Even at my age I have the ability to climb trees. Many English language learners will make a sentence using ‘to be able to’ when there are much simpler ways of describing our abilities! Let’s pretend for a moment that one of my skills is tree climbing.  Therefore I have the ability to climb trees  (or I am able to climb trees).  But in conversation it is much easier to use the word ‘can’ in sentences to describe abilities.  Try to use ‘I can’ do something rather than ‘I have the ability to’ do something and the sentence becomes much easier. I can climb trees.    (present tense)When I was younger…

It had been a difficult time for drinkers during COVID. They had been drinking with masks on! How do we use the perfect tense to indicate whether an action is still in progress? There are two ‘perfect’ tenses in English, the past and the present.  With the present perfect we use the ‘have’ followed by a verb in the past form, e.g. I have walked, or I have been (or  ‘he/she/it has moved’ if using the 3rd-person singular).   With this form, we are usually describing something that happened in the past, but is connected with the present.   So it is an action that is probably still in progress, or only…

Excuse me, can you tell me how to get to the racecourse from here? There are many ways to ask for directions in English.  The verb ‘to be able to’ is probably the easiest, but is this ambiguous?  Let’s take a look at some options. The verb ‘to be able to’ is an oddity in English, because we just say ‘can’ in the present tense, which is a lot quicker.  For example, ‘I can play the piano’ means the same as ‘I am able to play the piano’, or ‘I have the ability to play the piano’. When it come to questions though, there is a possible ambiguity in using…

When walking under the cliffs, you should always ….…  beware of falling rocks    ?…. watch out for falling people ?…. mind the gap ? This is a important safety announcement!   There are several ways to announce the presence of danger in english.   You will have probably seen or heard the famous warnings on the London underground – MIND THE GAP – which alert you to the danger of the gap between the train and the platform.   It seems that these gaps only exist in Britain, but warning signs exist all over the world.  The verb ‘to mind’, can alert us to the possibility of danger, and is used in the…

We often go down to the beach and command the sea to retreat. Long ago there a king called King Canute.  English legend has it that he was so convinced of his Regal powers that he sat on his throne on the beach at low tide, and told the sea not to rise.   “Back Sea !” he commanded as the sea lapped around his ankles.  The sea continued to rise, and the king’s desperate attempt to rule it by repeating “Back Sea, Back Sea!”, were of course doomed to failure. The legend ends with King Canute drowning at high tide.   In reality he probably gave up before being fully submerged. …

I learnt how to fly yesterday.  Yesterday I learned flying. Which one’s right? It’s great that we have loads of regular verbs in English, because once we know the rules on how to conjugate one regular verb we can conjugate all the others.  e.g. I walk, I walked, I’m walking, etc.  But that would be too easy for the foreigners, which is why the English language also uses irregular verbs.  It keeps people like me in business! By their nature, because irregular verbs are irregular, you will just have to learn the ones you use the most often and get used to their irregularities.  It’s no use me explaining the…

I can’t take your call at the moment, because I’m dancing in the sea It is a common law of the universe that events can only happen in the present moment.  But in speech, we are able to describe them in the past, the present or the future, which is why languages have developed tenses to sort this out!  For the moment (now!) let us have a look at how the present tense can be used. With English there are two main ways to describe things in the present tense.  For example with this picture of two people dancing in the sea. They are dancing in the sea.    (present continuous)They…

“My giraffe has had an operation, and now must wear some protection”. Why do we use ‘has had’ here rather than just ‘had’? Which of the following sentences do you think makes more sense? My giraffe had an operation, and now must wear some protection.My giraffe has had an operation, and now must wear some protection. Actually they both work equally well in this case, but only because we have added more information about the time of this event (now). Without this time information, the statements would be ambiguous: My giraffe had an operation– when was this, recently or years ago? My giraffe has had an operation– implies that the…

“There weren’t many people in London yesterday” When it comes to describing amounts of things, there a number of ways in English. But when we describe uncountable things there are no strict rules to follow, so how do we decide on which one to use to get our meaning across. Consider the following sentences and see if you can decide on the amount of people that we are describing: There weren’t many people in London yesterday. There were many people in London yesterday. There were a few people in London yesterday. There were a number of people in London yesterday. There were loads of people in London yesterday. There weren’t…