Learn the English Phrases "to better yourself" and "better off"

4,847 views ・ 2023-09-20

Bob's Short English Lessons


Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.

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In this English
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lesson I wanted to help you learn the English phrase “to better yourself”.
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When you better yourself, it means you do something that makes you a better person.
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Sorry, I'm defining the phrase by using a word in the phrase.
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That's not a good way to do it.
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Let's say you don't have a very good job.
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You might decide to go to school at night
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to better yourself so that you can get a better job.
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You might go to school so that you know more
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so that you have a better chance of getting a better job.
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I'm using the word better a lot aren’t I... to describe this.
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Let me think of another example.
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You're actually doing this right now.
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You've decided to better yourself by learning the English language.
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Learning a language is not an easy thing to do,
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but as you become more and more fluent, you have better job opportunities.
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You might be able to visit another country and speak the English language.
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You're definitely doing something that will better yourself.
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The other phrase I wanted to teach you today is the phrase “better off”.
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So this is when you're just...
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I keep using the word better, but let's say you were dating someone
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and that person wasn't a very nice person.
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And eventually you broke up.
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A friend of yours might say, Hey, you're better off without that person.
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It simply means that your life is going to be happier.
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Your life is going to be a lot more fun if you aren't dating that person.
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I'm better off when I don't eat a lot of food on the weekend.
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I find that as the weekend goes by, I eat a lot of cake and I...
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I go to places where there's lots of food,
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but I'm better off not eating a lot of food.
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I'm better off just standing and saying, You know what?
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I'm just going to have a small stack to...
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snack today,
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not a big one, because I'm better off not eating a whole bunch of food.
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So to review “to better yourself” simply means to do something
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so that you are more educated or you know more or you're kinder.
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You do something to make yourself a better person.
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And when you're better off, it simply means that the situation you are in
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is more pleasing than the situation you were in.
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It's hard to define this without using the word better.
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I should probably do a whole English lesson on that word.
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But hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video.
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This comment is from fellow teacher Konstantin.
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Nice spacey classroom you have.
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Not all of ours are so vast and echoey.
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Pretty handy, by the way,
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as you don't have to repeat some words and phrases to your students.
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Echo does it for you.
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Cheers, teacher.
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And my response?
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Yeah, it is quite echoey.
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It's much better when the students are there.
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30 students with their backpacks helps deaden the echo quite a bit.
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So thanks Konstantin, for that comment.
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We have a variety of classrooms I just happened to have,
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I think one of the nicer classrooms, the building I'm in
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or the part of the building I'm in doesn’t look great from the outside...
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kind of looks like a barn, actually from the outside.
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It doesn't look like a school,
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but the classrooms are actually the biggest classrooms in the school.
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So I'm kind of lucky because I get one of the bigger
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classrooms and yeah, and there's no one above me.
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It's a single floor.
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So I don't hear like students above me.
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In the other part of the school, there's two stories
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and then if you have a class above you, sometimes it's really, really loud.
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Well, hey, we're uh...
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we're not winding down the flower farm.
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We're not wrapping things up for the season yet, but we're getting close.
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All of these Lizzies (lisianthus) need to be harvested over the next two weeks.
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We don't have any frost in the forecast, so that's good.
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Frost is when it goes below zero just a little bit overnight.
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So we're crossing our fingers.
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We have three more weeks of market.
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So hopefully the weather stays nice.
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Hopefully we get everything harvested.
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I don't know if you can see I'll spin you around, but close to me
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we have the Lizzies (lisianthus) and in the distance we have the dahlias.
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I don't really have time to walk over there in this lesson,
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but yes, it will be a bit of work, but I think we'll get it all done.
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Thanks for watching.
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See you in a couple of days with another short English lesson. Bye.
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