#315 Separable and Inseparable Phrasal Verbs
48:33 Share

Hello everybody, welcome back. So lovely to be with you here again today. If you don't know, my name is Michael and this is the Level Up English podcast, the

The best place to come to practice the English language, learn about the British accent and culture with me, as I said, Michael Lavers. I hope you're ready today to do some learning, but as always, in a fun way. Because we'll be learning a little bit more about phrasal verbs.

And if you've been with me for a while, you'll know that I've spoken about this topic many times before. But that is really because it's such a big part of the English language. It really is a huge thing to learn. There's a lot to learn. And knowing them will help you sound much more natural and help you get by. That's a phrasal verb right there. To get by, which means to survive in many situations.

But first of all, I did want to mention, well, maybe first I should just say, hopefully it's not too obvious, but today is my first day or my first Monday back at home after a one week holiday.

I may be talking about this later today. In fact, I think I will. I'll try to talk about this in today's episode. But I was away for the last week in Cambodia. I had a great time. But I think you know how it is. That first Monday after your trip, you might be waking up a little bit earlier than you were during your holiday.

To be fair, in my holiday, I did wake up quite early, I think compared to many people, maybe 7am, 8am. I was quite healthy during the holiday. But when I'm back at home, like today, I wake up at 6. So it's my first day waking up at 6 again. And maybe you can see it in my face. I can feel it. I feel a little bit heavier than normal. But

But hopefully I can get energised as I talk today because I always love doing this podcast. One thing I should mention, I know many of you have signed up to my email community. To those of you, I say thank you. I really hope that you're enjoying my emails I send twice a month. There's like some free mini lesson there and some updates from me as well. And of course, many of you are also members at Level Up English.

But maybe there are some of you who haven't done so yet. You haven't joined the email community, which, by the way, is free.

And maybe you're considering it or you have considered it before. And I just wanted to let you know that I recently updated the free lessons that I give when you sign up to the emails. If you don't know, if you join my email community, you will get five free lessons from my website sent to your email right away.

And I felt like this was quite important because I want these lessons to represent level up English. I want them to be a good representation of what is inside the course, right? Because maybe if you really like them, you might consider becoming a member as well. That's part of the idea. So I wanted to make these lessons high quality, if I could,

So because of that, I updated them. So if you do want to check out these free lessons, you don't have to pay anything. You could sign up to our email community. If you look down in the description where I'm talking now on your phone or computer, whatever it is, there'll be a link that says get free lessons. If you click that, you can see what I'm talking about.

But that's one thing I've worked on recently. Hopefully that is useful for you. But I think I'll get right into the topic now. So first of all, let's do a quick phrasal verb introduction.

At this point, phrasal verbs have become an ongoing series on the podcast. Maybe you haven't noticed, but we've done, I think this will be the fifth episode on phrasal verbs. It feels like more, maybe I've missed one somewhere, but as far as I could see, I've done one called What Are Phrasal Verbs? That was kind of an introduction to the idea and it's way back in episode 13. So,

So I can't promise it's going to be a very good episode, honestly, because I was so new to podcasting. But listen if you like. We also had episode 261 where we looked at phrasal verbs with turn, like turn out. 272, phrasal verbs with set, like set off.

And then 284 phrasal verbs with out, like what could we say? Turn out. There's one with turn and out, but maybe I mentioned turn out. I can't remember.

but there's some specific ones there. And today is going to be a little bit different actually, because I want to talk about separable and inseparable phrasal verbs. This is something that confuses a lot of people, so I think it's really important to cover this today. And I'm going to try my best as always to share phrasal verbs or share vocabulary and relate it to my own experience.

And the reason I do this is because giving context makes things more memorable. And it's also showing you an example of what you can do. I definitely recommend that you try this as well. You try to use the phrasal verbs I mentioned today and make sentences about your own life, your past experiences, your future plans, or whatever else you can think of.

So my goal today is to talk about my Cambodia trip, I think, with these phrasal verbs. I'll see what I can think of in this episode. But one thing we should talk about first is a little bit of grammar. I'll try to keep it as short as I can.

let's first explain what a separable and inseparable phrasal verb is. So, separable just means able to separate. That means they can be separated. So, a phrasal verb is, for example, to turn down. Turn down is another way of saying reject. I turned down his offer.

'Turn down' is, I can tell you now, a separable phrasal verb. So that means we can put something in the middle, usually like a noun. So we could say, 'I turned down the offer', or we could say, 'I turned the offer down'.

The meaning is the same. So can you see here how we have the offer, the noun, in between the phrasal verb? Turn noun down. I turned him down. I turned his offer down. Okay, so in this case, we can use both. Together or separate. This is a separable phrasal verb.

Inseparable is where it cannot be separated. We'll come to this later, but this is when the words in a phrasal verb always have to come together. And if you put them apart, it will sound unnatural. So, in some ways, those are a little bit easier because you don't have to think too much, but we'll see. Let me know what you find hard at the end.

One thing I should mention, one other thing I should mention is a little bit difficult. This is the difference between a noun and a pronoun. So a noun is like, as we said, offer, like an offer, the offer is a noun. And if the object is a noun, it can go either before the particle, that means in the middle of the phrasal verb, or at the end.

So just like I said before, I turned down the offer. I turned the offer down. A noun can come middle or at the end. Both are possible. However, when the object is a pronoun, which is a word like it, him, her, them, for example, it has to go between in the middle of the phrasal verb.

So I could say, I turned it down. In this case, it could mean the offer. I turned it down. But we cannot say, I turned down it. It is understandable. I think we will know what you mean, but it sounds unnatural. So that's really, really important. One more example, let's use turn down again. I turned down his coffee.

marriage proposal. He asked me to marry him and I said, no, I turned down his proposal, right? Or we can just say for short, I turned him down, right? So, this is correct. I turned him down because him is a pronoun that goes in the middle. However, I turned down him sounds quite unnatural,

We could say I turned down his proposal or I turned him down, but we can't say I turned down him. A little bit confusing. For the members, I think I will put a table on the website to make this clear so you can kind of see what I'm talking about.

But anyway, with that kind of grammar stuff out the way, let's get into the phrasal verbs. So I've got six or something like that for each one. Let's start with some separable phrasal verbs and you'll see how these work. Again, these might be the harder ones. We'll see. So let's just start with turn down because I've already mentioned it. And let's expand on that one a little bit more.

So 'turn down' in this meaning means to reject or to say no to someone. So thinking back to my trip last week in Cambodia, I went to two places. I went to Phnom Penh, the capital, and I took a bus for a few hours to Siem Reap, another city there. And one thing that I found pretty annoying

uh was well there are many tuk-tuks everywhere tuk-tuks are like these small cars a little bit like a like a motorbike with seats on the back like a in between a car and a motorbike we could say and there are many tuk-tuks which are really fun to travel around on very convenient but i think because of the

economical situation maybe since covid they haven't had as many tourists so the drivers are much more desperate to get a ride and make money so wherever you go even if it's not a tourist area i found just because i'm not cambodian

We will be right back to the Level Up English podcast after a short break. I would like to take just one minute to tell you about a new free mini course that I have available that you could try today. This is called Level Up Your English, the mini series. So this is again a free course that you could take. It should take about one week to complete.

I've made this course to be super accessible and easy to start. So once you sign up, you get sent an email with a 10 minute video lesson from me. And in this lesson, we'll be learning a little bit about grammar in a really fun way, I promise. And we'll be learning everything in context so it's more enjoyable and easier to learn.

Once you finish the first lesson, you'll be sent another lesson a couple days later, each lesson about 10 minutes long, so very manageable. And once again, it's totally free. So if you're interested in levelling up your English with me and you'd like to try, then you've got nothing to lose. Sign up today. There will be a link in your podcast description wherever you're listening to this episode where you can click and join the free course today.

Hope you find it useful. Thank you so much. People would always say like, hey, Tok Tok, come ride with me. I'll take you somewhere. They always want to drive me somewhere because they want to make money from me.

And again, it's understandable, but it's a little bit annoying at the same time. So I had to turn down many tuk-tuk offers. I had to turn down many drivers because I, you know, for example, I'm running in the morning. I'm going for my morning run. I don't want to drive. And people are asking if I want a ride. And

And of course I have to turn them down and say no because I'm just exercising, even though it was very hot. So just a review there. I turned down many drivers. I had to turn them down, right? Inseparable. So that's one example of people I had to turn down or something I had to turn down on my trip. What could that be for yourself? Many, many cases where you might have to say no to someone or something.

Let's go to the next one now. Let's go to put off, put off. You may know that a lot of phrasal verbs have multiple meanings. I always advise against, I don't recommend learning several, like many meanings in one go. I think that can be confusing for most people. So I'm just going to focus on one meaning today or one of the most important meanings we could say.

So, yeah, put off is to delay. Postpone is another word. Postpone is a bit more formal. Put off is more conversational and slightly more casual.

So, yeah, I had to... Let me think. What did I put off? Oh, OK. Here's a good one. So you may know that Siem Reap in Cambodia is home to the largest religious structure in the world. I'm pretty sure. And this is known as Angkor Wat. Angkor Wat, I think, is how you pronounce it. I've never really said it out loud before. I just realised Angkor.

But yeah, Angkor Wat is a huge religious structure. So I didn't have a tour guide, but sometimes when you're walking around, you overhear other people talking. And I overheard another tour guide talking. And he said it was built around about 800 years ago or something like that. Originally as a Hindu temple, but later converted to Buddhist, to Buddhism. So...

If you really care, maybe double check that because this is just something I overheard from a tour guide. I promise I wasn't trying to steal his tour.

But yeah, it was a really, really amazing temple complex. If we say complex, it means like lots of different temples. And the scale is just huge. We rented bicycles every day. We stayed for three days and we rented bikes and we cycled around. One day we cycled around, I think it was most of the temples. We cycled around the outside of Angkor Wat.

And it was about 40 kilometers. So that just gives you an idea of how big this land area is. And there's temples everywhere. It's huge. But one thing I didn't expect, actually, is Cambodia was much larger

much or slightly hotter than Bangkok, we could say. So Siem Reap was a little bit hotter than Bangkok. And I really didn't expect that. And they're pretty close together. They're not that far, but it definitely felt hotter. So because of that, I had to reconsider when to go cycling.

So on the first day, I went cycling maybe like 10 a.m. and probably came back at like 2 p.m., which, you know, that's kind of the hottest time of the day. And it was very hot, very sweaty kind of activity, you know. So that wasn't such a good idea, perhaps. So on the final day, I got a little bit smarter and I put off my cycling until the afternoon.

It worked out really well. It was slightly cooler. I left the hotel at about 4pm and had two hours of cycling, watched the sunset from the temple. Surprisingly, it wasn't very busy. There weren't many people there.

So, yeah, I had to put off the cycling plan until it got cooler. I put off the plan. I put the plan off. We could say both here. Again, separable phrasal verb. So that's put off now. Next one, let's go to give up. Many of you might know this phrasal verb already, give up. There may be many that you know today, but you may not have known that this is separable.

Give up is something you shouldn't do if you're learning English, right? Don't give up. Keep going. So, yeah, give up means to stop what you're doing, maybe because it's too hard. It's too difficult. So you remove that goal from your life. You give up. And again, if we're talking about that final day where I cycled to the temple complex, I

I think by this point I had seen most of the temples, maybe. I'm not sure how many there are, but I felt like I had seen most of them. But there was one that I saw on Google that looked really cool that I hadn't seen yet. And this was a large reclining, reclining means lying down, reclining Buddha statue statue.

built into the side of the temple. It looked really amazing and again it's around like 700-800 years old, something like that, so a nice piece of history as well. And I almost gave up on my search. Notice we can say on and then add the thing that you're giving up. Gave up on my search.

So I almost gave up on my search because it was getting dark and the road to Angkor Wat is just like a road with cars and bikes and it's not very well lit. It's not well illuminated with lights. So I didn't want to cycle home in the dark because it could be a bit dangerous. Driving there is not the best, honestly.

So I almost gave up and then I found it. The Buddha is on the backside of one of these big temples. You have to climb up some very steep stairs to enter the temple and then go around the side to go to the back.

And it was really amazing. It was incredible. I think the best part about it is I had it all to myself. There was not a single person there. Maybe this is a bit judgmental now. I don't know how this will come across, how this will sound.

My impression of many tourists is a lot of them are quite lazy. Again, feel free to disagree. This might sound harsh. But whenever I go to like a temple, there's always like dozens of tourists at the entrance of the temple or taking selfies and pictures and stuff like that.

But then if I walk, you know, two minutes into the temple, there's no one there. Everyone is at the beginning by the road, but then no one actually goes into the temple. I don't know why. So when I went around the back, there's this huge Buddha, you know, many, many, many meters long, like really, really big. It's built by brick into the back of the temple with some windows in the top.

um maybe i'll find a picture to put here for youtube and yet no one else was there it was peaceful i kind of felt like i imagined the the i think they were french explorers or colonizers whatever whoever they were you know back a couple hundred years ago when they first rediscovered this temple how they must have felt like whoa look at this covered by jungle this ancient temple i kind of got that feeling from that which was cool

So yes, I almost gave up on the search, but I didn't. I almost gave the search up is another way we could say that. Okay, so I'm rambling a bit more than I expected, so I might have to cut this a bit short. Let me think about what I could do next. I think I will do two more here. Let's do two more.

So next one is another up phrasal verb. And I could talk about pick up, to pick up.

Pick up has many meanings, unfortunately. But in this case, I'm talking about kind of like collecting or getting or receiving something. And it's very common when we are buying something from a shop. Like if your partner goes to the shop, you can say, oh, while you're there, can you please pick up some bread for me? It just means, can you get some bread? It's very similar to that, the word get in that context.

And, you know, many people when they travel, they might like to pick up some souvenirs. So buy and collect these souvenirs. For me, I don't care about souvenirs. I want to have good memories. You know, photos can be good souvenirs, but generally I don't really care. I don't want to buy a souvenir. If someone gives me one, that might be a different story. It's got more meaning then for me.

But one thing I did care about a lot were the cats. Now there weren't as many cats in Cambodia compared to Bangkok, which is one reason why I love living here.

But we got really lucky because in our hotel, there was a mother cat who recently had kittens. They were about two or three weeks old when we got there. And they were so cute. Three little kittens inside our hotel that I suppose that the mum brought them here just because she knew they would be safe. Quite a smart mum there.

And we instantly fell in love. I think, honestly, the cats were my favourite thing about the trip. I really, really loved them. I really miss them still. If it were possible, I would have taken them back. But yeah, I think the cats were being somewhat looked after by the staff, but not super well. I mean, I think they were getting some leftover food from the kitchen, but they weren't being fed regularly with good quality food.

So, every day I went to the supermarket and I picked up some cat food. The kittens were too young to have cat food. They're just drinking milk from their mum. But of course, the mum needs nutrition. She's very skinny. So, I made sure to pick up some cat food to feed the mother every day. And at first, she was a little bit unsure. Maybe it was her first time trying cat food from the shop.

But eventually she got quite greedy and quite hungry and she ate it very quickly. But yeah, I picked up some cat food. I picked some cat food up from the store. I picked it up. So that was a good thing I did. I still feel good about that even several days later.

And the final one for separable phrasal verbs is to write something down. So, to write things down or to write down things. Again, both are possible. So, this is relevant, I think, when it comes to the language. I think I used to worry more about language. I used to feel guilty if I went to a country and didn't speak any language there.

These days, I don't care so much. I'm very busy learning a few languages already and it's not possible to learn every language. So...

To be honest, I didn't know anything about the Cambodian language until I got on the plane and I started researching and I wrote down some phrases in the Cambodian language. Basically, I just wrote down hello and thank you, because I think that's the most important words when you're going to a new country.

So I think that's my advice here. When you do travel to a new country, of course, English is probably OK, but at the very least, it's good to write down hello and thank you in that language or it's good to write it down. It's good to write these things down.

and if possible maybe get some audio as well like for the first day or two i kept listening again like thank you thank you thank you because you know i would read it and i'd instantly forget so i'd have to listen several times until it kind of sunk into my memory uh but yeah that goes a long way i just think saying hello in the local language can affect how people respond to you which which is quite nice um

Yeah, I think I'll keep it there. But yeah, write down. So just a summary here. We had turn down, put off, give up, pick up and write down. Few common phrasal verbs there. Let's go ahead now and talk about inseparable phrasal verbs. And just a reminder, this is where you cannot split with the object. So let's do

Let's just do 'look after' as the first one. Look after or look after, however you want to pronounce it. So this is inseparable and I'll explain how that works. An obvious example for me is my main priority in that hotel in Cambodia was looking after the kittens.

I really wanted to look after the kittens. When I went to bed at night time, I was just thinking, oh, I hope they're OK. I want to go out and check on them again. It's all I could think about. I was really crazy about them.

So yeah, look after means to take care of. It's a similar phrasal verb to make sure someone is happy and healthy, to give someone care and attention. So your parents might look after you. You might look after your children or your pets or your partners, for example. It's good to look after each other, especially when we're sick. You know, if someone gets sick, look after them as much as you can. That's a nice thing to do.

So yeah, I looked after the cats. We cannot say I looked the cats after. We have to say I looked after the cats. So look after always comes together. Think of them like stuck together like glue. Even though they have a space in the middle, it's not possible to squeeze them any further apart. Look after something. Look after someone. Hopefully that makes sense. I should just mention that

I very occasionally get questions about this, not very often, but in my accent, I pronounce it after. This is quite common in Cornwall, where I'm from, for example. If you do the same, it's totally fine.

Generally in the south of England and a lot of the English that your textbooks will be based on, they might say after, after. So it's a long vowel rather than a, it's a. You maybe say a after. It sounds a little bit more standard, you know, but there's lots of different ways to pronounce English. So just if anyone's wondering, that's that's why.

Let's go to another one now. I think we'll do look forward to. Another one that many of you will know. This is actually a three word phrasal verb. Three words, look forward to. They always come together. Look forward to something. And it can be a bit confusing because we often say look forward to eating or doing, you know, with an ing there.

And it's not very common to say to doing, but just remember that to is connected to the phrasal verb. It's not connected to what comes after, after. So just remember that. I was really, well, I was really looking forward to the trip. Of course, that's the obvious sentence there.

But to be honest, I think after one week, it was about seven days away, I was also looking forward to coming home. I was looking forward to getting back, doing work, recording the podcast, speaking Thai. Even though my Thai isn't very good, it's really nice to at least know some basic phrases, unlike in Cambodia. So I was looking forward to many things about coming back to Thailand.

And yeah, you'll notice I said, look forward to doing, to coming back. Look forward to, what can we say, a noun. I look forward to resting, I guess we could say. It's not common, I suppose, to say a noun. I look forward to my house. It's kind of understandable, but it sounds a bit strange. I think it's more common to have a gerund. I look forward to returning to my house.

But yeah, it's not possible to put anything in the middle. I look my house forward. I look forward returning to. No, it's always those three words. And a really nice rule here. This is actually really nice because this is consistent in English.

When we have a three word phrasal verb, look forward to, brush up on, you might think of some more. These are always inseparable, right? So when we have three words in a phrasal verb, we cannot separate them. So that's one nice way to learn which is which, right? Apart from that, it's kind of, you have to learn them, unfortunately. There's no rule to remember the others, which is a bit annoying, right?

Uh, come across. I may have mentioned this already today. I can't remember, but it's a very common one. To come across is to find something by chance. You weren't looking for it, but you found it. Usually it's like a place or something like that. And one of my, one of the memories that stand out to me from my trip was when we rented bikes. As I said, we cycled

One of the largest temple areas that we cycled around the wall, around the edge of the temple, on the inside of the moat. A moat is like a river that goes around a temple or castle. So we cycled around the inside of that lake, that river, and...

Basically, this is like a big square shape, a really, really big square shape. Cycling just one side of this square maybe takes like 20 minutes, 10 minutes. I don't exactly remember, but it took quite a while, like an off-road cycling trail. And at each corner of this temple complex, there was like a specific temple or gate there.

I don't know what its purpose was, these corner temples, but yeah, I didn't expect to find it. So that's why I can say I came across these temples at the corners of this. The words are quite hard to talk about this. I don't know how I would say it at the corner of this large area. Let's just use a simple word like that.

And they were really amazing. There were no other people there. Super peaceful, nice views over the edge of the wall. OK, maybe I'll put some pictures on YouTube if you're kind of curious what I'm talking about. And there'll be a picture of me and my bike, maybe. And yeah, I came across these temples and I think that made it much more special if I went to find them.

searching for them because I saw them online, maybe it would feel less special because I knew what I was getting into. So I came across some nice temples. What have you come across recently? Okay, we've done three so far for this one. And for the first one, we did five. So let's do two more and we'll make it even. Another one, three words you'll notice is put up with.

to put up with something or to put up with someone inseparable. And this is to deal with something or to, how can we say to cope with something, to be able to remain patient and remain positive, even though something is annoying you. Right. So hopefully this, this will become clear when I explain, when I give an example, uh,

We didn't have many annoyances or many big problems on the trip. But one thing I did have to put up with was the noisy tourists in the hotel. So we requested, before booking, we requested a room with good internet, fast internet speeds.

I think they put us on the ground floor for this reason, because maybe the internet is faster. So that was fine. That was good. But one thing we didn't consider is our room was very close to the reception and the lobby of the hotel. So that means everyone coming down the stairs and leaving the room, they're all talking in the lobby and they don't have much awareness of how close they are to other rooms like my room.

And it got very annoying. Sometimes I was like, OK, I want to lie in tomorrow, which means sleep longer. Maybe I'll wake up at nine or eight, a little bit longer. But then at 7 a.m., some loud people would come. I was going to mention their nationality. I'm not going to do that. But it's a country that often gets accused of being loud. It's their stereotype. Maybe you can guess which one. I'm not going to say anything.

But these people, they came down the stairs shouting and talking really, really loud at seven o'clock in the morning and I could not get back to sleep. So I was a bit grumpy. So I did have to put up with this noise. I didn't complain. I put up with it, which means I kind of accepted that this was unavoidable. Right. So I put up with the noise that woke me up. Hmm.

Okay, last one now, to run out of. To run out of. Another one with three words, run out of. So, based on that, you know that this is also inseparable. Run out of means to use up or to have nothing left. So, it's often used with food or water or money, something that you might have a lot of and then none of.

So I ran out of money quite early into the trip. It's not a big problem because you can just withdraw more money from the ATM, from the cash point. But it's a little bit difficult because all of the ATMs I went to, they said you can withdraw like $50. And I think in Cambodia, $50 is quite a lot of money. And I was thinking, okay, I've got four days left of my trip.

Will I spend $50 like having two meals every day and I'm not really going to do anything special. I'm not going to buy anything big. Will I spend $50? I don't want to have too much cash. And then I come home with cash and I'm losing money if I change it back again. So I ran out of money.

which means I had no more money left, and I decided not to withdraw any more money. So for the rest of the week, I only used my card, which was a little bit difficult. It's not a super card-friendly country, so sometimes it was actually quite embarrassing. You know, in Thailand, for example, you can pay with your phone everywhere. It's very easy, especially if you have a Thai bank account.

And because of that, I often just go to shops and I don't even take money. I just take my phone because it's always possible. So I've kind of got that habit from Thailand and I kind of forgot in Cambodia. Like one time I sat down in a restaurant, I ordered some food and I thought, wait a minute, I don't have any money. I need to make sure they can accept card payments. So we asked them, do you accept card? And they said no. So I was like,

Maybe you have to cancel my order and I'll go somewhere else. It was very awkward. I don't know. I kind of I don't really understand why they don't accept card. I'm happy to pay extra for the card fee.

But yeah, I don't know. I feel like they're losing business, right? But anyway, there was some kind of stupid moments from me. But in the end, I did make it the whole week without withdrawing money. And I didn't waste any money on fees, which was nice. Okay, so yeah, just to review, we have look after, look forward to, come across, put up with, and run out of.

Those are the inseparable ones. So we have 10 altogether, five from each group. So the last thing I want to mention is you might be wondering why should we separate phrasal verbs? Like in it, obviously inseparable, that's simple. It's always the same. But if we're talking about a separable phrasal verb, if I can say turn the man down or turn down the man,

Why would we put it in the middle if we can just put it at the end? Well, first of all, I did mention earlier if it's a pronoun that has to come in the middle, so turn him down when we're talking about separable ones. So that's one reason. Another reason why they might come in the middle is to emphasise the object. It changes the emphasis very slightly. Like, I turned down the job. Kind of neutral. If you say, I turned the job down,

There's a little bit more emphasis on the job here. So that it's very subtle, but it can kind of shift your attention to the job. I turned the job down, right? So there's a slight emphasis change. That's another reason.

And I think a lot of the time it can just sound more fluent. It changes the rhythm of a sentence. Rhythm is something that maybe you can start focusing on when you get to like C1 and C2 levels. I suppose it's something you're learning all the time, but when you get to the really advanced levels, maybe you can think about it more consciously, right? So...

Maybe she wrote down my number quickly. Right? She wrote down my number quickly, we could say. She wrote my number down quickly. I said that quite quickly and naturally.

But I would say the second one flows, the rhythm is a little bit better in conversation, right? Yeah, she wrote my number down quickly. She wrote down my number quickly, right? I mean, they're both very similar, but just sometimes adding it in the middle helps the rhythm of the sentence flow. And it just sounds better. It's kind of hard to explain why.

But if you think that's too difficult for you to understand, then don't worry. This isn't something that you really have to study, like the rhythm, for example. This is something that you will naturally get, acquire over time. But yeah, just in case anyone's wondering, there are a couple of reasons why you might put it in the middle, but...

Generally, it doesn't matter too much. It doesn't change the meaning in any big way. So don't really worry when it comes to those separable ones. But, okay, I feel like I need to take a breath, so we'll finish soon. I do want to say thank you to some reviews on Apple Podcasts. We're going all around the world today. One, thank you to Yuri in Japan, who said...

I'm Yuri or Yuri, Yuri maybe. I don't know how you pronounce it in Japanese. I've been studying English for several years and I think that I'm intermediate level. Recently, I've burned out a little bit, but I came across the podcast. Your clear voice is comfortable to listen to and your advice reminds me of the very beginning of my English studies. Thank you very much.

So thank you very much. That's very kind to say. I mean, I think your English sounds great. You've used some phrasal verbs like burnout, come across, which we mentioned today, right? So that's a really good one to mention here. You came across the podcast. But thank you very much. That's very, very nice to say. I'm happy to hear you like the podcast.

One from the United States, from Matty. And they said, I enjoy every single episode and it's improving my English a lot. Thank you very much, Matty. Super good to hear that.

And one more from Germany. I'm laughing a bit because I recognise this username. Maybe this is not your first review. I didn't know that you could leave more than one review, but thank you very much that you've done that. This is from Lady Som, who said, I really enjoy listening to you. You always have such interesting topics from everyday life.

I am glad you think so. I try to make them interesting and relevant to everyday life. So thank you for saying so. If you want to leave a review, Apple Podcasts is a great place to do that. It helps me go kind of higher up on the rankings, which is really, really helpful. It's a great way to say thank you.

or wherever you listen, whether it's Spotify or whatever other app you use, YouTube, then leave a comment or review. It means a lot to me. So thank you very much. I did prepare a quote for this episode, but annoyingly, it has been deleted somehow. I don't know how. So let me go back and look at my notes and I'll see what I can find.

Okay, this one may not be the best choice because it is... I'll have to explain something, but this is from Steve Jobs. And I love this quote. It's a really motivational quote. And he said, your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your inner voice.

So super motivational quote. Don't waste your life living based on someone else's expectations. But yeah, he also said, don't let others' opinions drown out your inner voice. To drown out is a new phrasal verb today. This is separable. And it means when something is so loud, it stops you hearing another thing.

So I couldn't hear his speech because he was drowned out by the music. Right. So the music was louder. So I couldn't hear the speech. In this case, don't let other people's opinions be so loud that you don't listen to your own voice inside. That's what it means. So don't let it drown out your inner voice. Don't let it drown your inner voice out. We can say both ways.

So, hopefully that makes sense. But I think on that motivational note, I will leave it for today. So, thank you so much for watching or listening. Hope you enjoyed this one and I'll see all of you in the next episode. Goodbye. You have been listening to the Level Up English Podcast.

If you would like to leave a question to be answered on a future episode, then please go to levelupenglish.school forward slash podcast. That's levelupenglish.school slash podcast. And I'll answer your question on a future episode. Thanks for listening.