Bob's Short English Lessons

In this English lesson, I wanted to help you learn the English phrase "to shake things up". When you shake things up, it means that you change things. Sorry, Walter just came running here. There he is. That scared me a little bit. I don't know if I jumped or not, but anyways, when you shake things up, it means you change things, hopefully so things get better. Here's a good example. I watch the Toronto Raptors and last year they decided that they were going to get a new head coach. They wanted to shake things up a bit. They also got rid of one or two players to shake things up a bit. So they changed things so that hopefully this year the team has a winning season. You might have this happen at work. Sometimes at work you might come in and they'll say, yep, Jim and Joe are gone. The boss fired them because the boss wants to shake things up a bit. I think I use a bit a lot when I use that phrase. They want to shake things up a bit. So it means to make a change.WANT FREE ENGLISH LESSONS? GO TO YOUTUBE AND SEARCH, "BOB THE CANADIAN"If you enjoy these lessons please consider supporting me at: http://www.patreon.com/bobthecanadianThe other phrase I wanted to teach you today is the phrase "to shake on it". When you shake on something, it means you agree on something. It means you actually shake hands with someone. I have someone coming to look at a water pump tonight and hopefully they want to buy it. And hopefully we can shake on it when we agree on a price.So to review when you shake things up, it means you make changes to something, hopefully so that things go better. And when you.... To shake on it means that you shake hands with someone after you agree to do something.But hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video. I hope this guy doesn't show up while I'm making this English lesson. This is from Andres. Mr. Bob, does YouTube provide you with metrics about how many users watch 10 seconds of your videos and how many users watch the entire video? And my response yes, although I don't usually pay it much attention, I make the video to satisfy a need. It doesn't matter to me how long people watch it for, so I can't see how long specific people watch it for. I do know that people watch about 60% to 70% of my videos before they give up and decide to do something else. But what that actually means is that most people watch the whole video and some people only watch the first 40% or 50%. I don't know the details, but anyways, yes, I do see metrics, but I do not pay a lot of attention to them because I just like making the video.Hey, this is the pump. Do you think someone will buy it. We bought a different pump this year. We have two irrigation pumps. We bought an irrigation pump that has a pressure regulator on it so it turns on and off automatically. That pump just pumps water. It doesn't turn on and off. It just pumps water. As long as it's on, it's pumping water until you unplug it. But we like to use pumps where when it gets up to 50 psi pounds per square inch, the pump turns off.So I'm actually waiting right now. The guy said he would be here around 5:30. It's 5:25 right now. And I thought, well, I'll kill two birds with 1 stone. I'll go outside and make a video while I'm waiting for him to show up. And then when he arrives, we'll have a look at the pump, and hopefully he offers me a price that we agree on and we can shake on it. And then hopefully, he gives me some money and he takes the pump away. I always like to sell things that I'm not using anymore because there's really no point in keeping things that you don't need otherwise, they just sit in your shed or sit in your garage. and kind of waste away.So, anyways, thanks for watching this short English lesson. I'll see you in a few days with anoSupport the show

Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrases TO BE IN THE KNOW and FOR ALL I KNOW...In this English lesson, I wanted to help you learn the English phrase "to be in the know". When you are in the know, it means that you know something is going to happen. Here's an example. If I was planning a surprise birthday party for my mom and if someone said, who all knows about this? I could say, well, my brother and sister are in the know. That means that they know that this party is going to happen. Maybe you're helping plan something at work and it's a top secret project and only certain people are supposed to know about it. Only certain people are allowed to be in the know about the project. That means you would have to make sure that you don't talk to the people you shouldn't talk to about the secret project.WANT FREE ENGLISH LESSONS? GO TO YOUTUBE AND SEARCH, "BOB THE CANADIAN"If you enjoy these lessons please consider supporting me at: http://www.patreon.com/bobthecanadianThe other phrase I wanted to teach you today is "for all I know". This is a phrase we use before we say something that we're not sure about. For all I know, it could snow tonight. I haven't checked the weather. I don't have enough information to actually know if it's going to snow tonight. So I could start that phrase by saying, for all I know, it could snow tonight. For all I know, some of you only watch the first 10 seconds of my videos. I don't actually know if you watch the entire lesson. For all I know, maybe you just watch the first little bit and think, this one seems a little bit boring.So to review to be in the know means that you do know about something that's going to happen, and it kind of implies that there's people who don't know what's going to happen. And for all I know is a phrase we use to introduce something that we're not sure about. For all I know, these leaves might all blow away tonight if it gets windy. I don't know if it's going to be windy or not, but it might be.But hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video. This comment is from Tammy. Yes, you always go to great lengths to make online lessons for us and all your lessons are a token of generosity. Thank you for your hard work. In my response, I do my best, but oddly, I just took a huge break on this channel. I'm back at it now.So yeah, I took a little bit of a break. Many of you have told me, I'm just putting the comment back in my pocket. Many of you have told me, don't apologize when you take a break, that I deserve to take breaks once in a while. So I'm not apologizing this time, but man, that was a long break. It was a week and a half, I think. But I got lots of work done. I'm in kind of a little bit of the tail end of a busy stretch at work.I do have parent teacher interviews tonight. We sometimes call these learning conferences as well. So I do have to go back to school. I'm just home to make this video and have a little bit of supper and then I'll head back in. I've talked about parent teacher interviews before. This is where parents and sometimes students come in to talk about their learning. We're at about the midway point of the semester. I do work in a semester system, we would call it. So we're at the halfway point.Grades went out last week, so students are aware of how well they're doing in their classes. But yeah, tonight. But I only have three, so maybe that means I'm doing a good job. Maybe that means no one wants to talk to me. I don't know. By the way, I think there's like 15 time slots and I only have three interviews tonight. So my colleagues are a little jealous. Some of them have a full slate this evening. That means they have interviews from, like, I think, seven till nine and I just need to go in at ten to Support the show

Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrases THE GREAT OUTDOORS and TO GO TO GREAT LENGTHSIn this English lesson. I wanted to help you learn the English phrase "the great outdoors". Well we're in it. We're in the great outdoors. This is simply a fun way to refer to being outside in nature. When I made my video on my other channel the other day, I was in the great outdoors. I went for a hike. It was a lot of fun. It's fun to be in the great outdoors. And we use this phrase a lot. We'll say things like, oh, it's nice to be out in the great outdoors. I love to go camping in the great outdoors. I love to go hiking in the great outdoors. I love to go fishing in the great outdoors. All very common ways to talk about being outside in nature. And why do we say it? I don't know. Because it's great. I think that's my simple explanation. It's great to be outside. It's great to be in the great outdoors.WANT FREE ENGLISH LESSONS? GO TO YOUTUBE AND SEARCH, "BOB THE CANADIAN"If you enjoy these lessons please consider supporting me at: http://www.patreon.com/bobthecanadianThe other phrase I wanted to teach you today is to go to great lengths. Now, when you go to great lengths to do something, it means you work extra hard and extra long and you focus on it really, really precisely and strongly. When I plan my lessons, I go to great lengths to make sure the lessons are good. I come up with the idea. I usually make a whole list of notes. I highlight all the words that I want to teach in the lesson, and then I take my paper with me because I like to go to great lengths to make sure that the lesson is done well and that all of you benefit from it.So to review, the great outdoors is simply this. I'm in the great outdoors right now and it's really nice. And to go to great lengths means that you just work really hard. You put a lot of effort into something to make sure it is good. I go to great lengths to make lessons that I can do outside or in other places. I go to great lengths to make sure that happens.But hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video. I know I seem distracted. There's sounds around me, but you can't hear them probably. I'm not sure what they are. Like a clunking sound. I should do that lesson on sounds at some point, shouldn't I? This is from Ricardo. The good mood is directly related to the brightness. It is a kind of chain reaction. The blue sky implies the sun. The sun implies vitamin D in our body, and the vitamin D contributes to generating endorphins. And eventually these give us a feeling of happiness. Closed circle. And my response, I guess there is an explanation for it.And I think Ricardo is referring to how when you are outside, it is nice and beautiful and awesome and you just feel better. And a lot of that is because of things like the blue sky, the fresh air just being away from the sounds of traffic, although I can hear a large dump truck going by right now. So thanks, Ricardo, for that comment.It is nice to come outside and get some sunshine, to get some fresh air and to allow my body to make some vitamin D. It's one thing that here in Canada, people often take vitamin D supplements in the winter. We're close to the time of year where the days are the shortest. We're about a month and a half away from the shortest day of the year. Not my favorite day. It will start to get dark at like 4:30 in the afternoon. Something that I guess for me is normal, but I guess in some parts of the world that would seem really, really strange.But I guess on the flip side, in the summer it's light out till 10:00 at night in June. So, yeah, you get, what is it, six of one, half a dozen of the other. I think that might be the English phrase. You get a little bit of both. So ISupport the show

Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrases TO TAKE FOR GRANTED and TO BE TAKEN ABACKIn this English lesson I wanted to help you learn the English phrase “to take for granted”. Now you can take something for granted, or you can take someone for granted and it means you don't recognize or notice them. Here's a great example, and it's coming up in the comment later. The sky where I live is very, very blue, but sometimes I take that for granted. That means I don't always notice how blue the sky is behind me. My mom worked really hard when I was a kid to feed us and make sure we had clothes and all the things that moms do. But I kind of took her for granted in the past tense. When I was a kid, I didn't really notice all the work that my mom was doing. So when you take something or someone for granted, it means you just don't notice how cool that thing is or how cool that person is.WANT FREE ENGLISH LESSONS? GO TO YOUTUBE AND SEARCH, "BOB THE CANADIAN"If you enjoy these lessons please consider supporting me at: http://www.patreon.com/bobthecanadianThe other phrase I wanted to teach you today is the phrase “to be taken aback”. When you're taken aback, you're I'm kind of acting it out. You don't actually back up like this, but when you're taken aback, it means you're surprised or shocked about something. You might go to buy a new car and then you're taken aback at how much the car costs. Maybe I was taken aback the other day at the gas station because the gas was $1.38 the Thursday before the long weekend, and then it was $1.62 on the long weekend, the Thanksgiving long weekend. So I was a bit taken aback by the high gas price because when I had driven by the day before, it was much lower.So to review, when you take something or someone for granted, it means you don't notice how awesome that thing is or that person is. And to be taken aback means to be surprised or shocked at something that you see.But hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video. This comment is from Know that and Know that says I would say that you are always well framed in your videos, Bob, even without adjusting anything on your camera. But I think after so many years and experiences making videos, you have developed a natural feeling when you are not. And by the way, the background at the end of the video is breathtaking. The landscape, especially the sky with the clouds and the sun looks really amazing. Thank you for the new lesson. It's always a pleasure to watch. I wish you a wonderful day Bob.And my response? It's... It really is a time of year when the sky looks amazing. Well, not today, I take it for granted usually because I see it every day. Sometimes our international students at school will comment on how blue the sky is in Canada. I'm sure it's the same way in most rural locations around the world. But in the big cities, maybe not so much.So thanks Know that for that comment. Yes, I think the sky does look amazing behind me most days, and I think I do take it for granted quite often. And honestly, I didn't realize it until I started making these videos and until we started getting international students at our school.Some of our international students, they come from really, really big cities in other countries, and they come from some cities where there's lots of pollution and the sky doesn't look as nice as it looks out in the countryside. For those of you that live out in the countryside, you probably enjoy the same clear blue skies that I do.They're quite nice, but today, as I mentioned, it's a little different. It's just a little bit overcast. It's kind of a gray, dull day. It's spitting a little bit out here. Let me see if I can get to a puddle and I will show you. AndSupport the show

Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrases TO DILLY-DALLY AROUND and TO ASK AROUNDIn this English lesson, I wanted to help you learn the English phrase "to dilly-dally around." Now, this is an older phrase, and you won't hear it very much anymore, but my mom said it the other day. My mom said that when she goes down for lunch, she lives in an old age home, she doesn't dilly-dally around. She just goes down as quickly as possible, because if she dilly-dallies around, she doesn't get there in time, and she doesn't get the good food, or something like that. So hopefully you can understand that to dilly-dally around means to not move quickly. It means to just kind of be lazy for a bit or not in a hurry. Jen and I don't often dilly-dally around when it's market day. We usually load the van and Jen gets there as quickly as possible. When my workday ends, I don't dilly-dally around on market day. I usually get there as quickly as I can to help Jen sell flowers.WANT FREE ENGLISH LESSONS? GO TO YOUTUBE AND SEARCH, "BOB THE CANADIAN"If you enjoy these lessons please consider supporting me at: http://www.patreon.com/bobthecanadianThe other phrase I wanted to teach you today is the phrase "to ask around." When you ask around it means you need to know something, and you ask a whole bunch of different people about it. So you go and maybe you ask your neighbor, maybe you ask your other neighbor. Maybe you ask a relative. If I was at market again and if someone said, "Is someone here selling garlic?" I might say, "I don't know, "but if you ask around, maybe you'll find someone who is." So it just means to ask a whole bunch of different people.So to review, "to dilly-dally around" means to be lazy, to not be in a hurry, to be in no rush to do something or get somewhere, and "to ask around" simply means you have a question and you just ask a whole bunch of different people.But hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video. I'm not sure if I'm framed the way I normally am. Maybe that's a little bit more normal. It's taking some getting used to here. This comment is from Patrick. "I enjoy lessons like this, where phrases like 'back up to speed' pop out naturally. "My students enjoy them too." And my response, "That's why I like the last two minutes of each lesson, because even I don't know "what I'm going to say. "It's very natural."Yeah, I haven't at any point sworn in a video though, have I, so that's pretty good. But hey, I wanted to show you something interesting about this time of year. If you look down here, you'll see the grass is turning yellow, and these flowers over here definitely are saying that it is fall. They're definitely saying that it's not summer anymore.But if we go over here, it's kind of interesting, these dahlias, let's spin you around again, these dahlias are going strong we would say. In fact, they're doing so well that we aren't even harvesting all of them anymore to sell them. By the way, we usually don't harvest them when they're this big. We usually harvest them when they're like this, or like this, or like these over here. But definitely, the dahlias are going strong and doing well. There's another phrase that just popped out, and Jen and I are still harvesting and selling. It's kind of odd. It's almost the middle of October and we are still harvesting flowers and selling them, so that's nice, 'cause the year was a little weird earlier.We also have things like this that were ready a little bit too late. This is a variety of broom corn, and you can see it's a little bit green. We like it when it is more, let me see if I can find one, more like this. And we didn't have a lot of this ready for the last market last week. By the way, in this lesson, I mentioned thSupport the show

The podcast discusses the English phrases 'to be all over something' and 'all over the place', including their meanings and examples. They also talk about the weather in Canada and invite listeners to support their work as an online English teacher.

Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrases SPREAD THE WORD and SPREAD OUTIn this English lesson I wanted to help you learn the English phrase. “Spread the word!” Now, this is something we tell people when we want them to tell other people about something. Every year the farmer's market opens at the beginning of June and we tell people, Spread the word. The first day of the market is June 2nd or something like that. Spread the word. This means that we want people to tell other people that the market is starting. I recently started uploading English lessons to a website called Bilibili in China, and in the comments I keep telling people to spread the word so that everyone in China will know that they can watch my videos on my channel instead of all the other channels where my videos happened to be... it’s always ah... an interesting thing when I see that.WANT FREE ENGLISH LESSONS? GO TO YOUTUBE AND SEARCH, "BOB THE CANADIAN"If you enjoy these lessons please consider supporting me at: http://www.patreon.com/bobthecanadianThe other phrase I wanted to teach you today is the phrase “spread out”. When you tell someone, a group of people, to spread out. It means they're all standing really close together and you want them to stand further apart. I do remember my physed teacher, my physical education teacher, saying this a lot in physed class. At the beginning he would say, Spread out, and then we would all stand, I think, arm length apart for our warmup exercises. I don't really remember what those exercises were.Anyways, when you tell someone or a group of people to spread the word, you want them to tell everyone they know about something important. When you tell a bunch of people to spread out, it means you want them to stand far from the people around them. By the way, you can also use this verb for other things. You can spread things out on your table when you get home from grocery shopping to see what you've bought. And there's other uses as well.But hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video. This comment is from Claudia. And the comment says, You can tell I printed this at school again, It's on a gigantic piece of paper. Every morning we have the most beautiful class where we can better ourselves learning English and enjoying amazing landscapes. Thank you a lot. Teacher Bob, it makes my day and my response. You're very welcome, Claudia.So, yes, amazing landscapes sometimes, but sometimes I'm just standing in front of a place like this where I'll show you in a sec what they do here. I have to look both ways before I cross the railroad tracks, though there's usually never any trains coming. Railroad tracks in this town aren't used very often anymore, but you can see behind me that they have lots of wood and lumber here. But it's all put together into what are called trusses. When they build houses in Canada, when they build the roof, they put trusses on. So a truss is an engineered product that they stand every 24 inches apart or every 16 inches apart. And then it makes a really, really strong roof.So this is actually a place where they make trusses. My uncle actually used to work there. He was really good. He ran the whole truss making division. He was really good at getting people to be very efficient. I'm not sure if he was a good boss. He was certainly an effective boss, but he could get people to make trusses really fast and he could get them to do a really, really good job as well. I think usually what he did is to have each area that was making trusses compete with each other to see who could build the best trusses and who could build those trusses the fastest.Anyway, once again, I'm on the train tracks. I'll just show you again that I'm not in danger here. You Support the show

Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrases TO BETTER YOURSELF and BETTER OFFIn this English lesson I wanted to help you learn the English phrase “to better yourself”. When you better yourself, it means you do something that makes you a better person. Sorry, I'm defining the phrase by using a word in the phrase. That's not a good way to do it. Let's say you don't have a very good job. You might decide to go to school at night to better yourself so that you can get a better job. You might go to school so that you know more so that you have a better chance of getting a better job. I'm using the word better a lot aren’t I... to describe this. Let me think of another example. You're actually doing this right now. You've decided to better yourself by learning the English language. Learning a language is not an easy thing to do, but as you become more and more fluent, you have better job opportunities. You might be able to visit another country and speak the English language. You're definitely doing something that will better yourself.WANT FREE ENGLISH LESSONS? GO TO YOUTUBE AND SEARCH, "BOB THE CANADIAN"If you enjoy these lessons please consider supporting me at: http://www.patreon.com/bobthecanadianThe other phrase I wanted to teach you today is the phrase “better off”. So this is when you're just... I keep using the word better, but let's say you were dating someone and that person wasn't a very nice person. And eventually you broke up. A friend of yours might say, Hey, you're better off without that person. It simply means that your life is going to be happier. Your life is going to be a lot more fun if you aren't dating that person. I'm better off when I don't eat a lot of food on the weekend. I find that as the weekend goes by, I eat a lot of cake and I... I go to places where there's lots of food, but I'm better off not eating a lot of food. I'm better off just standing and saying, You know what? I'm just going to have a small stack to... snack today, not a big one, because I'm better off not eating a whole bunch of food.So to review “to better yourself” simply means to do something so that you are more educated or you know more or you're kinder. You do something to make yourself a better person. And when you're better off, it simply means that the situation you are in is more pleasing than the situation you were in. It's hard to define this without using the word better. I should probably do a whole English lesson on that word.But hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video. This comment is from fellow teacher Konstantin. Nice spacey classroom you have. Not all of ours are so vast and echoey. Pretty handy, by the way, as you don't have to repeat some words and phrases to your students. Echo does it for you. Cheers, teacher. And my response? Yeah, it is quite echoey. It's much better when the students are there. 30 students with their backpacks helps deaden the echo quite a bit.So thanks Konstantin, for that comment. We have a variety of classrooms I just happened to have, I think one of the nicer classrooms, the building I'm in or the part of the building I'm in doesn’t look great from the outside... kind of looks like a barn, actuallyfrom the outside. It doesn't look like a school, but the classrooms are actually the biggest classrooms in the school. So I'm kind of lucky because I get one of the bigger classrooms and yeah, and there's no one above me. It's a single floor. So I don't hear like students above me. In the other part of the school, there's two stories and then if you have a class above you, sometimes it's really, really loud.Well, hey, we're uh... we're not winding down the flower farm. We're not wrapping things up for the season yet, but we're getting closSupport the show

Learn about the English phrases 'to rack your brain' and 'to pick someone's brain'. Hear anecdotes and examples, along with updates on their Patreon page and a mention of panic buying toilet paper.

Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrases TO FLY OFF THE SHELVES and TO SELL LIKE HOTCAKESIn this English lesson I wanted to help you learn the English phrase “to fly off the shelves”. If you are in a store and they are selling something, maybe it's on sale and people are just grabbing it and buying it as fast as they can, we would say that that product is flying off the shelves. Sometimes at market we bring a certain kind of flower that people really like and it will just fly off the shelves. So the phrase to fly off the shelves simply means when something sells really, really quickly at a market or in a store or in a shop. We're really happy when our flowers fly off the shelves. It's a nice feeling when there's people lined up to buy them.WANT FREE ENGLISH LESSONS? GO TO YOUTUBE AND SEARCH, "BOB THE CANADIAN"If you enjoy these lessons please consider supporting me at: http://www.patreon.com/bobthecanadianThe other phrase I want to teach you today is the phrase “to sell like hotcakes”. Now, you should go and watch Brent's video. I'll put a link up here or here. I don't know where it goes. Brent talked about this the other day in one of his short lessons. He went to buy air conditioners and they were selling like hotcakes. In English when we say that something is selling like hotcakes, it means the same thing. It means something is selling really, really quickly. And by the way, you'll have to go listen to Brent's lesson to find out what a hotcake is. It might not be what you're expecting. I'm not going to tell you here. Anyways so there's a link somewhere, or there will be in the description as well.So to review when something flies off the shelves, it means it's selling really, really quickly. And when something sells like hotcakes, it means the same thing. It means that it is selling really, really quickly.But hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video. I have the comment right here. I'm at school... when I print the comments at school... or I'm at school today... they come out really big and in color. So here we go. From Write Winter: Is the meaning of “to take a load off” the same as “to let my hair down”? And my response? They are related, but slightly different. “to take a load off” makes me think of someone sitting on a couch and relaxing. “to let your hair down” makes me think of someone dancing and having fun.So yeah, they both mean to not work, to do something that's not work. But one has an element of relaxing to it. One means, you know, you're just going to take a nap or sit on the couch and watch some sports. And the other one means that you're going to do something fun, something that's not work.Anyways, I'm out here today going for a little walk. I thought I would come back to this bridge. This is kind of a fun place to make a video. And I usually come here at the beginning of the school year to make a video. I think I did it last year as well. Hello? You're not in the video. I'm videotaping myself. But it's a nice place, as you remember, because sometimes the water is running, sometimes it's dry. But today you can see that there is water and it has this beautiful sound. I like the sound of water. You can see as well, you can see some water running down there. It's just a beautiful place to come. So I thought I would show it to you again. I might make my Wednesdays with Bob video here as well. In just a few minutes.There are a lot of people out and about today, but for some reason, when I started recording, they all disappeared. I thought you were going to be able to watch people walk behind me. There's people out walking their dogs. There's people just out for a stroll. I saw a few people with strollers, strollers, a small little thing you push wiSupport the show