| Hi everybody, welcome back to Ask Alisha, the weekly series where you ask me questions and I answer them. |
| Maybe, it's your first question this week. First question this week comes from Ramzad. Hi Ramzad. |
| Ramzad asked, I have been to London. I have been in London. In these two sentences, is the speaker |
| currently in or out of London? Okay, interesting question. So again, these two pieces we are going |
| to talk about are, I have been to London and I have been in London. Okay, so first they could both be |
| part of another larger sentence and to answer your question, they could both be said in London or out |
| of London. Okay, we need a little bit more information about both of them. So let's break down the first |
| one and what they could be saying here. I have been to London, could be a sentence on its own. |
| In this situation, it means the speaker is just talking about their life experience. I have the |
| experience of visiting London. That's what this means. Like you could say, I have been to London |
| two times. You could say, I have been to London before or I have been to London many times, right? |
| We simply want to talk about our life experience. You could say this in London if you wanted to. |
| Like someone might say, oh, have you been to London before? Is it your first time here? |
| They might say, yes, I have been to London many times. You can say that in London. You could also |
| say the same conversation outside of London. Okay, so both of those are possible, 100% possible. |
| So let's compare this to, I have been in London. This piece is probably just a piece of a sentence. |
| We probably would not say this alone. We need a little bit of extra information here. |
| For example, you might say something like, I have been in London since 2010 or I have been in London |
| for three months, something like that. Or you could say like, I have been in London |
| since I was a child, right? So we probably need some kind of time marker if we are going to use |
| this. So personally, I would probably say this if I am currently in London. That's probably |
| the most likely situation. But it is possible that we might use this sentence outside of London as |
| well. If you are visiting another location, although you live in London, and someone says, |
| how long have you been in London? You might say, I have been in London since 2010. |
| And that's another way to say that I have lived in London since 2010. So you could use this inside |
| London, you could use this outside London as well. Again, what we need here in both of these example |
| sentences is a bit of context, right? So yes, the grammar of these two pieces is very, very similar. |
| We just have those preposition differences to London and in London, but they could both |
| possibly be used inside the city and outside the city and to express different ideas as well. So |
| please try to think a little bit about how you can add more information around these pieces, |
| what you'd like to communicate and what it's possible to communicate with these ideas as well. |
| So this is a good just quick reminder about some differences with the present perfect grammar |
| point. So if you want more information about this, I would highly recommend you do a quick |
| search on the English class 101 YouTube channel or on our website to find more videos and more |
| lessons all about present perfect tense and how you can use it. So thanks very much for sending |
| this interesting question. Let's continue on to the next part. Next question comes from Kwong. |
| Hi Kwong. Kwong asked, if my mobile phone has a low battery, what should I say? Which sentence |
| here is correct? My mobile phone's battery is low. My mobile phone is running out of power. |
| And are there any ways that native speakers often say this that sound kind of natural? |
| Does this sound natural? My mobile phone's battery is out of power. Or my mobile phone's |
| battery power is 5%. And what sentences should I ask to know how much power is left? |
| Okay, great. Great question. I would suggest you just make all of these shorter. So everything that |
| you said was fine. You know, my mobile phone's battery is at 5%. Great. We just make it really, |
| really short. Usually when we say this, we go, ah, my phone is dying. Usually we say this, |
| which means my phone's battery is very, very low. Or we just say, ah, my battery is at 5%. |
| So oftentimes, we just cut mobile phone out of the sentence. Because it's usually very clear |
| when we're holding this, we might just say, ah, like I'm at 5%. Ah, my battery is dying. |
| It's usually very clear from context. If you're texting somebody and you're worried your battery |
| is going to die, you can say, I'm so sorry, my battery might die. Or my battery is at 5%. |
| So use that preposition at there. My battery is at 5%. My battery is at 8%. My battery might die. |
| So you can use all of those. And I would recommend you just take out mobile phone. |
| If you want to be really, really, really specific for some reason, just say phone, |
| like my phone's battery is at 5%. Or my phone's battery is going to die. My phone's battery |
| might die. These are usually the expressions that we use. If you want to ask someone this as a |
| question then, if you want to ask them about the battery percentage on their phone, you can just |
| use a simple question like how much power do you have left? Or how much battery life do you have? |
| There are a couple of different ways that we can ask that. Some really, really quick questions that |
| you could ask if you need to know someone's phone battery information, you could say, |
| what percentage are you at? Or how much battery power do you have left? Or what are you at right |
| now? If you're like gesturing to someone's phone or like how much power do you have as well? So |
| usually we say like how much power or like what percentage are you at? Those kinds of things are |
| probably the most common ones. We usually don't say how much battery percentage does your phone |
| have right now? That's very, very long to say. Instead just say like how's your power if you want |
| to make it really, really easy to do. So those are a few different ways that we can say you know |
| battery power and like battery power related questions too. Usually in my case I will just |
| share my own opinion here. Usually I will just say like my phone is about to die or my battery |
| is dying or my phone is at five percent. I will use those very, very short easy to understand ones |
| that don't have anything to do with like my mobile phone but I just say my battery because usually |
| it's very, very clear that's what I'm talking about. So that's what I would personally recommend |
| for you. So I hope that this gives you some ideas for how you can express this with your mobile |
| phone as well. Thanks for an interesting question. Okay let's move on to the next question. Next |
| question comes from Zachary. Hi Zachary. Zachary asked if I want to talk about an action in the |
| future but I don't know who is going to do the action, how can I explain it? For example, I will |
| check your bags in the lobby or a person will check bags in the lobby. Okay so this is an |
| interesting question because there are a few different ways that we can answer this question. |
| There are a few different ways that we could solve this problem. So if you know that something is |
| going to happen in the future like at your workplace or at your school but you don't know |
| who exactly is going to do that, you could use your second example like in your example sentence. |
| Someone will check your bags in the lobby or someone is going to check your bags in the lobby |
| or a person will check your bags in the lobby. What I would recommend here just to make the |
| sentence very efficient, try a passive sentence structure like bags will be checked in the lobby. |
| Something like that is very very clear like what is going to happen is the focus of the sentence |
| and we don't need to know exactly who is going to do it. So if you find yourself in a situation |
| where you need to describe something that is going to happen but you don't know who is going |
| to do it, so you can use a passive sentence structure like this because one of the uses, |
| one of the key important uses of passive is for when the subject is unknown, when we don't know |
| who is doing the thing. So this is a perfect example of when it's a great idea and a very |
| natural idea to use passive to express that and another benefit of using passive here is that the |
| thing that is happening takes the focus in the sentence instead of the person who is doing the |
| thing. So in this kind of situation like a customer service situation, it's great that the action is |
| taking the focus there and not the person who is going to do the action in the future. So I would |
| definitely recommend if you don't know who is going to do the thing, instead of using like |
| someone will check your bags in the lobby, I would recommend using that passive sentence structure to |
| do that. Bags will be checked in the lobby. Something like that sounds super supernatural. So I hope |
| that this answers your question and I hope that this is a good reminder to go and do a little bit |
| of review of passive sentence structures as well. They are super super helpful. So thanks very much |
| for sending this interesting question. Great that is everything that I have for this week. So 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 next time. Bye! |
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