| 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 Eden M. |
| Hi, Eden! |
| Eden says... |
| Time is important in the United States, and many people “frown upon lateness.” What does it mean “to frown upon lateness?” Thanks, Alisha! |
| Great question! Yeah, this idea of “frown upon (something)” means we look down on something or we consider something bad. In this case, frown upon lateness means we think that being late is a bad thing. So, if you are late, it reflects badly or poorly on your character. |
| So you can use this “frown upon” plus some noun or noun phrase to express that you don’t feel good about that thing. So, for example, you might say something like… |
| “Many people frown upon gambling. They think it’s unhealthy or a poor use of money.” |
| Or… |
| “My parents frown upon drinking a lot. They say that it’s not good for your body.” |
| So you can use a different noun in place of lateness to refer to looking down on something, to thinking that something is not good. A “frown” refers to the opposite of a smile, but we can’t use “smile upon,” actually. We use “frown upon” only in this case. So, I hope this answers your question. To frown upon lateness or to frown upon (something) means to look down on that noun or to have a poor opinion of that noun. Thanks for the question. |
| Okay, let’s move on to your next question. |
| Next question comes from Iori or Lori. |
| Hi! |
| Lori says… |
| How do I improve my reading comprehension, and what should I do when I find unfamiliar words while having a conversation or reading some books? |
| Okay. So, these two questions are connected, I think; how to improve your reading comprehension and what you do when you find new words, like when you’re reading a book or maybe you’re in a conversation. My suggestion is when you’re reading a book and you find a new word, try to guess what the word means just by yourself for a moment. Try to guess what the word means, and then don’t worry too much about it. And then review, come back to that same word or that same page maybe a little bit later or after your study session or whatever. If you still can’t guess what that word means based on the context, then check a dictionary and make a note somewhere. Write it down. Then after you do that, maybe the next day, review it again. |
| So, this practice of gradually finding new words in your reading will help you to build your vocabulary, yes, and it will boost your reading comprehension. So you need to actively be working on considering these words in your mind by yourself first and then looking for extra information when you need it. This is a time-consuming process, yes, but it will gradually help you to build your reading comprehension and boost your vocabulary skills. So, you can also apply this then in speaking, when you learn these new words from books and from your different readings, you can also apply those words in your speech. |
| So, I hope that this helps you. Remember, try to guess what the word means on your own, check back again later after you read some more of the texts, look up the word in the dictionary and most importantly, review, review, review. |
| All right, let’s go to our next question. |
| Next question comes from Carlos Alberto Rosario. |
| Hello, Carlos! |
| Carlos says... |
| Hi, Alisha! I’m from Brazil. Thanks for your lessons. My question; why do native speakers sometimes use “do” before verbs and sometimes not. For example, “I do believe in love” and “I believe in love.” |
| Oh, okay. So, this is a question about emphasis. So, for example, with your example, “I believe in love” versus “ I do believe in love,” the “I do” pattern could be in response to a question, like, “Do you believe in love?” You could say, “I do believe in love.” The DO acts as an emphasis like yes, absolutely! You can say, of course, correctly, “I believe in love,” yes, I believe in love, but that DO shows emphasis for something. |
| “I do believe in love.” |
| You can also use this in some situations as, like a confirmation of something. Like in past tense, you might see this example like, “Hey, you didn’t finish this report. What happened?” Then you could say, “Wait, no, I did finish that report!” So, that will show that there’s some kind of contrast with the speaker’s opinion, like you’re trying to reverse or like, confirm something that actually happened. You might also see this used more commonly in past tense. |
| So, you might see both of these. They’re very common. One is for emphasis, as in your example sentence, I think, and one, to kind of confirm or to give some contrasting information, as in the “Yes, I did finish that report.” So, I hope that this helps you. Thanks very much for the question. |
| Okay, let’s move on to your next question. |
| Next question comes from Yin Mon Oo. |
| Hi, Yin Mon Oo! |
| Yin Mon Oo says... |
| Hi, Alisha! I want to know the difference between “break” and “crack.” |
| For example: |
| I crack eggs into a bowl or I break eggs into a bowl. |
| What’s the difference? |
| Yeah, great question! So, the difference here is in the type of break. So, if you imagine, “break: as like an umbrella and then we have a lot of different types of break underneath that umbrella. This might help you a little bit. So, to break something means like to destroy something, kind of generally like to break a bone or in your example, to break an egg, so we just destroy that thing in some way, right, when we use “break.” |
| To “crack” something, a crack is a specific type of break. So, when we crack an egg, we see lines form on the egg, right? Those are cracks, so we can use this as a noun as well. So, when you have some kind of break that causes those lines to appear somewhere, you can describe that as cracking the object or you can use the noun as I did to describe those lines as cracks in the object. |
| For example, if a building is destroyed in an earthquake, you might say… |
| “Oh my gosh, there are cracks in the building!” |
| So, that’s a specific type of destruction or a specific type of break. So, in your example, you could say, “break the eggs into a bowl,” you could say, |crack the eggs into a bowl,” they’re both completely correct. Just consider that crack is like a specific type of break. I hope that this helps you. Thanks very much for the question. |
| Okay, let’s move on to your next question. |
| Next question comes from Miloud Eloumri. |
| Hello, Miloud! |
| Miloud says… |
| I can easily read and comprehend English well and also write advanced and complicated English reports, but my pronunciation is really problematic for me, though people still understand me. I think this has affected my spelling. How do I quickly improve my pronunciation and perhaps undo or forget my bad pronunciation that I’ve learned. |
| Good question! So, if you know that you are pretty good with English and you feel confident with your communication skills, but want to work on your pronunciation, a really great thing you can do is record yourself. I know that a lot of people feel really uncomfortable about it, but it’s so helpful to listen to your own voice. By record yourself, I mean use your phone. So, just try listening to a video, for example, listen to me speaking or find some other video to watch to, compare your voice to. Try to say the same thing as the person in the video. Record yourself saying that and listen to it because it’s sometimes really, really hard for us to hear our own voices when we’re speaking, like it’s really hard to understand how other people perceive the way we sound. |
| So, by recording yourself, you can listen and find those spots that sound different from the native speaker. So, yes, this will take time, but you can focus on maybe some sounds that you realize maybe you make mistakes with a lot. |
| So, for example, maybe you make a lot of mistakes with TH sounds or with R sounds or with L sounds. Once you practice this and listen to yourself, you’ll be able to identify those. So, that’s what I would recommend. Try recording yourself and listening. A lot of people say, I hate the sound of my voice. That’s fine, but remember, this is for your studies, right? You’re using this to improve your language skills, so you don’t have to share it with anyone else. Just listen to it yourself and find the parts that are different in your speech in comparison with a native speaker and work on those. So, I hope that this helps you and good luck with your continued studies. |
| 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 soon. Bye! |
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