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 for this week comes from Mari. Hi, Mari. Mari says, "Hi, Alisha. Do you have any advice for studying prepositions? I understand the basic ways to use 'to,' 'for,' and 'by.' But, it's really hard for me to choose the correct words quickly, especially when speaking." Super good question. Yeah, prepositions are really tough I think for a lot of people. So, let's talk about some tips to make sure that you can get some good practice in with these words. So, as you've mentioned, there are words like "to," "for," "by." We have "at," "in," and "on," and some others as well. So, of course, it's important to know kind of the basics of how to use these words and what situations we use these words, and there are many videos on YouTube about how to do that. But, as far as studying these words and studying how and when to use them, one of the things that I really recommend is to study these words together with the words that they're used with.
So, for example, instead of just studying -- okay, the word "to," and here's how I use it, take a look at the words that are around "to" when it's used. So, what do I mean by studying the words that are around the preposition? So, when you're learning a new sentence pattern or when you're learning a new grammar form, for example, it's normal to want to break down the sentence, right? Like the part of speech, this is the subject, this is the object, here's a preposition, and so on. And, that's great to do. But, also, once you kind of have a feel for the grammar, once you kind of get the hang of things, try to practice full sentences or full phrases. Just try saying them out loud or try writing them down. Because once you have kind of the pattern in your mind, the basic pattern, sentence pattern in your mind, you need to think less and less about the prepositions and other little helping words and so on that you need to use.
So, to give a really, really basic example of this, think about when you're expressing travel, right? When you say, "I'm going to the supermarket," you always use the preposition "to," right? We use "to" before our destination. We use this for travel to other countries and other cities as well. "I'm going to my friend's house." "I'm going to Mexico," and so on. So, we always have this pattern of "to," plus destination. This is just one very, very basic and simple example, but you can do this with other prepositions as well.
So, for example, when you're talking about time, there are a couple of prepositions that you're probably going to use a lot. Like "at time," to talk about the scheduled meeting. Or, in duration of time, "in 10 minutes," right? So, these are the kinds of things that we kind of associate together in our minds. Rather than trying to break it into two units, like preposition plus other thing, try to study the two things together. Try to think about the words that you commonly see together and study them as units. And, this will help you to become a little bit more familiar with the ways that they're used without having to like stop and think every single time, "Which preposition should I use?" Because that takes time for sure. Rather, try to practice speaking, and reading, and writing, and all of these things as kind of units in your brain.
So, another kind of tip that you can do is if you see a preposition that's used somewhere in like a book, or a newspaper, or magazine, or something like that, you can try writing that out. Just copy it down on like a list somewhere. Just the act of writing it down can help a lot of people, too. So, that's another way that you can kind of like grab new uses of prepositions, or maybe uses that you haven't seen before, and study those, too. So, try writing out those prepositional phrases that you find.
So, to recap, my main point here is to study prepositions as parts of phrases as units. So, it's important to know the base uses of these words, of course. But, also, keep in mind that you want to study them with other words together. So, I hope this helps you as you continue studying prepositions. Good luck and thanks very much for this question. Okay. Let's move on to your next question.
Next question comes from Shahram. Hi, Shahram. Shahram says, "What's the difference between 'debate' and 'argue'?" Nice question. Okay. Sure. Let's talk about these two different words. Let's start by talking about "debate." First, we can use "debate" as a noun and as a verb. So, "a debate" and "to debate," right? So, first, we can use debate as a verb to talk about discussing something with someone else in a kind of aggressive fashion, in a kind of aggressive manner. So, when we're debating someone, both people in the discussion have some points. They have ideas. Things that they want to express opinions. And, the goal generally is to win the discussion. So, you can kind of think of it a little bit as like a competition, sort of like a discussion competition. So, when you "debate" someone, you're trying to prove that your ideas, or your opinions, or the things that you are trying to persuade them of, are the best or the most correct in some way.
So, for example, "We debated for over an hour about this topic." Or, "We want to debate the other school's team, but they're pretty good." So, we can use "debate" as a verb in this manner, which means to discuss something in almost like a competition, or with the goal of winning in some way. As a noun, it refers to the same idea. Like, "We went to the school's debate last week." Or, "We're going to participate in a debate next weekend, do you want to join?" So, we can use "debate" in these parts of speech to refer to the same thing. A kind of competition of sorts, a formal discussion competition, you can think of it that way.
Okay. So, let's compare this to "argue." To "argue" as a verb is how we can use this, and we also have the noun form, "argument." To argue is generally not something that is formal. When we have a disagreement with someone and we talk about that. Maybe our voice gets a little bit louder, or we get angry or something, that's called an "argument." That's the noun form. So, we can use to "argue" as a verb and "argument" as a noun to refer to the same thing. So, let's take a look at some example sentences with this. "I heard my neighbors arguing last night." And, "I argued with my roommate this morning because they forgot to wash the dishes." So, generally, an "argument," or the verb "argue," is used to talk about these everyday disagreements. These kinds of maybe small things -- hopefully, small things. Though sometimes, they can be a little bit bigger, a little bit more important. But, basically, "to argue" refers to these sort of everyday life disagreements.
One interesting point however is about the word "argument." So, I said that we use this as a noun to refer to these kinds of disagreements we have in our everyday life. Like, "We had an argument last night." Or, "That argument sounded really bad." We can use it in this way. But, there's one link here between "debate" and "argument." We can use the word "argument" to mean a point, like a main point. So, this is something that is used in debates actually. So, when we say, "I have an argument for this," or "I want to make an argument for something," that means I want to make a point about that thing. So, "argument" means point in a formal setting. This sounds kind of confusing, I know. But, in the debate situation, it's actually quite clear.
When someone says, "He made an argument about blah blah blah," it means he made a point about something. So, he's trying to prove something about something else. We use the word "argument" in these kinds of formal situations. You might also see this used in the news when people are talking about politics, or maybe contracts, and other formal things. This use of "argument" like I said tends to be used in these more formal situations. We don't use it a lot in everyday speech. But, if you have maybe a formal meeting with a company, for example, you might hear someone using the word "argument" in this way.
Generally, though, to recap, the rule is if you're talking about an everyday disagreement, use "argue" or "argument." If you're talking about a formal discussion, use "debate." Great. So, I hope that this answers your question and you know a little bit more about the differences between these two words. Thanks for sending it along. Okay. Let's move on to the next question.
Next question comes from Javier. Hi, Javier. Javier says, "Hi, Alisha. How do I know when apostrophe S means 'is'? And, how do I know when it means 'has'? For example: she's or he's. Thanks." Yeah. Great question. So, the key here is to look at the word that comes after the apostrophe S. So, we have from your question, she's and he's, and we also have "it's" to think about, right?
So, let's take a look at adjectives that could follow these. We have, "She's pretty," or "He's handsome," or "It's rainy." In these situations, we have adjectives after the apostrophe S, right? That is a really good hint that that apostrophe S should mean "is." "She is pretty." Correct. "He is handsome." Correct. "It is rainy," is correct, right? If we use "has" in these situations, it makes a complete nonsense sentence, right? "She has pretty," nope. "He has handsome," nope. "It has rainy," not good. So, this is one pattern that will tell you what the apostrophe S means. If there's an adjective after the apostrophe S, it's an "is," apostrophe S.
Okay. So, let's compare this to the apostrophe S that means "has." Let's look at some example sentences for this case, too. For example, "She's been gone for a long time." "He's eaten all my snacks!" And, "It's taken way too long to get our order fulfilled." Okay. In all of these example sentences, we have apostrophe S followed by a verb in the past participle form. "She's been," in the first example sentence. "Been" is the past participle form of the verb "be." "He's eaten," in the second example sentence, "eaten" is the past participle form. And, in the final example sentence, "it's taken." "Taken" is again the past participle verb form of the verb "take."
So, this is our big hint here. Just like we saw in the adjective example sentences. When you see an apostrophe S, followed by a verb in the past participle form, it's a "has," apostrophe S. If we replace this with "is," it doesn't make any sense, right? "She is been gone," no. "He is eaten," no. "It is taken," also not correct. So, we can establish that is "is" definitely not correct from grammar practice in these example sentences.
So, to recap, the key here is to look at the word that follows the apostrophe S. If you see an adjective after the apostrophe S, it means "is." If you see a verb in the past participle form, it means "has." Keep in mind that in the adjective case, you may have some other words before the adjective. Like "so," or "very," or "extremely." These are modifying the adjective, but they follow the same rule. So, keep this in mind: look at the words that follow the apostrophe S instead of just focusing on that one and trying to figure it out there. So, I hope this tip helps you understand the differences between these two apostrophe S forms. Thanks very much for the question.
Okay. 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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