Search results for 'tag:Tenses tag:Learn English' matching tags 'Tenses' and 'Learn English'

WOULD

shehan1212 — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 03:37:12 GMT

In formal writing pepole use past simple tense.But i have seen many times books and other articles includes sentenceswhich have been made of "would"...I know that "would" is used in conditional clauses.Where as i realy want to know what are the situations where i can use "wolud" and please explain me whats the difference between "would" and "will".Can i use these two terms as the same meaning in formal writting?

what i want to know is this.please help me to find out this,iv beendying to get a answer which i expect,,
here,this is a sentence which i found in my text book.

"Under this method materials in concern WOULD BE stored in two different places in th company's storeroom"

so my question is this is a general fact.this is tru.so cant i use present simple tense?
"Under this method material in concern ARE STORED.."

Re: Lack of emphasis on NPs in ESL

Kooyeen — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 20:38:55 GMT

I obviously agree with Forbes: it depends on your first language. I have never had any problems with passive sentences, subjects and objects, the difference between countable and uncountable, etc. because those are all features I have in Italian too. It is not difficult at all for me to use conditional structures (= modal verbs) in polite requests, like in "Could you lend me 1,000 dollars?", because very similar structures are used the same way in Italian too. On the other hand, I know some Asian languages don't even have past or future tenses, so it's easy to imagine how much more difficult it must be for them to learn English.

So instead of focusing on noun phrases, shouldn't we rather focus on the real difficulties, which happen to vary from learner to learner according to their native language and past experience with languages in general?

Anonymous

How about this student?

<<I assume many of you have watched the cartoon "Totally spies", right?
I just wonder why it is "Totally" here. "totally" is always an adverb, so what do they imply when using "totally" here? How can it go with the noun "spies"?>>>

Heh, good question! I don't know! Could somebody tell me more about that, as a side note here without going completely off topic? Otherwise I will open another thread. I would say "Total spies", but if I suspect that "totally" in "Totally spies" is used informally in some dialects to mean "definitely", like in, like " Are you, like, coming to my awesome party tonight? - Oh, yeah, totally!"
If that is the case, then I don't think that "totally" has anything to do with proving learners have trouble with noun phrases. It would suggest learners have trouble with informal English, and if you ask me, that's true.

Re: Hey Guys, Need Help

CalifJim — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 01:07:55 GMT

hellosir66
my friends seems to think that this sentence, "It's time you learn English.", is correct.

It's acceptable, but after the expression "It's time" the past tense (with present meaning) is the usual pattern.

Re: Free Learn English Online

skbbabu — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 07:46:12 GMT

Hi,

This is Babu.I am having doubts while using past tense in conversation.

by using could,wolud,had, had been like that.

Re: the tense

Doll — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 09:57:58 GMT

Hello New Guest,

I really understand what you are looking for because when I was at intermediate level, I was questioning everything like you and interested in thinking every sentence in detail. Past perfect tense was my favourite.I questioned and thought about its usage for years because it wasn't an existing tense in my native language. I felt inefficient when I didn't use past perfect or had questions about it in my mind. To tell the truth, sometimes I still have. This is because I learn English as a foreign language and I don't have a native spaking environment key which will open the doors of questions so, it takes ,really, years to completely grab the real and accurate usage of something. This goes for present perfect tense and modals too. The thing you should do, if you care what I say, just to be patient. After years, I am sure, you will regard both tenses same even the past simple better in similar contexts as your original question.

One more thing, your thinking too much analytical on grammatical forms of the language may be an effect of your English teacher. You know, they do unnecessary exams and want you to find the right choice and want you make a discrimination between whether to use simple past or perfect though sometimes both can be used. To be frank, I still suffer from this. I am still too analytic.

Re: i need help with this sentence, please, it's important :(

Grammar Geek — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 17:50:51 GMT

Anonymous
i know that i need to add capital letters but that wasn't my question...

But when you ask if something is correct and it has an incorrect element, it would be remiss of us to not point that out. Oddly, we expect that when people come to a forum to learn English and present their work as correct, they have taken all due care to ensure that it is correct. Silly of us, I guess.

Context IS important. Are the professor's sacrifices current or in the past? That will determine the tense of your verb.

starting topic, could you help me

Duylam — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 13:41:16 GMT

Hi everybody,
I started write English topic to improve writing skill, but I don't know where I'm wrong in topic (grammar, vocabulary, tense, ..). I really want to learn English effectly, could you show my mistake in topic. Please help me :-). Here's topic:

I moved to the new company one month ago. It's a big company with more 2000 employees, an USA-based company. When I have started my work, there're many things making me surpricing. I have my own table, UPS (for PC box) and a private space, it's cool.

I meet many guys at my floor and company, of cource I don't know them. When I go somewhere, like get water or go to rest room (WC), and meet any guy on my way, then they usually smile with me so i would reply them. Poor me, God created my face not easy to smile so it's hard to do that .

Luckily, some guys in firm appoint me to potent team named Bamboo. Actually, they're a GREAT TEAM. Bamboo have many things I have even hoped: professional, united, potential and passionate.
Currently, Bamboo have been developing a new product for USA market and use latest Microsoft's technology (SharePoint). If I be a member of team, it's wonderful. Because they have researched SharePoint (and some relevant stuffs like NET 3.0, Enterprise Library) for a long time, so I have many thing to learn before I can start working with them. I can't image how cool when I received a bug of some components that I have implemented from QC

Re: had had

Yankee — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 17:27:54 GMT

Hi Mkyol

I'd like to point out a few things:

- The word 'since' does not work in your sentence as it is written. It seems that you want to use the word 'since' to talk about 'from a point in the past up to now', but that doesn't work well with the verb 'started'. The start of something is usually a very short point in time and does not take place over a period of time.

- The word 'since' is usually used with the present perfect continuous, and in that verb tense the verb is extremely connected to the present ('up to now'). To talk about the past time when something began, you need the simple past tense, but you can't use the simple past tense (started) together with the time word 'since' as you have done.

- Using 'had had' would suggest something that was finished/ended before you 'started' -- i.e. she was no longer interested at the time you started. But that wouldn't really make much sense in your sentence. You should use the simple present tense if your mother is still alive and still has this interest.

I would suggest rewriting your sentence in one of these ways:

If you want to talk about a time from the past up to the present, you could write it this way:
"My mother has an intense passion for education, and I have been learning English since junior high school."

If your mother is now dead, or if all of the verbs (events/activities/states) are in the finished past, you could write it this way:
"My mother had an intense passion for education, and I started to learn English in junior high school."

I can't think of any really logical way to use had had (past perfect) in your sentence.

Re: had had

Rotter — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 12:16:01 GMT

You see to write the past perfect tense there should be two past events.

"My mother had had an intense passion for education, and I started to learn English since junior high school."

In the above you wrote 'had had' .
So if you want to keep it as it is, I would write the following.

"My mother had had an intense passion for education before I started to learn English since junior high school."

had had

Mkyol — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 10:56:58 GMT

"My mother had had an intense passion for education, and I started to learn English since junior high school."

Is that right? I want to signify the fact that it was my mother's intense passion for education (which preceded in time) that made me learn English since junior high school by making the sentence past perfect.

Or should I just use one had?