6 English Phrases about Work and An Invitation to My Daily English Lessons!

Hi!

Bob the Canadian here.

A few of you have asked for me to do more videos.

Some of you would like it if I did one video every day, and that would be a lot of work

and I thought to myself, you know what, here’s a little surprise, I already have another

Youtube channel where I do one video a day.

Let’s have a look at one of those clips and let’s learn a few phrases that we use

in English to talk about work, because having another channel and doing a video every day

is actually quite a bit of work.

So when you live on a farm you have to work your butt off.

This is a slang saying that means to work really, really hard, and you'll want to be

careful when you use it because the word "butt" refers to, you know the part of your body

at the top of your legs and below your back and if you work really, really hard you are

described as working your butt off.

If you work on a farm, if you live on a farm you tend to work your butt off because a lot

of the work that we do is difficult work.

It's work that you have to do with your hands.

There isn't always machines to do the work that we do on the farm.

In the next couple of days we'll be doing a lot of hay on the farm and we'll be working

our butts off.

So, there was one clip from my other channel.

I do these videos every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.

I don’t do them on the weekends because I like to have a bit of a break, but I try

to do one every day and I’ve done one every day since December of 2018.

So there’s quite a few of them for you to watch.

Let’s look at another one.

So when you burn the candle at both ends it means you're working really, really hard and

you're working really, really fast.

I've been burning the candle at both ends lately so I'm pretty tired and this is the

last thing I need to do today.

But I had a day full of all kinds of different jobs and I worked really hard, and I worked

really fast.

You know what a candle is right?

It's a tall wax thing with a wick in the middle and you light the top and it has a small flame.

But if you lay a candle sideways you can light both ends and the candle is twice as bright,

but it burns out twice as quickly.

People are the same if you burn the candle at both ends at your job you're probably going

to get tired a lot more quickly and you're probably going to eventually burn out a little

bit.

So, burning the candle at both ends means to work really, really hard.

So the cool thing about these videos is that they are one minute long, they are really

easy to watch each day, and if you scroll down in the description, not just on my other

channel, but in this video as well you will see a complete transcript.

So you can read along, you can read along to the one minute video as you are watching

it and listening to it.

So it’s really great practice.

Let’s look at another one.

So it's been a bit of a long day and I'm kind of running on empty.

When you're running on empty it means that you're still doing stuff and you're still

working but you don't have a lot of energy to do it.

So you say that you're running on empty.

The phrase comes from when a vehicle is running on empty.

That would mean that a vehicle like this van behind me has very little gas in it and so

we would say that the vehicle is running on empty.

So today was a fairly long day.

I'm quite tired.

I almost forgot to make a video but I'm still plugging away.

I'm still working away getting things done even though I'm running on empty just a little

bit.

I hope that you guys aren't running on empty when it comes to learning English.

I hope you have lots of energy to study every day.

So, because these videos are on a different channel, by the way, there’s a link in the

description if you wanna go to that channel, you will need to subscribe over there as well.

So you’ll need to follow the link in the description and you’ll need to click the

red subscribe button on my other channel as well - if you’re interested in learning

a little bit of English every day.

Let’s watch another one.

So in English when we say "get a move on" it means get it done faster or hurry up.

Today in my classroom I was teaching and there was only 10 minutes left in class, and my

students weren't done their work so I said to them, "You guys better get a move on, because

there's only 10 minutes left!"

When I came outside today to shoot this video I noticed that it is going to start raining

soon, so I thought, "I better get a move on and get this video done quickly before it

starts to rain."

So when we say, "get a move on", it means exactly the same thing as "hurry up".

Some of you maybe aren't learning English very quickly and maybe you need to get a move

on and learn a little more English every day so that you are fluent in no time!

So, get a move on!

So one of the cool things about having the transcript in the description is you can copy

and paste the transcript into Google translate and you can read it in your own language.

Remember it’s only a one minute video so it’s not a lot of work.

Then you can watch the video in English and you’ll have a better sense of what’s going

on.

So use the transcript below.

Copy and paste it into Google translate if you need to, then watch the one minute clip

again and you’ll learn a lot of English.

You can even read it out loud.

This phrase is for some of you younger people out there.

In English when we say, "pull an all nighter", it means that you stay up all night to get

something done.

This phrase is usually used by students, university students and college students.

Sometimes when you have a paper or an essay or a test the next day, sometimes you will

pull an all nighter, which means that you will stay up either studying or working on

the thing that is due the next day.

When I was a student in university I would often, when I had a paper due, I would pull

an all nighter in order to get it done.

So it means that I would literally stay up all night.

I would drink lots of coffee so that I would have lots of caffeine in me so that when I

pulled an all nighter I was able to stay awake the whole time.

So again, I feel like I’m talking about my other channel a lot, but if you’re interested

there’s a link in the description.

If you’re wondering why I’m doing this kind of video today it’s because I have

a lot of hay out in the field to bale tomorrow and I won’t have time to make a full blown,

full production video.

So I thought this was a nice way just to make a video, for you, and to tell you a little

about my other channel.

Remember, link’s in the description.

So English is kind of a weird language.

If you do something all day it means that you did it from morning until night, and if

you did something all day long, it means that you did it from morning until night.

I, I really don't know why we sometimes put the word "long" at the end of that phrase.

So for instance, this past Saturday I worked all day long.

I got up early in the morning and I worked on the farm here, you can see behind me, we

have some flowers, maybe you can't quite see them.

They're way back there.

But I got up in the morning and I worked 'till night.

I worked all day, or if you wanted to add an extra word you could say that I worked

all day long.

Well, hey, thanks for watching this little advertisement for my other channel.

Hopefully you had some time to head over there and subscribe.

Don’t forget to subscribe to this channel as well if you are new here.

I’ve said it a million times, the link’s in the description if you want to see my other

channel, and I hope this video helped you also learn a little bit about English words

and phrases that we use for work.

Anyways, Bob the Canadian here, I hope you’re having a good day and I’ll see you in the

next video.