Education Matters

Question from Cathy in Canada:

Can we say I arrive to work at 9 o’clock or do we need to use “at”? Also can we say I was late to class or do we need to use “in”? Thank you.

Answer:

Hi Cathy, thanks for your question. The worst thing about prepositions is that there are no nice simple rules to let you know how to use them with certain words. Your question, Cathy, demonstrates this. In most cases you just have to learn the prepositions that go with certain words. Let’s look at your two verbs : to arrive and to be late.

‘Arrive‘ can be followed by several prepositions depending on what is following, look at these:

• I arrived for work in the morning. (arrive + for where ‘work’ is a task or job to undertake)
• I arrived at work in the morning. (arrive + at where ‘work’ is a place)
• I arrived in time to see her. (arrive + in time where there is a temporal aspect)

So, in terms of your first question, I would say that you can use ‘for‘ or ‘at‘ depending on what sense you want to give ‘work’ (a place or a task).

Your second question with ‘to be late‘ is a bit different as I don’t think either of your options is correct.

• I was late for class.

is the correct usage … late for something.

Hope that’s helped!

Question from Khadija in Morocco:

What is the difference between ‘hear’ and ‘listen’?

Answer:

Hi, Khadija. Thank’s for your question, I’m sure that the difference between ‘listen‘ and ‘hear‘ is not clear for a lot of English language learners.
Let’s have a look at them:

Listen is used to talk about or describe sounds that are being made around you and which you are making an active effort to focus on. For example:

• Did you listen to the news last night on television?
• She was listening to music on her iPod when I walked in.
• Mike listened to his teacher and then repeated what she had said.
• ‘Just listen to yourself! You talk such rubbish!’, she said angrily.

Note that ‘listen‘ is nearly always followed by ‘to‘ – you listen to some sound.

Just to repeat an important point; listening is active – that is you are making an active effort to listen to the sound.

Hear is used for sounds that come to our ears, but we do not, unlike listen, need to be actively engaged in trying to listen to the sound – it can just come to your ears! For example:

• Mike heard a bang in the night which woke him up.
• She heard someone screaming and called the police.
• I heard a loud explosion and then the building collapsed.

Note that ‘hear’ is not followed by ‘to’. But, to make it a little more complicated let’s look at this conversation:

• ‘Did you hear what I said’, asked John’s father.
• ‘No, I wasn’t listening‘, replied John.
• ‘Well, if you don’t listen you will never hear what I am telling you!’.

Now, that last sentence seems a little confused but also shows cleary how the two verbs are used – in this case, if John does not make an active effort to listen he will not hear his father’s advice (even if he may have heard sounds his father was making!)

Where hear and listen may seem very close is when you hear something like:

• Did you hear about Jane? She got married!
• I heard about the accident but I didn’t see it.

This is when information is passed to you from another source without you necessarily seeking it – in this case note that ‘hear’ is followed by ‘about’ – ‘to hear about’ something, someone or some action or event.

So, you can hear something without wanting to, but you can only listen to something intentionally.

Question from English4Today member Gireesh in the United Arab Emirates:

Which one of the following sentences is correct having the meaning like “cannot accept…” ?
1) We regret to accept your letter…..
2) We regret not to accept your letter……

Hi Gireesh, I’m afraid neither one of your examples is correct. The verb ‘regret‘ is not followed by the infinitive form of the verb (e.g. ‘to accept’) but more usually by the gerund form (-ing) or by a relative pronoun such as ‘that‘. Of course, another problem here is that the verb for ‘regret accepting‘ does not mean the same as ‘cannot accept‘. Let’s look at how we can use regret + accept to give the sense you want – we’ll have to add a little more to your sentences to do this:

• We regret not being able to accept your letter …

Now, we are using an equivalent of can (meaning having the ability to do something) which is ‘to be able to‘. We then need to make that negative not being able to and then follow that with the verb accept. Of course, you may find it easier to use this variation with the relative pronoun ‘that’ :

• We regret that we can’t accept your letter.

Or, try changing the verb ‘regret‘ into an adverb:

• Regrettably, we cannot accept your letter.

So you can see Gireesh, there’s more than one way to approach this but you have to know how to put the pieces together. I’d suggest that you login to the members’ section of English4Today and go through some of the exercise in the grammar section and also take a look at the relative pronoun, verb formation and sentence structure sections of the English4Today Online Grammar.

Question from English4Today member Khadija in Morocco

When can we use “how about” and when can we use “what about”?

Hi Khadija. This is another one of those situations, and we’ve discussed quite a few of them here, where you can use the two phrases interchangeably:

Both can be used to make suggestions.

• How about going to see a movie tonight?
• What about going to see a movie tonight?

Or, in the case of a non-suggestive question:

• Is Mike going with you? How about Pete?
• Is Mike going with you? What about Pete?
• Have you finished cleaning your room? How about your homework?
• Have you finished cleaning your room? What about your homework?

So, use either and the earth won’t open up and swallow you!

Simple past : Negative form

To form the negative of a sentence in the Simple Past you need to use the past form of the auxiliary verb ‘do’ – that is ‘Forming the Negative of the simple past

To form the negative of a sentence in the Simple Past you need to use the past form of the auxiliary verb ‘do’ – that is ‘did‘ + ‘not‘ + the infinitive of the verb you want to use. For example – I did not play.

We often contract did and not into one word – didn’t – for example:

• I didn’t play
• They didn’t play
• She didn’t play

Notice that did and didn’t are invariable – they do not change no matter which pronoun you use.

The Same rule applies for irregular verbs:

Let’s look at leave,come and teach:

• I didn’t leave
• We didn’t come
• He didn’t teach

Here’s an example with the very common irregular verb ‘to go’

• She went to school yesterday.

Becomes in the negative:

• She did not go to school yesterday.

Remember that ‘went’ is the past form of ‘go‘. I went I didn’t go

Regular verbs:

Very simple!

• She talked to Martin last week.
• She did not talk to Martin last week.

You try…
Make the sentences with the negative Simple Past

• They studied English in 2006.
• Tim played golf when he was at university.

(answers below)

Answers:

1. They did not study ..
2. Tim did not play…