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 Kaveesha Samarasinghe. I hope I said your name right. Hi, Kaveesha. Kaveesha says, what are the differences between do and does, is and are, can you teach me?
Yeah, sure. So let's start by looking at do and does. We use do and does as part of a question that we're asking and we decide to use do or does according to the subject. So when we use the subject, you, for example, we use do like, do you something, something, something, and when our subject is he, she, or it, we use does, does he, does she, does it.
We can, of course, use other subjects with do as well. Do I, or do they, or do we, but for today's lesson, let's use you because it's a very easy example to use so we can ask yes or no questions by putting do and does at the beginning of this question, for example, do you have a pen? Or does he have my wallet?
We can ask these simple yes or no questions we can also use do, and does in information questions that begin with a w H question like who, what, where when and so on, for example, what do you do means what is your job? or what does he do means what is his job? So we use do and does as part of these different kinds of questions.
So we have these simple, yes, no questions where do, and does come at the beginning of the question. And we have these information questions where these words come in the middle of the question. So the key here though, is to remember that we use do with certain subjects, you, we, they, and we. Does with other subjects, he, she, and it.
So this is a quick introduction. I hope that that helps you understand the differences between do and does. So let's talk a little bit now about the differences between is and are. The key here is to remember that "is" is used with singular subjects and "are" is used with plural subjects.
So to give a very, very basic example, he is something something. And we are something, something. So in the "he is something, something" example pattern, we have a singular subject. He is, that's one person in the "we are" pattern, we have "we" as the subject, which represents more than one person, so a plural subject, right? So we can expand this, we can use this in other ways too.
So for example, "two dogs are at the park." That's another way to make the subject plural. Or we could say "one dog is at the park" to make the subject singular. So the key here is that "is" is used for singular subjects and "are" is used for plural subjects.
Also keep in mind that these are used in present tense situations. If you want to make these past tense, we would use these as "was" and "were." so I hope that this quick introduction helps you understand the differences between do and does and is and are. Thanks very much for the question.
Okay, great. Let's move on to your next question. Next question comes from Matthew. Hi, Matthew. Matthew says hi, Alisha. I'm from Peru and I'm 17 years old. I always watch your videos. Thank you. My question is how can I improve my listening? And how long does it take? I'm very good at grammar and other but sometimes I worry when I don't understand conversations. Yeah, sure. Let's talk about some ways that you can improve your listening skills.
So I know that a lot of people of course want to listen to something to improve their listening skills. But like you said, it's sometimes really hard to catch all the words. If you're watching maybe a movie or like a YouTube video or something, sometimes you have subtitles, right? You have captions at the bottom of the screen, so you can read what's being said, and that's really helpful.
Right. But what do you do if you're listening to like a podcast, for example, or maybe a news report, those are kind of difficult situations because there's no captions, right? So what do you do? The thing that I recommend a lot for listening practice is to find materials that have a script. So sometimes you can find podcasts or other language learning materials that also have a script.
So it's not just listening, but you have the option to listen and to read along. So this is really, really helpful for exactly the reason that you mentioned in your question. If you can't quite catch a word or maybe there's a new expression or something like that, or maybe the way that the person speaks is kind of unique or something you haven't heard before, you can check the script and see what that person said.
Like, what were the words that person used. And you can think about how that person, how. Speaker connected words in a certain way. So you might be listening to something that has a kind of special dialect maybe, or they speak very, very uniquely, or maybe they have kind of a funny way of speaking, whatever that might be.
If you have a script, you can check the script and that will tell you what. The other person actually said, and you can kind of think about that, like, Hmm, maybe it's different from the way you've heard that word pronounced in the past, or maybe that's a totally new word that you need to go and look up.
So this can be a really great way to work on improving your ability to catch those new sounds and to hear how people link sounds together. So that would be one tip is to choose materials that have a script, or if you watch videos with captions, that's also great too, but make sure that you have something.
That you can read so you can check your understanding. That's tip one. My other tip for improving your listening skills would be to listen multiple times reading and not reading the script. So that means, for example, you listen three times, let's say so the first time you listen with no script, you just listen and try to see. Hmm... what can I understand? The second time you listen and you read at the same. And the third time you listen with no script again, to see how much you've improved. So another tip with this kind of listening practice is to try to space out your listening sessions over many days. So of course, if you want to, and if you have time, you can listen multiple times on the same day, but the point is to improve your listening skills over time, right? It's not just to improve your listening skills for one day. So if you listen, for example, to the same lesson, three times in a. And you have a script to refer to. You can refresh your mind on the script a couple times throughout the week. You're probably going to see improvements in your listening skills over time.
It'll probably be a lot better than if you just listen one time and try to cram everything in, in one listening session. So this can be another way to improve your long term listening skills. And it will also help you to remember any new vocabulary that you find in your listening and your script reading exercises.
So those would be my two big tips for working on your listening skills to choose materials that have scripts that you can check and refer to and to space out your listening practice over time. And to make sure you practice with and without the script. So you retain and remember those new words. So I hope that this helps you and good luck as you develop your listening skills.
Also, you mentioned in your question, how long does it take, please keep in mind that this is always an ongoing process. We are always developing our listening skills and always developing our ability to recognize new words, even in our native language. So just work on what's in front of you and try to set some small goals that you know, that you can achieve for yourself that will hopefully help you to keep your motivated.
So, thanks very much for your question. All right. Let's move on to the next question. Next question comes from Chitra Youm. Hi, Chitra. Chitra says hi, Alisha, the word "people" and the word "persons," which one is correct for the plural form. Can you answer this? Yeah. Great question.
Okay. So generally speaking, in most cases, you will use the one person for a single person and two or more people for multiple people. This is probably going to be the case in the vast majority of situations. So that means in very, very close to all situations. There are a few situations where you may see someone in writing, probably using persons to mean the plural of person. And there may be some situations where you see peoples, people with an S. So we can talk quickly about these, but these are kind of rare situations.
So the key guide that I want you to remember is one person, two or more, people. That's the one that you can use in most situations, but let's talk about these other kind of rare situations.
In very legal or formal, or perhaps official writing, like in rules and contracts and these kinds of things, you may see sometimes persons being used instead of people like two persons or three persons, something like that. You may see this choice used in those kinds of situations. We generally don't use this in everyday communication and everyday conversation.
So this is kind of this rare or uncommon use of "persons." Next. Let's talk about the use of peoples. So people with an S, this use is typically used specifically when we're talking about different ethnic or racial groups. So for example, if we're talking about maybe a tribe of native people, we might use peoples to talk about multiple tribes in one region.
So for example, if a news article is talking about tribe, Tribe B and tribe C in the article, they might say the peoples of the region that use of peoples refers to three different tribal or ethnic groups. So this is a very, very specific use of this peoples. This is pretty much the only time that we use this S at the end of the word. So you may see this from time to time when talking about specific racial groups or specific ethnic groups or specific tribal groups. But again, in most situations you can follow the rule of singular one person or. Multiple two or more people. So I hope this clarifies any doubts that you have about the uses of these words.
Thanks very much for sending along your question. 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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