Hi everybody, welcome back to Ask Alicia, the weekly series where you ask me questions and I answer them.

Maybe. Let's get to your first question this week. First question this week comes from Jose. Hi Jose asked, hi Alicia, in an expression like, let's check out this restaurant. Can I omit out? Okay, great question. So to be clear here, we're going to look

at the differences between let's check out this restaurant and let's check this restaurant. So first

of all, these two sentences are both grammatical, but they have different meanings. So let's break

this down. I want to start by taking a look at the use of check out. What do we use this phrasal verb for?

So when we check out a location, as in this example sentence, it means we want to go and see something. We want to look and see something. We want to understand more about

that thing. So we might use it when we're sightseeing, for example, like, oh, let's check out that

city or let's check out that new cafe that opened. It means that there's something that we want to

learn, usually. There's something unknown there, and we want to go to that place and learn more about it, right? So we want to learn usually. There's something unknown there and we want to go to that place

and learn more about it, right? So we want to see with our eyes, we want to maybe feel things there,

we want to experience something there and learn information about it. This is when we use to check out a location.

However, when we check something, we are looking at it, or maybe reading it,

listening to it, whatever that might be, in order to determine if it is correct or accurate or

true. So, for example, someone might say, hey, can you check my essay for me? I'm not sure if this is really good.

There might be errors.

So if someone asks you to check a document,

it means please look at it and make sure it is accurate or true.

We wouldn't say, please check out this document.

It might mean take a look at this, like to get more information. But when we ask

someone to check something, it means we want them to confirm or help us to decide if it is

good or true or appropriate. So in this sense, if you said like, hey, let's check that

restaurant. It would sound like you're going to the restaurant to see

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