Learn the English Phrases "to tag along" and "to play phone tag"

In this English lesson, I wanted to help

you learn the English phrase to tag along.

When you tag along with someone,

it means you go with them.

If Jen said that her and her brother were going to

see a movie, I might say, hey, can I tag along?

I'd like to see that movie as well.

So it does have a positive sound to it.

When you tag along, it can be a positive

thing, but we sometimes use it to talk about

a little more of a negative situation

when we talk about kids. Sometimes your

little brother or sister wants to tag

along every time you go somewhere.

And that's a situation where you might not like that.

If you think back to when you were 16 and if

you said to your mom and dad, when you were 16,

I'm going to go see a movie with my friends, they

might say, hey, can your little brother tag along?

Can you take him with.

And you might think, no, I don't

want my little brother to tag along.

I just want to go out with my friends.

Maybe that was your situation.

Maybe you let your younger siblings tag along.

I don't know.

The other phrase I wanted to teach

you today is to play phone tag.

So I think I might have taught this.

Sorry, did I just say lesson?

The other phrase I want to teach

you today is to play phone tag.

I probably said it correctly. Who knows?

It means to call someone and leave a message, and then

they listen to the message, and then they call you and

leave a message because you didn't answer the phone.

And then you listen to their message and

then you call them and leave a message.

So when you play phone tag with someone, when

you have a little bit of phone tag going

on, it means that you're calling, leaving messages, calling

the other person, leaving message, and it just goes

back and forth because you never quite connect.

So to review, to tag along means to go with someone.

A couple of weeks ago, I made a video at

the mall and you were able to tag along virtually.

You were able to come with me.

And to play phone tag means to

phone someone and then leave a message.

And then they phone you and leave a message.

And then you phone them and leave a message.

I think you get the point about what phone tag is.

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

This comment is from ksenom.

I... I just wave to people.

I don't know who that was, but I thought

it would be nice to wave. The phrase

a regular haunt was new to me.

It sounds like a place where ghosts go frequently.

These words I had to look up in the dictionary,

toboggan is a sled, finicky, demanding divot, a torn up

piece of turf, like from golf and then some

life events in my past have also come

back to haunt me in the present.

But that's another story.

And my response, this is a great example of

making your own homework after watching a lesson.

Great work. So thank you.

ksenom, sorry I didn't read the whole comment.

I don't want to take up the whole video.

But it was a great comment, and that is

a great example of making your own homework.

What I mean by that is, when you're done

watching a lesson, it's a good idea to do

other things to help you practice what you learned.

So you made a comment, you made some

notes, you looked up some other words.

That's all awesome, and I hope a lot of you do that.

Anyways, thanks for that comment. Where am I?

I'm in the industrial park.

So in our towns, we have different areas.

We have residential areas where there are houses.

We have commercial areas where you find stores, and

then we have what we would call industrial parks.

So this is an industrial park.

This place has a lot of metal

and steel and old steel drums.

The place up here, I think, makes trailers.

I don't know what this place does. This is new.

This is our water tower.

So all the water for this town comes from this tower.

And even our water that we drink at home is

from that tower because we come and we fill up

in town, we don't drink the water from our cistern.

So this is an industrial area or an industrial park.

This is where you'll find, like, little factories and

storage areas and people that do, I don't know,

like welding and all that kind of...

I don't actually know.

I've never been to the industrial area before.

I just know if there are big trucks.

This is probably where the big trucks come from.

So, anyways, thanks for watching this little

English lesson and a not so great

description of an industrial park.

I hope you're having a good day.

I'll see you next week with another short lesson. Bye.