| Hi, everybody! Welcome back to Ask Alisha, the weekly series where you ask me questions and I answer them, maybe. |
| Okay, let’s get to your first question this week. |
| First question this week comes from Boon Keong. |
| Hi, Boon Keong! |
| Boon Keong says… |
| “How do we know when to use shall or will when asking questions?” |
| Okay, so very simply, “shall” is used to make suggestions. We put “shall” at the beginning of our question when we want to make a suggestion and to make something sound kind of formal. We don’t really use “shall” in everyday English. |
| So, some examples: |
| “Shall I drop the mic?” |
| “Shall we leave?” |
| Or |
| “Shall we get going?” |
| Or |
| “Shall I make you a birthday cake?” |
| Okay. So, “shall” is used to make these formal suggestions. |
| “Shall I…?” or “Shall we…?” or “Shall he…?” and so on. |
| There is some kind of suggestion there like: |
| “Shall he make you a cocktail?” or “Shall we give you a birthday party?” or something like that. So you can replace “I” with “we” or “he” or “she” in those sentences, so you’re making suggestions. But again, they sound really formal. We don’t say these in everyday speech, at least in American English. It sounds too polite. |
| “Will”, on the other hand, is used at the beginning of questions when we want to make requests. So again, “shall” is used for suggestions, “will” is used to make requests, like “Will you stop doing that?” or “Will you get me a coffee?” and so on. So, we’re using “will” to make requests. “Will” comes at the beginning of the sentence when we want to make a request for something. |
| “Shall” can come at the beginning of a sentence when you’re kind of asking if it’s okay to do something as well. |
| So, this is the basic difference between using “shall” at the beginning of a sentence or the beginning of a question and using “will” at the beginning of a question. Suggestion or offer and request, making some kind of request. So, please keep this in mind. I hope that this helps you. Thanks for the question! |
| Okay, let’s move on to your next question. |
| Next question comes from Al Mubin. |
| Hi, Al Mubin! |
| Al Mubin says… |
| “Hi, Alisha! What is the difference between continue and go on?” |
| Okay. So, “continue” is followed with a noun phrase, so that’s the thing that’s going to move forward. So “go on” can be used to mean, please continue speaking, but when you say, when someone is saying something interesting in a conversation and they stop the sentence or they stop speaking, but you want them to continue, you can say, “go on”. You can say “continue” as well. It sounds like a command, but you might hear people say, “go on” as well. |
| So, in contrast to the word “continue”, we cannot follow go on with a simple noun phrase. We can’t say like, “Go on your discussion” or “Go on your presentation.” We cannot do that. |
| We use “go on” to talk about going to the next thing in a series, like the next item in a presentation or the next topic in a discussion. Like, “I’m gonna go on to the next slide now” or “I’m going to go on to the next question.” So we use “go on to” to express that. |
| We can use “continue” in this way and just as with “go on”, we need to connect continue with “to” to the next item. So, “I want to continue to the next topic” or “I want to continue to the next slide in my presentation.” So we can use both of these to talk about moving to the next item in a series of some kind, but we can only use “continue” with a noun phrase and we can use “go on” alone to mean please continue in a conversation. |
| So, I’ve noticed in the comments actually, a lot of people will write like they enjoyed a lesson or something like, and then, they would say, “Go on!” It has that feeling of like “go on” like, please. I know the feeling is like please continue. To express that a little bit more naturally, like if you see something you like on the internet, you should be a little more specific, like if you say, “go on” or “continue”, generally, what native speakers will say is, “I hope you make more videos!” or “Please make more videos like this!” or “Please make more podcasts” or “Please make more content like this!” So, being a little bit more specific with your comments, at least when you’re writing online sounds a little bit more natural than just saying, “go on” or “continue.” So, I hope that this helps you understand the differences between “continue” and “go on”. Thanks very much for the question. |
| Okay, onto our next question. |
| Next question comes from Luis. |
| Your name is in all caps, LUIS. |
| Hi, Luis! |
| Luis says… |
| “What is the difference between the words sleep and asleep in sentences?” |
| To answer this question, just use your grammar knowledge and your knowledge of how to use a dictionary as a tool. “Sleep” can be used as a noun and as a verb. “Asleep” is an adjective, so that means these words take different positions in sentences. |
| For example: |
| “He’s sleeping.” |
| In that sentence, “sleeping” is used in the progressive tense, “He is sleeping.” It’s a verb. |
| You could also express the same idea with: |
| “He’s asleep.” |
| “He is asleep”, so “He is (adjective) asleep.” |
| So, they have the same meaning. |
| “He is sleeping.” |
| “He is asleep.” |
| So, “asleep” means in the state of sleeping. So, “asleep” is just a way to say it differently. So, you could say that. |
| You could also use “sleep” as a noun as in: |
| “He went to sleep on the sofa.” |
| Or |
| “I didn’t get enough sleep last night.” |
| So, the differences here are in how we use the words in the sentence, like the sentence position, and we also need to think, especially with the verb, about conjugating the verb, changing the verb to match what we want to say in the sentence. “Asleep”, we use as an adjective. So there are a lot of different ways we can express a similar idea, you know, not being awake, but we just need to think about the type of word, by that, I mean verb, noun, adjective. We need to think about that as we build the sentence. |
| We could say it negatively too, like: |
| “You’re not asleep, I can see you.” |
| “I tried to call him, but he was asleep.” |
| “Don’t sleep on this chance!” |
| That’s something else we knew which means don’t miss this chance. Oh, that’s another good expression, yeah, don’t, “I’m gonna sleep on it”, means I’m going to go to sleep and then wake up in the morning and then have a decision. So after you’re presented with a big decision, you can say, “I’m gonna sleep on it” which means please give me one night to think about this, so I’m going to go to sleep, wake up, and make my decision, so give me a night to sleep on it. |
| So “sleepyhead,” sleepyhead is a word we use in the States, usually, for little kids, like to mean like, oh, that’s your child. You’re a small person who is sleepy. That means you’re ready for bed. So “sleepy” is another word that we haven’t really talked about here yet, but “sleepy” is also an adjective. |
| “I’m sleepy.” |
| So that means, it takes the same position in a sentence as asleep, but “sleepy” means “I’m tired.” “I’m ready to go to sleep.” “I’m ready for a sleep.” So again, that takes the same position as “asleep” in a sentence, but it means something different, just a different adjective. |
| Okay, so I hope that that helps you understand the differences between “sleep” and “asleep” in sentences. Thanks for the question. |
| Ok, that is everything that I have for this week. Thank you, as always, for sending your questions. Remember, you can send them to me at EnglishClass101.com/ask-alisha. Thanks very much for watching this week’s episode of Ask Alisha and I will see you again next week. Bye-bye! |
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