| Hi, everybody. My name is Alisha. In this video, I'm going to talk about the differences between "affect," with an A, and "effect," with an E. Let's get started. |
| Okay. Let's begin by talking with "affect," with an A. In speech, "affect" with in A, and "effect" with an E, sound the same. At the beginning of this lesson, I emphasized the differences between the two just to make it clear which one I was talking about. But, actually, in everyday speech, "affect" and "effect" are pronounced the same way. |
| So, "affect" with an A -- in your spelling, you need to consider this, can be used in two ways. First is the most common way of using this, it's as a verb. The verb "affect" means to cause a change in someone or something. So, this causes some kind of transformation, or some change happens. And, we describe that in verb form with "affect" with an A. Let's take a look at a few example sentences that use this. |
| First, "Rainy weather negatively affects my mood." Rainy weather negatively affects my mood. So, this sentence means that rainy weather negatively causes a change in my mood. So, we use "affect" with an A here. "Effect" with an E would be incorrect. Another example, "Our boss's anger affected our team's morale." Our boss's anger affected our team's morale. So, in this sentence, "affect" with an A is used here to show that our boss's anger caused this change in our team's morale. So, "morale" means like the level of motivation, on the level of happiness of a group. That's morale. So, we use "affect" with an A here. Again, "effect" with an E would be incorrect. Finally, "His new medication affects his muscles." So, again, that means this new medication this person is taking has some kind of change, or created some kind of change, in his muscles. His new medication affects his muscles. So, this is what we use "affect" with an A to do. |
| Before we go on to the second point here, I want to compare this to the first use of "effect" with an E that I'm going to talk about in this lesson. So, let's take a look. "Effect" with an E is used primarily as a noun. Again, as with "affect" with an A, there are a couple different uses of "effect" with an E. But, most commonly, we use "effect" with an E as a noun. And, this noun means the result of a change in someone or something. So, it's kind of like the outcome. It's the change itself. What happened? We use "effect" with an E to express that. So, we can actually use the same topics, the same kind of sentence, that we used here but we just need to change the sentence structure a little bit. So, I'll show you what I mean in these example sentences. |
| First, "Rainy weather has a negative effect on my mood." Rainy weather has a negative effect on my mood. So, in this sentence, we see exactly the same idea as in this sentence, yeah. But, the difference here is that we need to create a sentence structure that uses "effect" as a noun. So, for that reason, we have, "Rainy weather has a negative effect on my mood." In this sentence, when we used "affect" with an A, we said, "Rainy weather negatively affects." Here, we have to change the structure of the sentence. "Rainy weather has an effect," to have an effect. You can kind of think of this as a set pattern, "to have an effect." Both of these sentences are 100% correct. It's up to you to choose which one you want to use. |
| Let's look at another example sentence and compare it to the first one. "Our boss's anger had an effect on our team's morale." Our boss's anger had an effect on our team's morale. So, again, we have the same topic. The same thing that's causing some kind of change here, right? That part does not change. But, we use this same "have" structure, "to have an effect," on something else. So, "A has an effect on B," is the pattern that you can use, if that's helpful for you. In this case, it's a past tense structure. So, "had an effect," with an E, "on our team's morale." So, the same idea is being communicated as in the first set of examples. |
| Finally, let's look at the last one. "His new medication has an effect on his muscles." His new medication has an effect on his muscles. So, again, "effect" with an E is used as a noun. It refers to the outcome or the result of a change. "Affect" with an A, as a verb, refers to causing something to change or causing someone to change. So, again, we can use these two words to express the same ideas in sentences. There's no difference in terms of more correct, or more polite, or less polite. It's up to you to determine which one you prefer, and you can mix and match. |
| So, with that said, let's go now to point two for both of these words because this is where things get quite different. So, let's take a look at "affect" with an A, and talk about the second use. So, the second use of "affect" with an A is as a noun. But, this is very uncommon. This use of "affect" with an A is not really used in everyday conversation. This use is used more with doctors, medical professionals, psychologists, people who deal with human behavior. This use of "affect" means the expression of feelings and emotions with the face and body. The expression of feelings and emotions with your face and with your body. So, that means how you express yourself, right? So, the noun for this is "affect," affect. So, notice the pronunciation change. We don't say "affect" here. The emphasis changes with this noun form, we say "affect," affect. So, when you're writing, it looks the same. But, in spoken English, this word as a noun referring to this, the expression of emotions, is pronounced "affect." |
| So, let's look at this in a few example sentences, in a couple. "That woman has an anxious affect." That woman has an anxious effect. So, that means that woman's emotional display, her body language, her facial expressions, these things together, are anxious. So, "That woman has an anxious affect." That's what this sentence communicates. But, again, we don't use sentences like this very much in everyday conversation. This is a sentence that could possibly be used by a professional, someone who studies human behavior, emotions, feelings, and so on. This is not something I would generally say. I, if I wanted to express this same kind of idea in everyday conversation, would probably say something like, "That woman looks anxious," "That woman looks anxious." But, a professional person maybe taking notes about someone might say, "That woman has an anxious affect." |
| Okay. One more example of this. "This patient has a normal affect." "This patient has a normal affect." So, "normal affect" means there are normal displays of emotion and feeling in this person. So, when they're supposed to feel angry, or sad, or happy, and so on, all of those emotional displays are normal. So, we might express that with a sentence like this. "This patient has a normal affect." So, again, this is probably something a professional, a medical professional, psychological professional, might use to talk about their work and their patients that they're seeing. So, again, we don't use this in everyday conversation very much. But, you may find it somewhere in a news report or in other documentation. This part is kind of just for your information. This part here is the key takeaway for "affect," and note the pronunciation change, too. |
| Okay. Finally, let's finish this lesson by looking at point two for "effect" with an E. So, "effect" with an E can be used as a verb. And, this use is fairly common. It's not as common as the noun use of "effect," but you may see this from time to time, so it's good to know about this. So, "effect" with an E, as a verb, is used to mean to bring about or to cause something to happen. So, we see this a lot in reports of change. And, reports of like groups of people, or certain like policy changes, or like community members doing something in order to bring something else about. So, let's take a look at some examples so you can see what I mean. First one, "Our proposal effected positive changes." So, "effected," in this case, past tense. "Effected positive changes," that means we can replace "effect" with this kind of idea. Our proposal brought about positive changes in our company, or our proposal caused positive changes to happen in our company. So, these have the same feel, but we use "effect" to say that very efficiently. "Our proposal effected positive changes in our company," means our proposal caused positive changes to happen or brought about positive changes in our company. So, you'll see this use a lot, like "effect," plus the word "change" after "effect." This is quite a common pattern with this verb. |
| Let's look at one more example. "The medical policy adjustment effected change in the country." The medical policy adjustment effected change in the country. So, again, we could replace this "effected," in this case, past tense with one of these. So, "The medical policy adjustment brought about change in the country." So, we use this "effect" to kind of efficiently say that something caused something else to change. So, a good hint word when you're seeing this kind of "effect," and you're trying to decide, "Is this the noun form? Is this the verb form?" You might look and see if "change" is after it. It won't be there 100% of the time, but this is a good hint word to look for. |
| So, these are the two uses of "effect" with an E that you are most likely to see when you are reading and writing, and when you are speaking, of course, too. It's important to know these differences. And, these are the differences and the different uses of "affect" with an A. Again, this is the most common form, the verb form here. So, I hope that this lesson helped you understand the differences between these two words. See you next time. Bye. |
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