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 Elias Hobba. Hello, Elias. Elias says, what's the difference between "look" and "look like," and can I use usually and sometimes, and always with present continuous.
Okay. You have two questions here. Let's break down the first one, "look" versus "look like," or "looks like." Let's talk about, "looks like" first or "look like" as well. So when we use the expression A looks like B, it means A has the same visual or similar visual as B. So that means the appearances are similar. He looks like that guy, or she looks like an owl.
So we're comparing the appearances of two things when we use A looks like B when we use that pattern. So this is what we use that expression look like or looks like to mean when we use the verb look, however, it just means to direct your eyes or to move your eyes in a specific way. So for example, to look at the camera means to move your eyes toward the camera, to shift your focus toward the camera. So it means to move your eyeballs in a certain direction. We don't use look as a verb to talk about similar appearances. We do. However, use, look as a noun to talk about one's outfit or one's style for the day. So you might see a sentence online in like a fashion magazine, for example, that says something like, get this, look at this store now.
So. Look, this use of look refers to someone's coordination in their clothes for the day. So that means usually the shirt they're wearing the skirt or pants or whatever, their shoes, their accessories, and so on. Look as a noun, refers to someone's appearance in terms of their clothing and their accessories. So when you see something that says, like, get this look, or I love your look, it refers to someone's style, their appearance in terms of their clothes, or maybe as well, their hairstyle for the day. So when someone says, oh, I love your look. Or I love that look, it means that they like the way you appear, they like your appearance. So they like your style in some way.
So as you can see, there are a few different ways that we use look and looks like. So again, to recap, looks like, is used in the pattern, A looks like B, which means that A has an appearance similar to B. We use look as a verb to mean to focus our eyes and move our eyes towards something.
And we also use look as a noun to refer to someone's style or to their appearance in terms. Clothing and their accessories for the day. So I hope this answers this question. Let's move on to a quick answer about your second question you ask. If we can use words like always and sometimes, and usually with the present continuous.
So I think your question is if we can make sentence patterns, like for example, I am usually working or I am sometimes working or I am always working and so on. Okay. So the short answer to your second question, if I understand it correctly, is that when we use words like always, and sometimes, and usually we're typically talking about them in terms of a schedule, right?
And we use present tense, not the continuous form to talk about our schedules. Like I always work in this office on this day, or I usually go to the gym on Saturday, or I sometimes eat meat for breakfast, whatever your sentence is. When we use these words, we tend to use them to talk about schedules and so on, there are some situations where you may see a continuous verb form used, however, and we'll probably see this most of the time when we use always to make complaints.
So what does this look like? For example, my coworker is always making irritating sounds or my friends are always coming late to the parties. So we use this always plus the, -ing verb form to make complaints sometimes. So when somebody has done something that's irritating, that's annoying to us, or when we're tired of some kind of behavior, you might hear people using the always plus - ing form. So in my earlier examples, my coworker is always making irritating noises or my friends are always coming late to parties. So you might hear it used with always in these cases, but we don't use the -ing form with words like usually, or sometimes, like "my friends are sometimes coming late to parties" is not something that we use.
We would also not do this with usually, like, "my coworker is usually making strange noises"; we don't use that either. So to recap, yes, you may see the-ing verb form used. Always, but you probably won't see it used with usually or sometimes. So I hope that this helps answer your questions, both of them.
Thanks very much for sending them along. Okay. Let's move on to your next question for this week. Next question comes from Yasser Alexander. Hi, Yasser. Yasser says, what's the difference between drugstore and pharmacy, and when can I use them? Okay, great question. Yeah. So I'll speak from experience with American stores.
This may be a little bit different depending on the country, but generally a drug store is a store that offers medicines and those kinds of things like you can pick up a prescription medicine from your doctor at the drug store, but the drugstore also has other household goods. So for example, like soap and shampoo and things for the shower or the bath, or maybe hair dye or things that you use to wash your face, all of these kind of personal care goods, you can find at a drug store generally; a pharmacy, on the other hand, is a place where you go just to get medicine if you get a prescription from the doctor. So if you receive some kind of medicine from your doctor, you take that to a pharmacy and you get the medicine there. Sometimes, there is a pharmacy inside a drugstore. So if you go to a drug store in a big city, there might be like a pharmacy desk or a pharmacy reception window somewhere inside the drug store.
So if that helps you, you can kind of think of the pharmacy as like a department in the drugstore. Sometimes, you'll see a pharmacy that's completely separate from the drugstore as well. It just depends on the pharmacy. It depends on the store, but this is the key difference. We would use them in the same way in a sentence. Like, I need to go to the drugstore to pick up some things for the shower, or I need to go to the pharmacy to pick up my medicine. We would use them in the same position. They have the same part of speech. So to recap, a drug store is a more general store where you can go for. In as well as lots of other everyday household and body care things, and a pharmacy is a place that you go to pick up medicine.
So I hope this helps answer your question. Thanks very much for sending it along. Okay. Let's move on to your next question. Next question comes from Hima Jakkampudi. Hi, Hima. I hope I said your name correctly. Hima says, I'm good at writing email but not able to speak confidently. Do you have any tips for that?
Mm, yeah. So if you are good at writing emails, maybe that's because you write emails a lot; so maybe if you are at work or if you're at school and you're writing a lot of emails, that means you are getting a lot of practice writing emails. Right. And that's great. That's a super, super great skill to have if you're pretty good at writing emails, but you want to work on your speaking skills, maybe a good place to start is just by trying to read your emails out loud.
If you want to practice something else, of course you can try reading other texts out loud or try shadowing exercises with TV or with YouTube videos or with other media. So based on your message, it sounds like you feel pretty confident in your email writing skills, which is great, but it's probably because you have lots of practice writing emails.
So make sure to build your speaking skills. You give yourself lots of chances to build your speaking skills. You can do this by reading out loud by shadowing. You can do this by participating in conversations if you have a conversation group, you can find a partner that you can practice your English language skills with whatever.
So it sounds like if you have lots of practice, you can get better at something as you are able to do already with your email writing. So just make sure that you're creating opportunities for yourself to practice your speaking skills, as well as your writing skills. This can even just be talking to yourself at home, just getting comfortable, saying things and expressing yourself in English.
So that would be my quick advice for you. If you have some pretty good writing skills already make sure to also use some of your time to work on your other skill sets as well. So take some of that energy and put it towards your speaking skill development. All right. Thanks very much for sending this question along.
I hope that helps a little bit. 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 week's episode of Ask Alisha and I will see you again soon. Bye.

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