Take Back & Taken Aback

Hi students, it's Shana from Espresso English dot net and today's lesson is on two phrasal verbs take back and Taken aback these look quite similar, but they have very different meanings, and I'll explain them with examples We use a lot of phrasal verbs when speaking and there are thousands of them in the English language a Lot of students ask me about the best way to learn them, and I think it's helpful to learn phrasal verbs in context inside sentences in Situations where we'd really use them. That's the strategy we use inside my phrasal verbs in conversation course You can click on the link in the video description to learn more about my phrasal verbs course and sign up for it Let's look at take back first. We use it in two situations One is when you want to cancel something you previously said and admit that it was wrong for example Imagine I'm talking to my husband and complaining about my friend because she didn't reply to my email And then I find her message, so she had responded But I just didn't see it then I might say I take back everything I said about her I am admitting that my previous words were wrong I am taking them back or if I'm arguing with my father And I say some mean and nasty comments to him then later when I'm calmer I might regret having said those things and say I wish I could take back what I said I wish I could go back in time and cancel those comments or avoid saying them The other situation is when something takes you back by reminding you of a memory in the past often a really old Memory or a pleasant memory if I hear a certain song that was meaningful to me as a teenager I could say oh wow that song takes me back to high school because it's making me remember that time If someone's cooking a holiday recipe that my grandmother used to make I could say this smell Takes me back to my childhood Christmases because it's making me remember them Okay, so if you take back some words you admit that your previous words were wrong And if a sound smell sight or something else takes you back to a past moment in time It reminds you of it. It brings up the memory very clearly and strongly Now if you are taken aback that means you are surprised or shocked I already played the piano, so I thought it would be easy to learn guitar But I was taken aback by how difficult it was I was surprised We are often taken aback when we hear some surprising news for example He was taken aback to learn that his parents were getting a divorce after 30 years of marriage Or we were all taken aback by the news that the company would be moving its offices to another country If you want to modify the level of surprise you can say I was a bit taken aback for mild surprise And I was really taken aback for strong surprise or shock Finally with taken aback. We usually use it with a form of the verb to be I was taken aback We were taken aback So we say I was taken aback by the news and not the news took me aback Now that you know how and when to use take back and taken aback try to make your own sentences using these phrasal verbs Inside the phrasal verbs in conversation course each lesson includes short answer questions that help you put the phrasal verbs from the lesson into Practice and then you can send in your answers to get feedback and correction on them from an espresso English teacher Again click on the link in the video description to check out that course Because it's an easy and effective way to learn the phrasal verbs that are so common in English That's all for today. Bye