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Good evening friends. It’s me again – Brooke Gillespie – your phrasal
verbs expert guru guy in Omaha, Nebraska. And I’m sitting in my porch
again and it’s a muggy, hot July evening. It’s actually 8:30 at night and I
know that Brazilians are accustomed to the sun setting a little earlier but
here in the summer time we get really long days and oftentimes don’t
have the sun set until like after 9 o’clock. So I’m enjoying one of those
beautiful, muggy long summer afternoons.
Well our phrasal verbs today are ‘fill out’, ‘hand in’ and ‘catch on’. And
we’re going to start with ‘fill out’. The first thing to think about is the
word ‘full’. When you make something full it’s because you’re filling it up.
So something that is full is something that is completely filled with
something. The first definition for ‘to fill out’ is to complete by providing
requested information, especially on a form. So let’s imagine a form like
an application for a job. It’s a piece of paper with many questions and
there are blank spaces where you write information. You fill or complete
a form. So, by writing the information in those spaces on that form, you
are filling out, you are filling out the form. So here are a few examples of
‘filling out’ with that definition:
Sandy was looking for a summer job so she filled out applications at
several stores.
So, Sandy’s looking for a job, she’s going to a store saying ‘Hey, I’d like
to work here’ and they’re giving her a sheet of paper where she’ll fill in
her name and her address and probably her work history and she’s doing
this at several places. She’s filling out the application. The second
example is:
When Linnea applied for financial aid for college, she had to provide
lots of personal information when filling out online forms.
So in this day and age of technology, oftentimes we don’t write or fill
things out using paper. Oftentimes it’s done electronically. So in this
case, she’s applying for aid for college and again, information is being
requested and she’s answering all of the questions on the online form.
She’s providing all of the information that they want. So again she’s
filling out a form but in this case it’s done electronically.
Now, a different example of ‘to fill out’ is more of a physical filling out.
For example, I, Brooks – I’m 43 years old – I used to be – when I was
younger I was skinnier and unfortunately, as a lot of us age, we tend to
fill out. We get more muscles but unfortunately as our metabolism slows
MAIRO VERGARA ADVANCED PHRASAL VERBS COURSE
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down we get a little more heavy set. So as I have gotten older I have filled
out. Here’s my sentence:
I was skinny as a teenager, but I started to fill out in my mid-
twenties.
So once I became an adult, my metabolism changed, my habits changed
and I started to gain a little bit of weight, my face got fuller etcetera.
Alright, our second phrasal verb of the day is to ‘hand in’. And it can be
both literal and figurative; but imagine if you are giving something to
somebody. You know, we use our hands. I am handing this in to another
person. So my definition for ‘to hand in’ is to deliver or submit something
to someone and it can be literally physically giving it to someone. Or it
can be figurative. First sentence:
Billy’s grades are bad because he often forgets to hand in his
homework on time.
So like any student in school, Billy has work to do. He does it, either in
school, at home, and there are deadlines and he is not handing in his
homework to the teacher on time and therefore his grades are suffering.
Another example:
As a result of major policy disagreements, the Attorney General
handed in his resignation to the President.
So in this case, the Attorney General has decided not to work anymore for
the President and so he is going to hand in his resignation and that could
be, that could be figurative. He may not like physically have a resignation
that he will give to the president. He may just call him or he may send an
email; but in any event that’s another example of handing in something
to somebody.
The kindergarten teacher asked the kids to hand in their artwork by
the end of the day so she could display it in the lunchroom.
So again we have a physical handing in. The little kids are with their
crayons, they’re coloring pictures and using glue or whatever little kids
do to make artwork. At the end of the day, the teacher wants them to
hand in their artwork because she plans on putting it on display in the
lunchroom where everybody can see it and enjoy it.
The third phrasal verb for the day is to ‘catch on’. The most simple
(simplest) and easy explanation for this is…well there’s two definitions
for to ‘catch on’. The first is to become popular.
At first Facebook was popular primarily among young people but it
finally caught on with older people as well.
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If you can remember seven or eight years ago, most of the people that
were on Facebook were college students. In fact, I think it started at a
college in the United States and mostly college students used it but as it
became more and more popular, it started to catch on with older people.
It started to become more popular with older people.
I feel quite confident that the Brazilian practice of eating rice and
beans everyday will never catch on in the United States.
And this is funny to me because I’ve travelled to Brazil and I know that
Brazilians eat rice and beans every day and we don’t do that here.
Sometimes we have rice with a meal. Sometimes we have beans but it’s
not something that we do on a daily basis. And Brazilians often will come
here and they’ll miss that. They’re so accustomed to having that on a
regular basis. I was in Brazil and a friend even told me – It’s not a meal if
there’s no rice and no beans. So I really doubt that that practice of eating
rice and beans everyday will ever catch on in the United States. It will
never become a popular or common practice here because of cultural
differences.
Now, another definition of ‘to catch on’ is to understand something. My
official definition here is to understand what something means or to learn
to do something.
I thought my directions would confuse you, but you’re catching on
very quickly.
So in this case, ‘catching on quickly’ means you’re understanding, you’re
learning fast; you’re not confused. You’re not slow, you’re
understanding. And my goal is that all of you, as you study phrasal verbs
will catch on to what’s going on. You’ll start to understand how to use
these phrasal verbs and hopefully all of these examples and sentences
that we provide you will help you catch on quickly.
And the final thing I’m going to do, I always love to do this, because
every lesson includes three phrasal verbs – I always try to create a
sentence that combines all three for one sentence. Now okay, let’s
imagine that you need to apply for jobs and there are lots of places
hiring. So you’re going to,
you’re going to turn in applications at many places. So, I hope that you
catch on very quickly how to fill out the application and hand it in. Got
that?
So that’s all for today. Again, it’s been my pleasure to discuss phrasal
verbs with you. Happy studying to one and all!
MAIRO VERGARA ADVANCED PHRASAL VERBS COURSE