| 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 Aster Fleury. |
| Hi Aster. |
| Aster says, the Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, wrote this: |
| From making electric vehicles easier to buy and easier to charge, to putting a price on pollution across the country, to helping industries adopt clean technologies, we’ve done a lot to tackle climate change. But we know there’s much more work to do. |
| My question is, why did he use verbs in the progressive tense with "to," like "to putting" and "to helping?" |
| If he would have used to put or to help in this sentence, what would have been the meaning? |
| Yeah, great question. |
| Okay, so we need to break down what's happening in this part of this speech. |
| So actually, what Prime Minister Trudeau is doing in these few sentences is he's describing a range of activities. |
| So you notice in the very first sentence, he says, from making electric vehicles, blah, blah, blah, blah. |
| And then the next point is to putting, and then we have to helping and so on. |
| What he's doing here is he's describing a series of activities. |
| We often do this with this from A to B construction. |
| So this is a very long example of this, but that's actually what he's doing here. |
| So in a very, very simple situation, we use from A to B to talk about a range of things or maybe a range of services. |
| So to give a different example, a very short example sentence of this, we might say, that |
| store sells everything from electronic goods to home goods. |
| So that expresses a range. |
| So this store sells lots and lots of different things. |
| In this example sentence, Trudeau is doing the same thing with this from to pattern, but those noun phrases are much longer. |
| So now that we understand why we have this from to pattern we use to express a range, and he adds an extra range with another to statement. |
| Now let's look at why we see these ING verb forms here. |
| So one thing we can do by putting this ING form of a verb is we can create a noun form or a noun phrase out of this. |
| So for example, you probably have thought about the difference between like, I like to hike and I like hiking, right? |
| So hiking in that example sentence is a noun. |
| We use this as a noun. |
| This ING form can be used as a noun. |
| So what Trudeau has done in this speech is he has created noun phrases by using this |
| ING form of the verb at the beginning. |
| So let's break this down. |
| Let's look at each part of this. |
| So Trudeau begins his from to range statement with from making electric vehicles easier |
| to buy and easier to charge. |
| So this is a noun phrase, making electric vehicles easier to buy. |
| So this is one action. |
| We can understand this as one action the Canadian government has done here. |
| And then the next part to putting a price on pollution across the country. |
| So this is another activity, right? |
| Another noun phrase to putting a price on pollution. |
| That's an activity. |
| And the third one, helping industries adopt clean technologies. |
| This is the third item. |
| So by creating these noun phrases with the ING form of the word, he's showing a range of things the government has done. |
| So that's the two parts that are actually happening here. |
| So we have this from A to B pattern, and he's extended that. |
| He's made that longer by adding one more to from A to B to C to show that he did many things as part of the Canadian government. |
| And he's using noun phrases, very long noun phrases after this. |
| So he's basically expressing the different activities the Canadian government has done in order to tackle climate change. |
| So that's what's happening in this sentence here. |
| You can do the same thing when you want to express a range of activities or a series of steps for something. |
| Use that from A to B pattern. |
| And for more emphasis, you can add a to C pattern too. |
| And just add those noun phrases after that. |
| From this thing to that thing to that other thing. |
| Trudeau is doing the same thing here. |
| They're just very, very long. |
| So I hope this helps you understand what's happening in this sentence and also helps you understand why that ING verb form is used here. |
| So thanks so much for sending along this really interesting question. |
| I hope that that helps you. |
| Okay, let's move on to our next question. |
| Next question comes from Maryam. |
| Hi, Maryam. |
| Maryam says, Hi, Alisha. |
| Hi, Maryam. |
| I'm Maryam and I would like to ask this question. |
| I'm not good in English, especially my writing skills. |
| They are zero. |
| I tried really hard to improve it, but it doesn't work. |
| I want you to please give me some tips. |
| How can I improve? |
| Thanks. |
| Okay, first point, Maryam, you wrote me this message. |
| So that's clear. |
| That makes it very clear. |
| You have some skills, right? |
| You were able to communicate your question to me. |
| You were able to share about your experience very clearly. |
| I understood it. |
| No problem. |
| And you were able to talk about your goal. |
| So that shows you already have some writing skills, right? |
| So the things that I would suggest to work on improving your writing skills, there are a few things to do. |
| Maybe the first thing to do would be to set yourself a very small goal. |
| So if you think, I don't know how to improve, I don't know what to do, try thinking about something you want to do, some kind of target for your writing skills. |
| So for example, you could think of writing this message as a kind of goal. |
| You were able to write this message and communicate your idea, right? |
| So maybe think of another type of writing goal. |
| So maybe you want to write a letter to ask for a product from a company, or maybe you want to write a letter to a friend in another country that speaks English, for example. |
| So try to think of kind of some small goals. |
| If you can't think of a goal outside yourself, maybe try to think about a goal you can do just alone. |
| For example, writing in a journal every day or a diary, or maybe writing like tweets if you use Twitter or something like that. |
| Maybe try setting a small goal for yourself like, oh, I'm going to write about my day every day in a journal, something like that. |
| So having a goal for yourself can help you kind of work on finding the words you need to study and finding out the steps that you need to take to achieve that goal, right? |
| So for example, if your goal is to write to a company to order a product or something like that, you need to think about the vocabulary words, you need to think about kind of the ways to ask for something politely, to make a request, to provide your own information, and so on, right? |
| So try setting a couple of goals for yourself. |
| Like you say here, like, I'm trying to work on my writing skills, but nothing helps me. |
| Maybe think about what you want to do with your writing skills. |
| That might be one thing that can help you to start. |
| If you're just kind of out of ideas, generally, though, some things that you can do are copying as well. |
| I know that sounds a little bit ridiculous, sounds a little bit crazy, but you can sometimes work on your writing skills just by copying interesting sentences that you find online and news articles and so on, because it forces you to stop and think like, why did they use this grammar point here? |
| What is this vocabulary word? |
| You kind of slow down, right? |
| When we read things, we kind of take it in, and it just kind of gets like really blurred. |
| And we don't know, maybe we don't think carefully about what we're reading. |
| So sometimes writing can be a really helpful way, just copying something can be a helpful way to think carefully about how the sentence is made, and why this vocabulary word was chosen in these kinds of things. |
| So those are two quick things, copying and setting a goal for yourself. |
| The third thing I would suggest is maybe just do a little bit of grammar review. |
| If you're feeling like you don't have a whole lot of confidence in your writing skills, that might be just a little bit of uncertainty about grammar. |
| Like when should I use this grammar point? |
| When should I use that grammar point? |
| So maybe if you feel a little bit unconfident, or if you're feeling like you don't have very much confidence in your writing skills, maybe go back and do a little bit of grammar review and make sure you feel really confident in how those grammar points are used to make sentences. |
| So those would be maybe three places to start for working on your writing skills. |
| And remember, like I said before, you were able to send me this message and communicate your points clearly, so you clearly already have some writing skills. |
| So just have some confidence and try setting some goals for yourself, try copying some things out and try a little bit of grammar review so that you can build more confidence in your writing skills too. |
| So I hope that those three quick tips help you to work on your writing skills and good luck with improving that. |
| Okay, thanks very much for the question. |
| Let's move on to your next question. |
| Next question comes from Dushantha. |
| Hi, Dushantha. |
| Dushantha says, Hey, Alisha, I have a question about the word being. |
| I saw this sentence: |
| Being disappointed sometimes is natural. |
| What is the use of being in a sentence like this? |
| Can you explain? Thanks. |
| Yeah, nice question. |
| Being. |
| So we use being to talk about a condition or a status. |
| We have this ing form, right? |
| This progressive or this continuous form. |
| In your example sentence, being disappointed is natural. |
| So we see after the word being is the word disappointed, right? |
| This is something that expresses emotion. |
| This is an adjective. |
| So I am disappointed. |
| He is disappointed, right? |
| So it's very common to see this kind of pattern being plus adjective, being plus some kind |
| of status or condition adjective. |
| So we use this expression, we use this being plus state or condition to talk about a temporary |
| condition to talk about a temporary status, being disappointed or being happy, being sad, being angry. |
| These refer to temporary conditions, temporary emotional conditions in this way. |
| So this being has to be used in the ing form. |
| Like, be disappointed is grammatically incorrect. |
| For example, be disappointed is natural. |
| This is incorrect. |
| We are expressing a temporary condition. |
| So we do that with the ing form of the verb be and our adjective. |
| So being disappointed is natural. |
| So we can use being in other sentence patterns as well to talk about conditions. |
| So for example, kids sometimes use the expression, he's being annoying or you're being weird. |
| So that means your temporary condition is annoying or your temporary condition is weird. |
| So when we want to talk about a temporary condition or a temporary status that's related to our mental state, our emotions or our behavior, we can use being before the adjective to do that. |
| So a lot of these examples, they follow that same pattern, being plus adjective, being |
| disappointed, he's being weird, you're being annoying and so on. |
| So keep in mind, this also expresses that the status is temporary. |
| So I hope that this helps you understand this use of the word being. |
| Now there are other uses of the word being, but I wanted to look at this one in particular because it can be a little bit confusing, but this is how we use it to talk about those temporary conditions. |
| So I hope that this answers your question. |
| Thanks very much for sending it along. |
| Alright, that is everything that I have for this week. |
| Thank you as always for sending me your great questions. |
| Thanks very much for watching this week's episode of Ask Alisha and I will see you again next time. Bye! |
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