Lesson Transcript

Hi, everybody! Welcome back to Ask Alisha, 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 Mohammed.
Hi, Mohammed!
Mohammed says…
Hi, Alisha! Do you have any tips for remembering vocabulary words that you don't use very often? I'm learning new words through reading and watching TV and movies, but I can't remember the words very well. What should I do?
Nice question, yeah! So those words that you pick up like one time from a book or from a movie or something like that and you think, oh, that’s an interesting word, I should try to remember that word! Maybe I’ll need it for the future! How do you remember those because it’s like I only need it at this one time so far? It’s really tough, for sure.
Here are a couple of ideas. Hopefully, one of them will help you to kind of keep these words in your mind.
First, if you use flashcards, put that word in your flashcard deck. So, if you find a new word in your book, the book that you’re reading or if you find a new word on a podcast or a movie, whatever, if you use flashcards, if you have like online flashcards, if you use physical flashcards, take five seconds, you put that in your flashcard deck, so that you have that in your review pile or so that you know that you’re going to review that word in the future. That can be one really good way to immediately put it into your study queue or your study lineup. So, if you use flashcards, physical or digital, you can do that.
Second, you can keep a list of vocabulary words in, like a notebook or maybe on your phone, you know, list in your phone and you can pull that up every once in a while to look at that if you like. So maybe that can work for some people.
Third is, of course, to just review the thing that you found the word in. So, if you found the word in a book, you can review that book again and you can look at that topic again and kind of try to remember the word through context, that’s another way, or with TV and movies. Make sure you come back to that and review it again in context, that way. That’s another thing that you can do.
A fourth thing that you can do is try creating things with that new vocabulary word. So when you pick up a new vocabulary word, try to make a sentence with it. So maybe you have a journal or something like that and you try to make a sentence that uses that new word, so you try to apply it right away. So, this can kind of help you to get it in your head and thinking about how you can use that word, instead of just seeing that word in another context. I tend to like to use this strategy. I try to use the new vocabulary words that I find, like in books, usually, and I try to make sentences with those. I try to look at that and see how I can use it in my own words and then I tend to review those sentences. Sometimes, I’m not super great about it, but I keep a notebook, so I can at least go back in the pages and see the words that I’ve learned.
So, those are four tips that I hope can help you to remember those vocabulary words that you maybe just hear one time or two times that are kind of hard to remember. So, I hope that one of those strategies will work for you. Thanks very much for the question.
Okay, let’s move on to our next question.
Next question comes from Raoul.
Hi, Raoul!
Raoul says…
Hi, Alisha, I wanna ask if English has a formal way of speaking. Some languages have a polite style of grammar to use when speaking to older people or at work. Does English have this? For example, in business English? Thanks.
Nice question! So, when we talk about, like a formal way of speaking, we don’t have, like a specific kind of grammar that we use, no. English doesn’t follow, like, a specific grammar rule to make things more formal. Instead, what we do with English is we use vocabulary words and we have set phrases that sound more formal or more polite. So, it’s not that we follow a certain grammar rule or like a manner of speaking in that sense. Rather, we make choices with our vocabulary words that sound more formal or that sound more business like.
So, for example, when we apologize, at a casual situation, we would say:
“I’m sorry,” right?
Or, “I’m very, sorry,” right, when we apologize to someone we’re close to.
But in a business situation, when you need to say I’m sorry, you probably won’t say “I’m sorry” because it sounds too casual. Instead, you will probably say…
“I apologize.”
Or “I deeply apologize.”
Or “We sincerely apologize for the mistake.”
So, these are not grammar choices, but rather, these are vocabulary choices and set phrases that we use to elevate our sentences, which means to make the level higher, yeah?
So, “I’m sorry” is great! It totally communicates everything perfectly, and so does “I apologize,” right? But one sounds more formal than the other. So, in this way, English makes distinctions or we can find the different levels of English. So vocabulary is what really matters here.
Okay. So, let’s look at another example of this. When you want to make a request from someone, like you want to have a meeting with them, for example, or meet up with them, in a casual situation, you might say to a friend or a family member:
“Hey, are you free tomorrow?”
So, it’s a very quick, easy sentence, yeah. But in a business situation or work situation or other formal situation, if you say, “Hey, are you free tomorrow?” No good. It sounds way too casual and it sounds like you don’t care that much, right? It’s too close.
In a business situation, you might say something like:
“Would you be free tomorrow at about 3 pm?”
Or if it’s a more open-ended situation, you might say:
“Could I have a moment of your time?”
Like if you wanna ask someone for time right at that moment.
So, using these kinds of expressions is what creates formality. It’s what creates that level of politeness.
So, “Would it possible to…” is a really common kind of formal pattern that we use.
“Would it be possible for you to look at this?”
“Would it be possible for you to attend?”
“Would it be possible for you to (blah, blah, blah)?”
So, the verb comes at the end of that.
“Would it be possible for you to [verb]?”
In a casual setting, we would just say:
“Can you…(verb)?”
“Can you do this?”
“Can you look at this?”
But, “Would it be possible to…”
So, these kinds of set phrases and vocabulary choices really make your speech sound more formal or more polite and this is also why it’s very important to keep in mind the level of formality of vocabulary words when you’re using them. Because if you learned a kind of more formal or business-like vocabulary word and you use it in a casual situation because you wanna sound polite, it’s gonna sound really unnatural.
Like if you say to your friend:
“Would it be possible for you to meet me for coffee at 3 pm tomorrow?”
It’s gonna sound funny because it sounds way too formal. You can use it if you wanna sound like you’re silly, if you wanna make a joke or something like that, but it’s gonna sound weird, so that’s why it’s really important to know the differences in formality levels, so that you can make sure you express yourself naturally and appropriately, yeah? So, I hope that this answers your question. Thanks very much for a super interesting one.
Okay, great! Let’s move on to your next question.
Next question comes from Handsome.
Hi, Handsome!
Handsome says…
When do you use two "had" or even three "had" in a row?
Great question, yeah! I think this is in reference to past perfect tense.
So, “had” is used in a number of different ways, but there are some grammar patterns where we see “had had” in a row like this and this confuses people.
So, why does this happen?
This happens because the past perfect tense requires that we use “had” plus the past participle form of a verb. So, the first “had” is that helping verb, “had” in the past perfect grammar structure, and then the second “had” is the past participle form of the verb “have.”
So, “I had had way too much to eat for dinner.”
Or, “He had had too much to drink that night.”
So, these sentences are 100% correct. You might look at it and think is that really okay to use “had had” two times in a row?
Regarding the second part of your question, about using three (had)s or four (had)s or more, something like that, it’s very rare to see a sentence that has three hads in a row, but here is one example and a breakdown of what’s happening here.
“All the food that she had had had a negative effect on her stomach.”
So, what is happening here?
First, let’s take a quick step back and remember that we use past perfect tense and simple past tense to show a sequence of actions. We use past perfect tense to show that a past action happened before another past action. The other past action, the one that happened closer to the present is used in simple past tense. We use simple past tense to express that.
So, in this example sentence:
“All the food that she had had had a negative effect on her stomach.”
This means, all the food that she had had, so this is the past perfect structure. The first “had” is the helping verb “had.” The second “had” is the verb “have” in the past participle form. All the food that she had had, that’s our past- past, past, past situation or a past condition, yeah. This thing happened first. Then the second part, “had a negative effect on her stomach.” This “had” is the simple past tense “had.” We know this because this is the action that happened after the first action. So, all the food that she had had had a negative effect on her stomach. This sentence is grammatically correct, but again, it’s quite rare, so you probably won’t see this very often, but I hope that this helps you understand the differences between “had had” and “had had had.” Thanks very much for an interesting question.
All right, that is everything that I have for this week. Thank you, as always, for sending your great questions. Thanks very much for watching this episode of Ask Alisha and I will see you again next time. Bye!

Comments

Hide