Learn the English Phrases "to work away" and "Ask away!"

In this English lesson,

I wanted to help you learn the English phrase, to work away.

When you work away at something,

it means you're working on something

that will take a long time to finish

and you're doing it little by little.

A great example of this would be

if you are doing a jigsaw puzzle.

If you have 1,000 or 2,000 or 5,000-piece jigsaw puzzle,

you need to work away at it.

You're not going to finish it

in 10 minutes or in 15 minutes.

When you open the box and you dump the pieces out,

you need to work away at it.

You need to take some time to put every piece in slowly.

At school, it's the week before Christmas

and parents keep sending big boxes

of chocolates to the staff, to the teachers to eat

and we work away at each box of chocolates.

We don't eat them all at once, but there's so many

that we have to work away at it until the box is empty.

I've eaten way too much chocolate lately, by the way.

I need to slow down.

But the second phrase

I wanted to teach you today is the phrase, ask away.

This is a phrase that we say sometimes as teachers

when someone asks if they can ask us some questions.

If a student says to me,

"Can I ask you a few questions about my project?"

I'll respond by saying, "Sure, ask away."

This is simply giving the person permission

to ask you lots of questions.

Maybe a friend is visiting you and they say,

"Hey, can I ask you a few questions

"about what it's like at work for you,

"what your job is like?"

You could say, "Sure, ask away.

"I'm happy to talk about work."

So to review, when you work away at something,

it means you get it done slowly but surely.

There's another English phrase for you.

A jigsaw puzzle is a great example.

You just need to work away at it, and eventually it's done.

And the second phrase, ask away, is something you say

when you're giving someone permission

to ask you a lot of questions.

A politician might be walking along

and a journalist or reporter might say,

"Can you stop and answer a few questions for me?"

And they might say, "Sure, ask away."

Or they might run

because they don't wanna answer any questions.

That could happen too.

But hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video.

This is from U Bean.

Hi, Bob.

I heard that Canadians

don't like to use umbrellas when it rains.

Is that true?

And my response, it's an interesting thing

and there might be some truth to it.

I can only speak from my own experience, though.

I don't use one.

I own one, but I rarely use it.

So I know that umbrellas are these amazing things.

They're really cool.

When it rains, you open your umbrella and it keeps you dry.

I own two umbrellas, actually, not just one.

And we sometimes use them when we're at market.

We sometimes use them when we go somewhere

where we will be forced to be outside

in the rain for a while.

But we don't use umbrellas quite,

we don't use umbrellas regularly

to walk from our vehicle into a building.

When I say we, I mean Jen and I.

I think there are Canadians that do use umbrellas.

But yeah, I don't take one with me every day.

If I drive to school in the rain, when I get to work,

I just run from my van to the front door.

I don't use my umbrella.

So, interesting.

I might have to go to the city sometime

and see how many Canadians actually use their umbrellas.

We'll see.

Hey, it's not snowy here.

It's a little disappointing.

Christmas is only a few days away,

and most people who live in Canada

really like it when we get lots of snow.

But it sounds like we might get some snow this weekend.

It sounds like Friday and Saturday might be quite snowy.

So there's still hope.

There's still hope that we might have snow on the ground

on Christmas day, which always just makes the day nicer.

I just like it.

It's so fun sitting in the house,

just enjoying other people's company

with a whole bunch of snow outside.

It's nice to be warm inside when it's cold outside.

Anyways, see you in a couple days

with another short English lesson.

Bye.