This is the Rachel’s English 30-Day Challenge! Learn 30 phrasal verbs in 30 days! Jumpstart your vocabulary in 2017. Today is Day 9 and we’re studying “hear” phrasal verbs.

Have you heard about the 30 day challenge? It’s what you’re doing right now. If you hear about something, you are told some news, you are learning information. Did you hear about Joan and Steven? They broke up. Break up – that’s another phrasal verb, when you’re in a relationship and it ends! Bonus phrasal verb.

What about to hear from? This would be a person. I heard from Shannon that Joan and Steven broke up. Or, if you’re waiting for someone, or for something from someone, you might say, did you hear from Jon?

If you’re waiting to get a report from him. Did you hear from Jon? Or if you’re waiting to get anything from him.

It can also mean to get someone’s opinion. A business might say, we’d love to hear from you. That means they want your feedback about your experience.

Do you know the book Gone with the Wind? No, but I’ve heard of it. If you’ve heard of something, you’re familiar with it in that you know it exists, but you don’t have experience. You’ve heard of the book, but you haven’t read it. You’ve heard of the movie, but you haven’t seen it. You’ve heard of an event in history, but you haven’t studied it. Do you know about the painter Dali? No, I’ve never heard of him. That means you didn’t even know that he existed. If something is unheard of, it’s a new idea, it’s never been done before. The woman who won the race set a world record. That kind of time is unheard of!

What about the phrase ‘hear of’ with ‘not’? I will not hear of it. That’s a polite way of saying, no, I won’t allow that. Someone might say, “I’ll just walk to your house from the train station.” You can say, “No. I won’t hear of it. I’ll pick you up in my car.”

Have you ever heard the phrase to hear someone out? Just hear me out? When would you say this? You would say this when you know someone doesn’t believe you or want to hear what you’re saying, and you just want them to listen to you. For example, if you hurt someone’s feelings and they didn’t want to talk to you, but you wanted to apologize. You could say, just hear me out.

Hear. This word is spelled phonetically with the IH vowel, ih, but I find it’s more like the EE vowel, hear. He-ee-ar. Now you’ll see a schwa in the phonetics but you don’t need to worry about it. The schwa before the R disappears, it gets absorbed by the R. So we have he-r, hear, hear. So for the vowel, the tongue tip is down, and the front part arches towards the roof of the mouth. Hear. He-ar. For the R, lift the tip of the tongue and pull it back a little: hear. Also, notice the lips flare a little bit for the R sound. Hear, hear.

In the past tense it’s ‘heard’. Here we have the R vowel-consonant. They make just one sound: ur. Hh-ur-d. You don’t need to drop your jaw very much for this sound, do you? Ur, heard, heard.

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Click the links in the description. This 30-day challenge is leading up to a phrasal verbs course that will be available on my online school on February 1. Rachel’s English Academy is a collection of courses focusing on English conversation, pronunciation, and listening comprehension. You will understand Americans better and speak better English with these courses. Visit rachelsenglishacademy.com to sign up and get started today.