regular listeners, welcome for the 167th time. Well done to you all, you have just learnt how to count to 167.

Listen up everybody, listen up carefully – you will be learning a lot today.

I am going to throw some phrases at you, I am going to go through 4 random and useful phrasal verbs. I think there are 4, there could be 5 or 6, but who’s counting?

Let’s just say 4. I am really bad with numbers. (That’s why I teach English, maths wasn’t my best subject at school)

So we are going to learn 4 phrasal verbs. These verbs will be useful to you if you work in an office where English is spoken. I am sure you will also use them when you write emails, schedule meetings, organise events and so on.

And sometimes you can use them in personal situations, in everyday types of situations.

I am going to share a personal story with you. I am full of stories, aren’t I? Almost every episode has a story in it.

It’s a short story.

Just a little bit of background for those of you who don’t know. I have recently moved to Adelaide from Melbourne. And the reason for the move was my husband’s job. My husband got a job in Adelaide, it was a good opportunity for him so we decided to move across to Adelaide.

I should also mention that English is his second language, his first language is Spanish, and he is originally from Chile. He moved to Australia recently. He had a lot of obstacles to overcome before coming over to Australia, and then again obstacles…once he arrived in Australia – I am talking about things like, applying for work and landing a job in his field. But we will cover this later – not today, not in today’s episode I might share his story later…if he lets me.

Anyway, if you are curious, you can hear about my experience of moving from Melbourne to Adelaide in episode #134 Difference between moving and relocating – #136 My trip from Melbourne to Adelaide

It was painful to say the least. I miss Melbourne. I don’t mind Adelaide. It’s quite small, shops open from 11am on Sunday so that’s annoying but in general Adelaide is OK, (I am not going to say WOW but it is just OK) Anyway, I do miss Melbourne sometimes.

So that’s the background in a nutshell, just a brief background of the story to come.

The story that I am about to share will teach you about 5 different phrasal verbs. It will teach you the following: Deal With, Fill in/Fill out, Fill in for someone, Kick Off, Shut up.

As you can see, they don’t follow a particular order, yet they are still relevant for you to learn.

Here’s the story… finally! After that long “short” introduction. haha

So, one Friday afternoon, my husband got home from work and said: Wow I had so many tasks to deal with at work, I managed to finish them all. You know how I was filling in for James, I was responsible for his tasks as well as mine. So I am quite happy I was able to complete today’s tasks.

I even had time to attend a Kick off meeting for this new project at the ABC Company.

On top of that, I learnt how to fill in the sick form and submit it online so that I can get paid for that day I was away sick.

And I am like, whaaaaa? What just happened?

This did not sound like a typical day for my husband at all.
Plus, it didn’t sound like him because he used words we don’t use at home. (
He learnt some new phrasal verbs at work and I was impressed.)

The phrasal verbs we use at home are:

Clean up the mess. Tidy up the room. Pick up the socks off the floor. And my favourite phrase – Shut up!

Clean up those dishes. What are you waiting for? The dishes aren’t going to wash themselves. Just keep on cleaning damnit. (I say to my husband lovingly)

So as you can see we don’t use these fancy shmancy words around the house, the words such as Deal with, to fill in, to fill in for someone and so on.

As you can tell, I like to add a bit of drama to the story. I watch too many telenovelas.

Ok now back to the episode. I hope you were able to pick up the phrasal verbs in that short story.
Alrighty, I recommend you learn the following phrasal verbs

1 To deal with someone or something… According to Weon Inteligente (he is back again) or the online dictionary, to deal with someone or something means to dedicate your attention to someone or something to help solve a problem or to help make a decision. The synonym for this would be, to manage, to take action on something, to be concerned with something or to do business with something/someone.

It kind of means a lot of things.

For example, now that you know that I had recently moved from Melbourne to Adelaide, you could ask me: So how did you deal with the move? Did you manage ok? Did everything go ok?

Another example: I don’t want to deal with this problem now. Meaning, I don’t want to solve it. I don’t want to think about it.

My husband mentioned, I had so many tasks to deal with at work… Meaning he had a lot of tasks to finish at work. He had to manage all those tasks, meaning to manage the priority of each task and whatever else goes with it.

Now that that is clear, let’s move on to the next phrasal verb.

2 Fill out a form. American English / Fill in a form. British English – you can either say Fill out a form or fill in a form. If you live in the States you will often hear people say Fill OUT – for example: Can you fill out this form?

In other words, can you populate this form? Can you complete this form?

If you want to sound more fluent, use fill out instead of complete.

We hear both versions in Australia. I tend to use, fill in actually.

Yesterday I filled in an online survey. After filling it in, I got a message that said: Thank you for filling in the survey!

By the way, don’t get confused with the word TO FEEL – to have feelings as in – to feel angry, to feel happy. That word is spelled differently – F E E L.

The word I am using is F I L L.

The verb Fill is regular, past tense is FILLED and participle Filled.

For example: I filled an empty glass with water.
The Italian dessert Cannoli is filled with cream or was it custard, I don’t know. But it tastes delicious.

Ok enough gibberish. The next phrasal verb is:

3 To fill in for someone – in other words to replace someone.

We use the same word FILL – F.I.L.L.

The phrasal verb is – to fill in for someone.

For example, I am filling in for James at work. Ana is filling in for John, you can ask Ana any questions if you have questions about James’s projects. She is replacing James until James is back from his holiday.

Righto, easy peasy lemon squeezy.

Another phrasal verb that you would hear around the office is – Kick off.

If you like soccer or football, you will hear the phrase Kick off. It means the start of the game.

They use this at work too, a kick off meeting. This would be a meeting about a new project. Everyone who is invited to the Kick Off meeting needs to attend to hear about the requirements of the project and also to meet others who are involved in the project.

Sometimes you will hear it at the start of a presentation. For example,
Let’s kick off by introducing each other.
Let’s start by introducing each other.

Following me so far?

The word OFF has double F and it sounds like Offf not ‘OV’. Which is spelt with a single F.

And lastly, 4. Shut up! – This is another useful phrasal verb, it means Callaté in Spanish. It means Silence, stop talking! Shut up! Keep your mouth shut! It’s not a very nice thing to say to a stranger or to someone you just met. Use it with your friends or your husbands.

Alright, thank you for listening to another episode of the English Made Simple show. If you would like to learn English with me, go to www.englishmadesimple.net and click on Learn With me button at the top.

If you have found today’s episode useful, please share it with your friends. You’ve been an awesome audience as usual, you’ve been jamming with Milena from English Made Simple. Until next time, hasta la proxima!

Ok, I think it’s time for some mojitos and piña coladas.