Make and do. To make and to do. Two very simple verbs that you probably never think about (if you’re a native speaker). You probably literally use them every day. Nothing interesting about them really. Just common words that do their job without any fuss, without drawing attention to themselves. Nothing interesting about them at all, is there? Well, you might be amazed to find that actually, I find both words quite interesting indeed.
We’ve already looked at the three main tenses in English: the past, the present, and the future. Or two tenses, if you don’t consider the future a tense. But in addition to tense, there’s another element to referring to time in English, and that’s aspect. There are three different aspects in English, each of which can be combined with a tense (and sometimes another aspect), and they are: simple, continuous, and perfect.
I’ve already covered simple and continuous in writing about tenses, and they’re fairly straightforward (I go, or I’m going), but the perfect aspect is a little trickier. Before getting into the details, have a look at the following pairs of sentences:
Having already looked at how we talk about the present and the past, let’s have a look at how we talk about the future in English. You’re probably feeling confident now: maybe you were initially surprised at the complexity of how we refer to the present and/or the past, but now you’ve got this figured out, and you can easily identify how we refer to the future. OK, well, let’s see.
What does it really mean to be grammatically correct? Is it important? People often tell you that you shouldn’t get bogged down in grammar when learning a language, and should aim for real communication. And I agree about that whole communication thing, but you still need good fundamental grammar to do so. Grammar and natural use of English don’t have to be enemies. Continue reading
English-Language Thoughts 