EnglishClass101

Learn English with FREE Podcasts

Audio Transcript

All About , Lesson 3 - Learn English Grammar

Chihiro Hi everyone, and welcome to the

EnglishClass101.com’s All About English 3, Learn
English Grammar.
Daniel Oh no, not grammar!
Chihiro I’m sure some listeners are having that very same
reaction right about now. But we’re here to tell you –
there’s nothing to worry about. We’re going to describe
to you briefly how the grammar works in English.
Daniel Many of you may struggle with grammar because you
can’t understand when to use what, or you learned it
one way but people say a different thing.
Chihiro Right. Or you may know it in writing, but just can’t get
it when speaking.
Daniel So let’s go back to the basics and try to break things
down just a little bit.
Chihiro First, what we want to do is take a look at the basic
word order of English. Daniel, what would that be?
Daniel SVO
Chihiro Which stands for?
Daniel Subject-verb-object. That means that in an English
1 sentence, the subject generally comes first, followed by
the verb, and then the object. That’s how English
sentences are put together.
Chihiro Can we have an example?
Daniel Sure. I drink coffee. I is the subject, or the one doing
the action, drink is the verb, or the action taking place.
And lastly, coffee is the object that receives the action. I
cannot say I coffee drinks, or drinks coffee I.
Chihiro SVO…
Daniel He catches the ball, We watch the movie… these are all
SVO sentences.
Chihiro You may speak a language that has a similar word
order, which makes English learning a little easier for
you. If you come from a language where the word order
is completely different, then this word order might seem
a bit strange.
Daniel And English generally keeps the subject, with just a
few exceptions.
 EnglishClass101
Learn English with FREE Podcasts

Chihiro Right, avoid that temptation to drop the subject, even if

the listener knows who or what is being talked about.
Daniel Okay, let’s talk about tense now. Chihiro, what is
tense?
Chihiro Tense tells you when something happened in time,
basically it would be past, present or future. Only in the
present tense and for the third person singular in the
present tense is the verb adjusted to fit. In other words
for he/she/it you need to add an s or es depending on the
verb. And of course, remember your irregular verbs.
Watch out for a few exceptions like the be-verb or to
have.
Daniel Ok, so can you give us an example first of the present
tense?
Chihiro Sure, how about I eat lunch or in third person, she eats
lunch.
Daniel Simple as that. And one of the past tense?
Chihiro She brushed her teeth
Daniel Okay and how about one of the future.
Chihiro He will buy shoes.
Daniel Sounds good. Now here’s what makes things a little
complex. The aspects.
Chihiro The aspects are often combined with the tense in
textbooks, therefore you may not have heard about it
before. But what it does is that it describes the nature of
the action.
Daniel Now, listeners, before you throw up you head phones
2 and say what the heck is she talking about, listen just a
little more.
Chihiro Ok, stay with me now. There are 4 aspects. Simple,
perfect, progressive, and perfect progressive. You’ve
probably heard about this before.
Daniel The examples that Chihiro gave of the past, present and
future tenses were all in the simple aspect.
Chihiro Right. Now let’s use the progressive to illustrate what
aspect means. If Daniel says,
Daniel I am brushing my teeth.
Chihiro With the tense in the present, and the aspect in
progressive, then he’s talking about an action that is
happening presently, and currently. If he says,
Daniel I was brushing my teeth
Chihiro With the tense in the past and the aspect in the
progressive, then he’s talking about an action in the
past, that was happening over a duration of time.

LC: ALL_L3_082510 © www. EnglishClass101 - All Rights Reserved 2010-08-25

 EnglishClass101
Learn English with FREE Podcasts

Daniel That makes sense. As long as you understand the tense

and aspect system, you’ll have a head start in keeping
your head clear.
Chihiro Right, and also keep in mind that English has many
irregular verb forms, which you should learn one by
one.
Daniel But the regular verb form rules are easy to remember if
you don’t know them already.
Chihiro Okay good. Let’s talk about something else now... let's
see... how about plural forms? The plural form in
English is made by generally adding an s to the end of
the noun. For example apple becomes apples.
Daniel Right, but of course we have our irregular plurals, such
as person, which becomes people, mouse become
mice…
Chihiro And there are also nouns such as water. I would usually
say cups of water, or glasses of water. But those are all
eventually acquired one by one as well.
Daniel Oh but there’s some good news for our listeners,
English does not have any gender based determiners,
which means that determiners before nouns are all either
a, an or the. You can use pronouns such as he and she
for things if they do have gender, such as for people or
animals, but all other things become it.
Chihiro There are many other aspects to English that you can
learn over time and a lot of practice, but we hope we’ve
given you a general idea of what you’re going to study,
3 or what you’ve already been studying.
Daniel Right, but the key is to stick to it, and you’ll see that
English comes along with such an international culture
and the language will bend according to the people
speaking it.
Chihiro Ok, so hope to see you in our next lesson, which is
about pronunciation.
Daniel See you all soon.

LC: ALL_L3_082510 © www. EnglishClass101 - All Rights Reserved 2010-08-25

Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)