In this episode: Phrasal verbs about driving, tag questions (Part 3), a lesson about crowded cafés, the Joke of the Week, a listening quiz, and more.
Episode 153 of the Everybody ESL podcast has a list of phrasal verbs about driving, a lesson about crowded cafés, Part 3 in our series about tag questions, the Joke of the Week, a listening quiz, and more. If you have questions, comments, or suggestions (or if you’d like to record an introduction for future episodes), send an email to EverybodyESL@gmail.com!
Episode 153 rundown: Vocabulary (phrasal verbs about driving): 1:20, Grammar (Part 3 in the series about tag questions): 6:00, Small talk (a lesson about crowded cafés): 13:00, the Joke of the Week: 16:10, Listening quiz: 17:50.
Vocabulary: phrasal verbs with "pull"
For this episode’s vocabulary list, I want to talk about a group of phrasal verbs. These are all phrasal verbs that use the word pull. P-u-l-l. And they all have something to do with driving. This is a list of phrasal verbs all about driving. In all of these phrasal verbs, the word pull has the meaning of “turn, or steer a car or steer a truck.”
The first phrasal verb on our list for this episode is pull up to. Pull up to. That’s pull. Up: u-p. To: t-o. Pull up to. To pull up to means “to drive to a certain spot, to drive to a certain spot and stop.” So you could talk about a taxi pulling up to the corner or your friend pulling up to your apartment building.
The next phrasal verb on the list is pull over. Pull over. To pull over means “to drive your car to the side of the road, to steer your car to the side of the road.” If there is an ambulance behind you—an ambulance with its lights flashing and its siren going—you have to pull over. You have to drive to the side of the road and stop.
The next one is pull out. Pull out. This one means “to steer your car and join the other cars traveling on the road.” You will often hear this as “pull out into traffic.” That means “steer away from the side of the road and join the other cars.”
The next one is pull ahead. Pull ahead. That's ahead: a-h-e-a-d. To pull ahead means “to drive beyond somebody, to drive ahead of somebody, to drive in front of somebody.” This is a phrasal verb you might hear during a race, where one car pulls ahead of—or drives beyond, drives past—another car. You can also hear this with races that do not involve cars. You could have two people running, and if one of the runners goes faster than the other one—and runs past the other racer—you can say that that racer pulls ahead of the other one.
The next one is pull on to. Pull on to. O-n t-o. On to. Pull on to. This means “to drive or turn or steer your vehicle to another street.” If you pull on to Main Street, that means you turn to Main Street.
How about this one? Pull around. Pull around. A-r-o-u-n-d. Pull around. To pull around means “to move past an obstacle.” Maybe there is a car stopped in front of you, and it's not going. Maybe there's a problem with the car. Maybe the car broke. Or maybe the driver is not paying any attention. Well, if you want to keep going, you have to pull around the car that's in your way. So, to pull around means “to go past an obstacle or go past an obstruction, something that's in your way.”
And the last pull phrasal verb that has to do with driving is pull to the left or pull to the right. This means that a car’s steering is not working perfectly. Even when you don't turn the steering wheel, the car still wants to turn slightly to the left or maybe slightly to the right. To pull to the left or to pull to the right means “to have a situation with your car where the steering is not perfectly straight.”
And that is the end of this list of phrasal verbs: pull up to, pull over, pull out, pull ahead, pull on to, pull around, and pull to the left or pull to the right .
Grammar: tag questions (Part Three)
Our grammar lesson today is Part 3 in our series about tag questions. And this part will be the final part in the series. In Parts 1 and 2, I told you a little bit about how to use tag questions, what they mean. And I also told you a little bit about how to form them.
Well, in this last part I'm going to tell you more about creating tag questions. In case you don't remember, a tag question is a question that repeats part of a statement and puts it at the end. For example: “You have tried espresso, haven't you?” That part at the end—haven't you?—that is the tag question.
What part of the sentence do we repeat in the end? It depends on the parts that we find in the sentence. If you have a sentence with an auxiliary verb like have, has, or had, then that is what you repeat at the end of the sentence. That must sound very confusing. I will make it much clearer by repeating the sentence that I just gave you. The sentence was: “You have tried espresso, haven’t you?”
You can hear in that sentence the auxiliary verb have. “You have tried espresso,” and now at the end we repeat that auxiliary verb have. And we use that to form the tag question: “You have tried espresso, haven't you?”
Now, if you don't remember, one thing that always happens with tag questions is that, if the first part of the sentence is positive, then the tag question will be negative. And if the first part of the sentence is negative, then the tag question will be positive. And you can see that happening in this example. “You have tried espresso.” That’s positive. Then the tag question becomes “haven’t you?” The tag question is negative. “You have tried espresso, haven't you?” Again, what you are seeing here is the auxiliary verb being repeated at the end to form the tag question.
What about a sentence with a modal in it? Do you remember what modals are? Modal is spelled m-o-d-a-l. Modals are a set of very complicated and annoying little words like can, must, should. Words like that. If you have a sentence with a modal in it, then that is the part that you repeat at the end to make the tag question. For example: “He shouldn't drive home in the storm, should he?” He shouldn't drive home in the storm, should he?
What do you do if the sentence does not have an auxiliary verb or a modal? What do you put in the end to make the tag part of the tag question? The answer might surprise you. You don't move the verb. What you do is you add a new verb. You add the verb do: d-o.
Let me give you a few examples, and then I hope this will seem a little bit more clear.
“She watches too much TV, doesn't she?” She watches too much TV, doesn't she? In the first part of that sentence—“She watches too much TV”—there is no modal. There is no auxiliary. There's just the verb watches. So what do we do when we form the tag part of the tag question? We have to put in the word do. And because watches is positive, when we put in do we need to make it negative. Because that always happens with tag questions. So we start with “She watches too much TV,” and we end with “She watches too much TV, doesn't she?”
How about this one: “We enjoy going on vacation together, don't we?” We enjoy going on vacation together, don't we? In the first part of that sentence, there is no auxiliary verb like have, and there is no modal, like can or must. There is only the verb enjoy. We enjoy going on vacation together. So, to make the tag part of the tag question we need to add the verb to do. And because the first part of the sentence is positive, when we add to do, we need to make it negative: “We enjoy going on vacation together, don’t we?” We enjoy going on vacation together, don't we?
And here's one last example of a sentence that does not have an auxiliary verb and it does not have a modal: “You forgot to turn the lights off, didn't you?” You forgot to turn the lights off, didn't you? In that sentence we just have the verb forgot. It's positive, so when we make the tag part of the tag question, we add do, and we need to make it negative. Of course, in this sentence forgot is past tense—“You forgot to turn the lights off”—so we need to make do past tense also. “You forgot to turn the lights off, didn't you?” There's a lot happening in this sentence. We need to add the verb to do. We need to switch it from positive to negative. And we need to make sure it is the correct tense.
That is the end of our series about tag questions. It turned out to be a little bit more complicated than I thought it would be. And now I have a homework assignment for you. I know I'm not your teacher and I can't make you do homework, but I have a homework assignment for you anyway. I want you to create five sentences with tag questions at the end. I want you to make at least one that has an auxiliary verb and at least one sentence that has a modal. And the rest of them should be sentences that have no auxiliary verb and no modal.
Good luck.
Small Talk: how to ask if someone is leaving
For this episode’s small talk topic or social situation, I want to talk about an experience that you have probably had. Let's say you are in a very busy restaurant or a very busy café, and you are looking for a place to sit down. And you see a person over there at that table. It looks like he's going to be leaving soon. It looks like he's getting all of his things together, like he's getting ready to go. And you want to sit in his seat. You want to sit at his table. You want to be there as soon as he leaves.
Well, what can you say to that person to let him know that you're ready, that you are waiting for his seat? Well, there are some simple things you can say.
The first one is “Excuse me. Are you leaving?” Excuse me. Are you leaving? Remember, most of the time when we start a conversation with a stranger, we say excuse me or a phrase like that. Again, that one was “Excuse me. Are you leaving?”
Another thing you might know is that when we make sentences sound more polite, we often do that by adding words to the sentence. Longer sentences somehow sound more polite. They sound less direct or less blunt.
So we can make that original sentence a little bit more polite-sounding if we say something like this: “Excuse me. Are you leaving soon?” That makes it sound a little bit softer.
We can make it sound even softer, even more polite, by saying this: “Excuse me. Are you going to be leaving soon?” Excuse me. Are you going to be leaving soon? This is sounding more and more polite.
There's another phrase that I want to teach you that is a very informal, very casual, way of saying “to leave.” And that is to head out. To head out. That’s head: h-e-a-d. Out: o-u-t. To head out means “to go." It means “to leave the place where you are and go someplace new,” or “to leave and go in a certain direction, go toward a certain destination.”
So you could also ask that person in the crowded café, “Excuse me. Are you heading out?” Excuse me. Are you heading out?
These are all ways of saying, “Hello! Uh, I'm here, and I want to sit in your seat, and I hope you're leaving. And maybe I want to encourage you to go a little bit more quickly,” but I want to do it in a polite way.
Well, those are all things that you can say the next time you find yourself in this situation.
The Joke of the Week
And now it's time for the Joke of the Week! That's right: the Joke of the Week, a joke that will probably not be very funny, but I still like doing these jokes because I think they can show us interesting, fun things about English.
Here is this week's joke: What is black and white and blue? What is black and white and blue?
Do you have any idea? Can you think of something that is black and white and blue?
Well, let me tell you the idea that I have in mind. What is black and white and blue? A sad panda. A sad panda!
Do you get it? Do you understand why this is a joke or why it is supposed to be a joke? It's because the word blue can have different meanings. It can be the word for a color, like the color of the sky or the color of the ocean. But blue can also mean “sad.”
So, what is something that is black and white and blue? A sad panda. Pandas are black and white, and if a panda is sad, you could also say that it is blue.
Well, that is this week's joke, and it was the best one ever!!
Listening Quiz
Here are this episode's listening quiz sentences: