English for the Business World [Business]

Expand your vocabulary with our core 2000w ebook it's free and packed with essential Expressions that you'll use on a daily basis start building your vocabulary today click the link in the description below to download your free English ebook before it's gone hi everybody welcome back to ask Alicia the weekly series where you ask me questions and I answer them maybe let's get to your first question this week first Question this week comes from s Iman Zahra no I hope I said your name right hi say say says hi Alicia how can we use sort of

in a sentence I hope you answer my question Okay cool so let's talk about a couple different uses of sort of the first use I want to talk about is using sort of when we respond to someone when someone asks us a question they are trying to confirm something with us like they're trying to make sure something is correct and they're a little bit correct But not 100% correct we can use sort of as a response to that so for example if someone says to you are you tired you look kind of tired today you

might say sort of maybe you're a little bit tired yes but maybe you're also just feeling kind of down so if you want to express that someone is a little bit correct but a little bit incorrect you can use sort of here's another situation where you might use sort of in this way imagine you're at work and you're in a situation Where you need to make a prediction about something and many people are sharing their different ideas one person might say to you so do you think that the company is going to improve a lot

next quarter you might say sort of which means that's a little bit true but a little bit not true so sort of can be used as a response in this way to mean that something is in some ways correct and in some ways not quite correct so when you use sort of as a response in This way you should expect to share some more information about your opinion so if you respond to someone's question with sort of you should probably indicate you should probably share which parts are correct or that you agree with in the

situation and which parts are different from what the other person has suggested or asked about so in the first situation I mentioned maybe the person feels tired and a little bit depressed or maybe they have a cold as well so for Example you might respond sort of when someone asks if you're tired you might say h I'm just a little bit tired a little bit depressed and I'm also a little bit sick so this expresses the full picture this is one way we can use sort of in my second example when someone says do you

think the company is going to improve a lot next quarter and you say sort of you might follow that up by saying well I think we're going to improve in some parts of the company but Other parts of the company might still need a little bit of work so sort of helps kind of introduce this feeling so this is one use of sort of let's talk about a different use of sort of this is the same as kind of or type of so we use this when we are talking about a selection of things or

maybe multiples of something so for example if you go to an ice cream store you might go to select your ice cream when you order and you think to yourself hm what sort of Ice cream do I want to get today so sort of can be used in the same way as kind of what of ice cream should I get in American English we tend to use what kind of ice cream should I get today we would use kind of in these kinds of situations but you may also hear people using sort of in this

manner as well so this is an everyday situation you might also hear this in work or in more formal situations like what sort of restaurant were you thinking for the meeting Tonight we could also use kind of or type of in this sentence and it means the same thing what kind of restaurant were you thinking for tonight or what type of restaurant were you thinking for tonight so all of these kind of type of and sort of can be used to talk about one item in a category or one thing from a group of possible

things so this is another use of sort of so I hope this helps you understand the different uses of sort of we can use it as a response To show that something is a little bit true and a little bit not true and we can use it to mean kind of or type of thanks very much for the question okay let's move on to your next question next question comes from o hi oel oel says I always confuse might and must can you explain the difference sure yeah might and must let's do a quick review

of these two so let's start with must we use must and must notot for official rules and for very strong advice so the Example that I always like to give when I talk about using must is about showing your passport at the airport there's often a sign that says You must show your passport to the immigration officer so there's usually some kind of sign some kind of rule at the airport or in other official places where you show documentation that says You must show this document so must is used to show official rules to show

these kinds of formal things that we need to follow we Can also use the negative here for example you must not wear casual clothes to the office so this expresses a formal rule in the workplace for example must can be used to Express these kinds of rules we also use musk to express very strong personal advice for example a doctor might say to a patient who is a smoker you must stop smoking it's bad for your health something like that or you must not eat so much junk food this is very bad for your health

so we can Use the positive and the negative so must has these two uses official rules formal rules at work at school maybe in public places and for strong personal advice now let's compare this to the word might so we use might to talk about things that have some possibility of happening or a condition that is possible this is in the positive or we talk about a condition that maybe Isn't So possible in the negative for example I might go to the beach this weekend Shows there's some possibility of going to the beach this weekend

it is possible it's not 100% generally for might I think about it as like a 40 to 60% chance maybe maybe 20 to 50% the possibility also kind of depends a little bit on the sound of your voice for example if you say I might go to the beach this weekend it sounds different than I might go to the beach this weekend might sounds a little bit less certain so we can use the tone of our Voice to affect the level of possibility we want to express we can also use this in the negative to

express something that has a low chance of happening like M I might not go to the beach this weekend so that sounds like you had a plan to go to the beach but you are thinking it's not going to happen or there's a possibility it's not going to happen so this is the key difference between must and might might is used for things that have a possibility of Happening or not happening and must is used for rules and to talk about strong advice so I hope this helps you understand the differences between these two words

thanks very much okay let's move on to your next question next question comes from Jose hi Jose Jose says all are there any other ways to sayou welcome I saw in a movie Once someone said cheers after helping someone can we use this word yes great question okay so let's talk about some Different ways to say you are welcome cheers is one way to do this yes we don't really use cheers so much in American English but you might hear this used in British English you might hear this in Australian English so it depends a

little bit on where the person is from generally we don't say it in American English but we'll understand we don't have a problem with that so cheers is another way to say you're welcome for something here are a couple more Expressions you can use you can say no problem no problem or it's no problem so that shows n everything's fine for me so you can use no problem in casual situations or when you're close with the other person you can also use no sweat no sweat so again this is good for a casual situation oh

thanks so much for helping me move the sofa yeah no sweat so no sweat sweat refers to the sweat our body makes when we feel stressed or when we feel hot yeah so when we say no Sweat it means please don't stress out about asking me for this so it's a very casual very friendly expression to use no sweat another expression that you might hear a lot is no worries no worries like thanks for helping me move my sofa yeah no worries that sounds very friendly as well you'll probably hear that in other dialects of

English from around the world too another one you can use is don't mention it don't mention it so don't mention it makes it sound like Don't even talk about it that's not even something you need to talk about of course I would help you that's kind of the feeling here don't mention it so if you're in a more formal situation you could say something like the pleasure is all mine so we sometimes use this when we introduce ourselves to somebody else it's a pleasure to meet you H the pleasure is all mine so this is

a very formal way to introduce yourself to somebody and also to say you're welcome To somebody you can also use the Expression happy to help happy to help or happy to be of service if you're in a customer service situation this means I am happy to help you at this time or I am happy to be at your service in this time if you say happy to be of service to someone that is not a customer it will sound kind of strange so don't really use this one with your friends unless you want to make

a joke so you can use happy to help happy to be of Service and the pleasure is all mine in more formal situations depending on the needs of the situation so those are all different ways to say you're welcome I hope that this answers your question thanks very much for sending it along okay that is everything that I have for this week so thank you as always for sending your great questions remember you can send them to me at English class 101.com asken Alicia you can also find a link in The description for this page

so check that out there if you like this lesson please please please don't forget to give it a thumbs up and subscribe to the channel if you haven't already also check out us out at englishclass101.com for some other things that can help you with your English studies hi everybody welcome back to ask Alicia the weekly series where you ask me questions and I answer them maybe let's get to your first question this week first question This week comes from elas Haba hello elas elas says what's the difference between look and look like and can I

use usually and sometimes and always with present continuous okay you have two questions here let's break down the first one look versus look like or looks like let's talk about looks like first or look like as well so when we use the Expression A looks like B it means a has the same visual or similar visual as B so that means the appearances are Similar he looks like that guy or she looks like an owl so we're comparing the appearances of two things when we use a looks like be when we use that pattern so

this is what we use that expression look like or looks like to mean when we use the verb look however it just means to direct your eyes or to move your eyes in a specific way so for example to look at the camera means to move your eyes toward the camera to shift your focus toward the camera so it means to move Your eyeballs in a certain direction we don't use look as a verb to talk about similar appearances we do however use look as a noun to talk about one's outfit or one's style for

the day so you might see a sentence online in like a fashion magazine for example that says something like get this look at this store now so this look this use of look refers to someone's coordination in their clothes for the day so that means usually the shirt they're wearing the Skirt or pants or whatever their shoes their accessories and so on look as a noun refers to someone's appearance in terms of their clothing and their accessories so when you see something that says like get this look or I love your look it refers to

someone's style their appearance in terms of their clothes or maybe as well their hairstyle for the day so when someone says oh I love your look or I love that look it means that they like the way you appear They like your appearance or they like your style in some way so as you can see there are a few different ways that we use look and looks like so again to recap looks like is used in the pattern a looks like B which means that a has an appearance similar to be we use look as

a verb to mean to focus our eyes and move our eyes towards something and we also use look as a noun to refer to someone's style or to their appearance in terms of their clothing and their Accessories for the day so I hope this answers this question let's move on to a quick answer about your second question you asked if we can use words like always and sometimes and usually with the present continuous so I think your question is if we can make sentence patterns like for example I am usually working or I am sometimes

working or I am always working and so on okay so the short answer to your second question if I understand it correctly is that when We use words like always and sometimes and usually we're typically talking about them in terms of a schedule right and we use present tense not the continuous form to talk about our schedules like I always work in this office on this day or I usually go to the gym on Saturday or I sometimes eat meat for breakfast whatever your sentence is when we use these words we tend to use them

to talk about schedules and so on there are some situations Where you may see a continuous verb form used however and we'll probably see this most of the time when we use always to make complaints so what does this look like for example my coworker is always making irritating sounds or my friends are always coming late to the parties so we use this always plus the ing verb form to make complaints sometimes so when somebody has done something that's irritating that's annoying to us or when we're tired of some kind of behavior you Might hear

people using the always plus ing verb form so in my earlier examples my cooworker is always making irritating noises or my friends are always coming late to parties so you might hear it used with always in these cases but we don't don't use the ing form with words like usually or sometimes like my friends are sometimes coming late to parties is not something that we use we would also not do this with usually like my cooworker is usually making strange Noises we don't use that either so to recap yes you may see the ing verb

form used with always but you probably won't see it used with usually or sometimes so I hope that this helps answer your questions both of them thanks very much for sending them along okay let's move on to your next question for this week question comes from Yasser Alexander hi Yasser yaser says what's the difference between drugstore and Pharmacy and when can I use them okay great question yeah So I'll speak from experience with American stores this may be a little bit different depending on the country but generally a drugstore is a store that offers medicines

and those kinds of things like you can pick up a prescription medicine from your doctor at the drugstore but the drugstore also has other household goods so for example like soap and shampoo and things for the shower or the bath or maybe hair dye or things that you use to wash your face All of these kind of personal care Goods you can find at a drugstore generally a pharmacy on the other hand is a place where you go just to get medicine if you get a prescription from the doctor so if you receive some kind

of medicine from your doctor you take that to a pharmacy and you get the medicine there sometimes there is a pharmacy inside a drugstore so if you go to a drugstore in a big city there might be like a pharmacy desk or a pharmacy reception window somewhere Inside the drugstore so if that helps you you can kind of think of the pharmacy as like a department in the drugstore sometimes you'll see a pharmacy that's completely separate from the drugstore as well it just depends on the pharmacy it depends on the store but this is the

key difference we would use them in the same way in a sentence like I need to go to the drug store to pick up some things for the shower or I need to go to the pharmacy to pick up my Medicine we would use them in the same position they have the same part of speech so to recap a drugstore is a more General store where you can go for medicine as well as lots of other everyday household and Body Care things and a pharmacy is a place that you go to pick up medicine so

I hope this helps answer your question thanks very much for sending it along okay let's move on to your next question next question comes from Hima jaki hi hea I hope I Said your name correctly hea says I'm good at writing emails but not able to speak confidently do you have any tips for that yeah so if you are good at writing emails maybe that's because you write emails a lot so maybe if you are at work or if you're at school and you're writing a lot of emails that means you're getting a lot of

practice writing emails right and that's great that's a super super great skill to have if you're pretty good at writing emails But you want to work on your speaking skills maybe a good place to start is just by trying to read your emails out loud if you want to practice something else of course you can try reading other texts out loud or try shadowing exercises with TV or with YouTube videos or with other media So based on your message it sounds like you feel pretty confident in your email writing skills which is great but it's

probably because you have lots of practice writing emails So make sure to build your speaking skills you give yourself lots of chances to build your speaking skills you can do this by reading Out Loud by shadowing you can do this by participating in conversations if you have a conversation group you can find a partner that you can practice your English language skills with whatever so it sounds like if you have lots of practice you can get better at something as you are able to do already with your email writing so Just make sure that you're

creating opportunities for yourself to practice your speaking skills as well as your writing skills this can even just be talking to yourself at home just getting comfortable saying things and expressing yourself in English so that would be my quick advice for you if you have some pretty good writing skills already make sure to also use some of your time to work on your other skill sets as well so take some of that energy and put it Towards your speaking skill development too all right thanks very much for sending this question along I hope that helps

a little bit all right that is everything that I have for this week thank you as always for sending your great questions remember you can send them to me at englishclass101.com asky Alicia there is also a link in the description so check that out too if you like this video please please please don't forget to give it a thumbs up and Subscribe to the channel if you haven't already also check us out at englishclass101.com for some other things that can help you with your English studies thanks very much for watching this week's episode of askala

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you'll start speaking from your very first lesson if you enjoyed these tips hit the like button share the video with anyone who's trying to learn a new language and subscribe to our Channel we release new videos every week I'll see you next time bye hi everybody welcome back to ask Alicia the weekly series where you ask me questions and I answer them maybe Let's get to your first question this week first question this week comes from Marvin James mouro hi Marvin Marvin says hello I am from the Philippines my question is with regard to the

use of an and a in a sentence regularly we use an or a depending on the next vowel used for example an apple a basketball game but how about for example hour which has a vowel sound when you speak it but is spelled with a consonant yeah great question so the question here is about Using an and a when you have words that are spelled with consonant sounds but that are pronounced with vowels great point so to refresh everyone's memory we use an before vowel sounds and uh before consonant sounds this is the rule and

the key in this rule is that sound is what's really important so in your example you mentioned for example a basketball game so a basketball game we have that b sound that's a consonant sound in your other example our yes it Does start with an H on paper which is a consonant however when we speak the sound we say ow right this is a vowel sound and this is what really matters this doesn't mean that every word that starts with H needs to take the an article we need to to think about how the word

is pronounced for example if we take the word history which begins with an H we actually have to use a before it not an because the H in history is pronounced as a consonant this is not True in your example of our so yes as you've suggested we do need to use that an article before words that have a vowel sound so when you're writing something and you're not sure whether you should use a or a before the word you need to take a second and try pronouncing that word does it begin with a vowel

sound or does it begin with a consonant sound if it starts with a consonant sound use a if it starts with a vowel sound use an so our is a perfect Example of this keep an eye out for this when you're writing I hope that this answers your question thanks very much okay let's move on to your next question next question comes from Wes hi Wes lless Wes says hi Alicia I'm I'm Wes lless from Benin in West Africa Benin is a french-speaking country but I work in English on an American program with American colleagues

we often use the words checking and checkin and sometimes checking in I'm confused I know in one Of your last lessons you explained the meaning of checkin but could you talk a little more about the difference between them sure okay so our Focus words here are checking check in and checking in yeah we can use these three in very similar ways for example you might hear somebody say I'm just checking or I'm just checking on this thing which means I am currently in the process of confirming something so we can use checking and confirming in

work and in Study situations to mean kind of the same thing I want to confirm something or I want to check the status of something I want to learn any updates about something so we can use checking to do that so you might get a message from someone that says just checking this thing or just checking on this thing which means I would like to get an update about this thing you also mentioned check in to check in also means to get an update you can think of This is a set phrase a phrasal verb

to check in means in this case to get an update about something so I want to check in about this topic I want to check in with you so we typically follow check in with with to mean a person I want to check in with you I want to check in with him I want to check in with the project manager or we use checkin with about for example I want to check in about the project status or I want to check in about this or that so We typically follow check in with one of

those two words about or with finally the last one that you asked about was checking in you might see this used just as a short phrase in message somewhere like hey your name checking in which means I just want to say hi or I just want to send a message to remind you that I exist that's kind of the feel of checking in so it sounds like maybe you haven't heard from someone for a while and you want to see how they are or how They're doing you want a status update maybe you haven't heard

from that person for a while and you'd like a status update or you'd like to get some information about what they're doing or what they're working on you might get a message that says hey so and so just checking in I want to see what you're up to these days or how is the project so we use checking in to do that so checking check in and checking in all refer to this idea of getting an update About something or getting an update from someone yes of course there are other uses of checking and check

in too we can also use check as a verb to refer to confirming that something is correct for example can you check this paperwork or I need to check this paperwork or I had my paperwork checked and it seems it was okay so this has kind of that feeling of confirming something like confirming that everything is correct so we also have this use of check which Means making sure things are correct it depends on the context so you need to take a look at the kind of messages you're getting from your co-workers or from other

people in your life to determine whether they want an update from you or whether they're talking about making sure that something is correct aside from these topics of course check-in can also be used to refer to for example arriving at a hotel or arriving at an airport to confirm Your registration or to confirm your reservation there for example let's check in at the airport two hours before the flight or I checked in at my hotel this morning so these words do have lots of different uses as you can see but depending on the context you

can quickly understand which one hopefully your co-workers or the other people in your life are talking about so I hope that this helps clarify some of the differences between check check in and So on I'll talk about one more use of check that might be kind of surprising we use check as a noun it means a form of payment where someone can write an amount on a piece of paper and give it to another person as payment for something or as a gift as well this is called a check so this is a noun we

don't say I'm checking you or something like that we can use this as a noun only as a verb phrase we say I'm going to write a check for something so this is Perhaps a very American form of payment something that's used in the US to pay for things like to pay for rent perhaps or to provide someone with a lot of money if they need to make a big purchase so this is another type of check that is used in American English and this might not be available in your country or it might not

be something that's used a lot in your country but this is a very common type of payment in the USA so you might not run into this Word so much but in case you do that's what it means so I hope that this answer covers a lot of different uses of check in verb and noun forms thanks very much for sending along an interesting question and good luck with your work okay let's go on to your next question next question comes from Marano hello Maru I hope I said your name right Maru says hi Alicia

when do we use No and when we use not I'm very confused okay well let's just break this down into Very very simple sentence structures of course we can use no to reject something to say I don't want that or I don't like that right we cannot use not in this way we have to use no to reject something or say we do not want something but when we make larger sentences like for example with an adjective or with nouns and so on we need to think about the differences between these two words let's start

with not we use not with adjectives for example we could make a Sentence like I am happy right or I am sad to make this sentence negative we use not before the adjective for example I am not happy or I am not sad we cannot use no in this way that would become I am no happy or I am no sad this is completely incorrect we cannot use no in this way so we use not before adjective Ives to make them negative we also use not with verbs for example he eats dinner every day okay

great but if we want to make that a negative sentence we Would say he does not eat dinner every day we use not along with verbs to make the verb negative we cannot use no in this way for example he does know eat dinner is incorrect so we use not with adjectives and with verbs to make them negative when we use no we use it typically with nouns when we want to talk about how much of something we have we use this when we want to talk about having zero of something for example if I

want to express that I have Cookies in my house I would say I have cookies in my house right but if I wanted to express zero cookies in my house I would say I have no cookies in my house so no comes before for the noun cookies in this case to express that I have zero of something I could not say I have not cookies in my house this is grammatically incorrect another example of this might be I have time like I have time for my projects or I have time for my hobbies if I

want to express I have Zero time I would use no before time I have no time I have no time for my projects or I have no time for my hobbies this expresses I have zero time I cannot use not in this position I have not time is grammatically incorrect so to recap really quickly we use not to make verbs negative and to make adjectives negative and we use no to reject things or say that we do not want them and we also use no before nouns to express zero of something so I hope that

This quick guide helps you understand the basics of the differences between no and not thanks very much for the question all right that is everything that I have for this week thank you as always for sending your great questions remember you can send them to me at englishclass101.com asky Alicia there's also a link in the description so you can find it there too to send me your questions if you like this lesson please don't forget to give it a thumbs up and Subscribe to this channel if you haven't already also check us out at englishclass101.com

for some other things that can help you with your English studies thanks very much for watching this week's episode of askc Alicia and I will see you again soon bye being in Planes Trains and buses can be an uncomfortable experience for many people often there are small cramped seats not many things to do and sometimes the experience is even scary Despite this you often see people working in these environments how do they do it in this video you'll learn three tips to help you be able to study anywhere the first one is adjust to your

environment most of us would probably agree that a plane or a bus is not the best place to study these environments are usually dark and cramped and you may have a crying baby next to you but the point is there's never a perfect time or Place to learn the reality is that a lot of us use Transportation every day we Face environments that are typically considered unsuitable for study trains get crowded you can't do much in your car even in your own home you'll get distracted by the TV or Facebook or something and some days

you'll be sick you'll be tired you'll have dinner plans once you accept that there's rarely such a thing as the perfect time to study you can start thinking about how to make the Best of the environment you have at that time for example if you ride a train you might stand up for a long time it might be difficult to focus on a book in a case like this you can use the Innovative language 101 app to study listen to the audio lessons or do the word of the day by email there are ways that

you can learn in just about any situation the point is you need to adjust your study method to your environment So take a look at your day and see where your time goes are there any gaps in between your activities where you feel like you can't study and is there any way you can adjust two take advantage of your limited time we've surveyed tons of Learners over the years and every year we find that the number one reason most people don't learn a language is they say they have no time but there's a chance you

May have some spare time to study you might just not recognize it yet let's say you commute for 30 minutes every day you can ask yourself how do I put these next 30 minutes to use or if you finish work at 7 p.m. and spend an hour doing nothing you can think about what you might do in that hour that will help you work towards your goals you don't have to use all 30 minutes of your commute or the full hour of your free time but you can definitely fit in a Short lesson or take

other steps towards your goals three have an on and off mindset when you work it can be really helpful to have a kind of onoff switch for when it's time to work and time to rest you can apply the same idea to your language studies when it's time to study you can focus solely on that you don't spend time thinking about doing it you just do it it doesn't matter where you are or what kind of studying you're Doing as long as it gets done and when you're done with a lesson reward yourself it can

be as simple as telling yourself great job when you're finished with the time you promised yourself for studies feel free to focus on the next thing in this video we cover a few tips to help you study no matter where you are or how much time you have it's all about having the right mindset and for even more ways to study check out our complete language learning Program sign up for your free lifetime account by clicking on the link in the description get tons of resources to have you speaking in your target language and if

you enjoyed these tips hit the like button share the video with anyone who's trying to learn a new language and subscribe to our Channel we release new videos every week I'll see you next time bye hi everybody welcome back to ask Alicia the weekly series where you ask me questions and I answer Them baby okay let's get to your first question this week first question this week comes from ja Krishna hi Ja Krishna ja Krishna says in school we call teachers other names like Madam or Miss what is the difference between teacher Miss Madam and

other words yeah it's a good question in American English in schools in the US that are high school and below so like junior high school or Elementary School we do not call our teachers teacher we don't use that title For our teachers we use Mister for male teachers or we use Miss and last name and Miss's and last name for female teachers the difference between Miss and Madam and Ms is usually related to whether or not the woman is married so if a woman is not married usually we use miss or if you're not sure

we use Miss if the woman is married we use misses Madam however is something that we don't really use in settings like these we use Madam in service situations usually so We use this particularly in like luxurious settings so imagine going to like a really expensive hotel and you meet staff at the hotel they address you if you're a woman or your female companion with Madam so that's like a high kind of um respect term so it's kind of an old fashioned term as well we don't use it so much in everyday speech in the

US Madam but you might hear it in kind of like these luxurious expensive situations another situation where you Might hear Madam used in US English is in situations relating to official positions like in the government so there's a position for example where a a woman holding the position might be called Madam job title so for example Madam Secretary there is a government position called secretary of state and if a woman holds that job we might call her Madam Secretary when referring to her official duties so that's a very specific case where we would use Madam

In relationship to someone's job but generally when we're talking to somebody uh in other fields of work we do not use this title if you are going to school in the US and you're going to high school or below just use Mr or Ms or Ms plus the last name for your teacher if however you're going to college or university in the States you should use Professor if your instructor is a professor or doctor if your instructor has achieved that level of Education if They have their PHD uh many professors or instructors prefer to be

called doctor so should use that title of course some professors also like to keep things casual and they say please use just my first name or please use my last name uh whatever so pay attention to how your instructor uh prefers to be called and just use that okay thanks very much for the question let's move on to your next question next question comes from franois luzy hi franois FR says hi Alicia thanks a lot for your videos could you please explain the difference between remember remind and recall from a French follower sure so remember

and recall have the same meaning they both refer to thinking of something being able to think of something that happened in the past so that could be a conversation it could be a person a place whatever so remember and recall both have that meaning to be able to think of that the difference between Them though is that recall sounds much more formal much more polite we don't use call so much in everyday conversation in everyday conversation we use remember some examples I can't remember that phone number do you recall the name of that restaurant I

can't believe you remembered my birthday so recall and remember do have the same meaning yes but in everyday life we use remember much more often so please try to use remember if you want to sound More polite choose recall remind however is a bit different from recall and remember to remind means to cause someone to remember so you give someone information like to refresh their memory they know about something and you want to tell them again so to cause them to remember some information for example can you remind me about tomorrow's lunch meeting you remind

me of someone I knew a long time ago did someone remind you it was my birthday okay so I hope that This helps you understand the differences between recall remind and remember thanks very much for the question okay let's move on to your next question next question comes from win Min hi win Min win minu says hello Alicia what is the difference between Trust and Believe okay um trust means to be able to rely on something we feel confident about our understanding of something or someone so we can trust a person or we can trust

a situation or we Can trust an object so to trust means you're able to rely on that thing for example it's important to work with people you trust this computer crashes a lot I don't trust it to believe however refers to having faith in something like you are confident that something is true so we use believe a lot when talking about religion or when listening to people's stories like when we believe a story we are confident the story is true when we don't believe a story we are not Confident the story is true so you

may hear believe used in the common expression I can't believe it which we use a lot when we feel shocked or surprised so depending on the speaker's intonation this can mean they actually do believe it but they're very surprised or they really don't believe it so let's hear a couple of examples I believe hard work is important for success I got a huge promotion I can't believe it so in the second example there that kind of Excited voice shows that the speaker is really surprised and really excited and even though they say I can't believe

it they're just kind of expressing shock so it's a true situation yes that condition is true but they want to express their shock in an excited way so I hope that this helps you understand the differences between Trust and Believe thanks very much for question okay let's move on to your next question next question comes from ma hi Ma ma says can I say I don't give a damn in an English lesson um I would not say this no this sounds very aggressive and rather rude so if you want to communicate that you don't have

a strong opinion about something or that someone else can make the choice I would recommend something like I don't have a preference or it doesn't matter to me something like that sounds a lot lighter and a lot more friendly if you say I don't give a damn you're probably going to make people Upset they'll probably think that you're being very rude similarly please be careful with the expression I don't care so if you say I don't care a lot of people feel that it sounds kind of rude again so slightly rude not as rude as

I don't give a damn um but I don't care can also sound a little too rough so instead please use expression like I don't have a preference or maybe whatever you think is fine so please try to be polite in your English lessons Although the expression you used is grammatically correct and it communicates an idea effectively you will probably upset someone in your class so I hope that this helps you thanks very much for the question okay let's go on to your next question next question comes from Xiao Paulo hi Xiao Paulo Xiao Paulo says

Alicia you know the video about American convenience stores can you explore something similar to the way Risa did on the Japanese Channel yes we have started making videos about culture in the US so this video about the US convenience stores is now available on the English class 101 Channel I'll put it behind me on the green screen here yay okay great uh so we didn't explore it I personally did not explore the channel but we're trying to think of some other similar things that we could maybe do so check this out if you haven't seen

it already and also check out the second video in the series About uh supermarkets in the US and we'll have some more stuff coming out there soon as well so we're kind of exploring some culture topics if you are interested please check those out uh thanks for this idea we'll we can consider it but we'll try to see how we can work things out so thanks very much for this idea much appreciated okay that is everything that I have for this week thank you as always for sending your questions remember you can send them to

Me at englishclass101.com / asken Alicia of course if you like this lesson please don't forget to give it a thumbs up subscribe to our Channel if you haven't already and check us out at englishclass101.com for some other things that can help you with your English studies thanks very much for watching this week's episode of ask Alicia and I will see you again next week bye-bye let's get started even though there's a dude on my Balcony hi everybody welcome back to ask Alicia the weekly series where you ask me questions and I answer them maybe first

question first question this week comes from Imon hi again Imon Imon says what is the use of definite article the' we use the' with a singular noun to refer to a specific instance of that noun so when you're telling a story we'll often introduce the first instance of a noun with a and then after that we'll use the to refer to the specific Instance of that thing so for example a simple story I was walking down the street and I saw a dog the dog was really cute I pet the dog so in that situation

when I introduce a dog in the story the first time I talk about the dog in the story I use a to introduce it then after that I use the to refer to that specific dog that I introduced earlier in the story every other time that I want to talk about that same dog I use the before for it so use the Wordthe when you need to refer to a specific noun or when you have to refer to a specific group so for example the teachers in the school district went on strike so specifically we're

talking about teachers in a specific School District the teachers went on strike the mothers at the PTA meeting organized a bake sale it's a specific group that is defined by something else so in this case the mothers at the PTA meeting only the mothers that were at that meeting Not the mothers from a different uh group for example so we use the to uh to talk about a specific instance of something next question next question comes from Johnny hi Johnny you wrote a very long message thank you very much for watching there's a slang expression

that I've heard several times and don't understand well I know right using I know right is like an invitation then for the other person to agree again really I know right So think of I know right as like an even stronger like even more emphasis on the agreement and an invitation for the other person to agree again I know right it's like yes and you agree too don't you next question comes from Zafar Ahmad Zafar Ahmad hi Zafar asks about two sentences okay one have you ever cried in a film two have you ever cried

at a film my question is about the preposition in or at which sentence is correct and explain the reason of course I will explain the reason let's take a look at the first one have you ever cried in a film um this is actually a point where the differences between British English and American English might come into play a little bit have you ever cried in a film could have a few different meanings depending on the situation if for example you are speaking to an actor and you say have you ever cried in a film

meaning when you were in a film when you were acting In a film did you cry at any point in time so have you ever cried in a film it could also mean have you gone to watch a movie in a movie theater and cried at the movie theater or in the movie theater your second sentence have you ever cried at a film so using at shows like the direction of an emotion like we use it with uh other emotions as well like my mom is mad at me or my dad is angry at me

so it's showing the direction of emotion so in this case Have you ever cried at a film meaning did a film cause you to cry have you ever cried because of a film uh in my case though if I wanted to ask my friend if a movie had ever caused them to cry I would say have you ever cried at a movie next question okay next question comes from Igor hi Igor why are verbs like Berry hurry study tidy and try uh in the irregular verbs list their past simple and past participle forms have Ed

endings like other regular verbs in the Course books used have listed these verbs in the irregular verb list all right tough question cuz I did not create the textbooks and I don't know the logic that was used for the textbooks um but if I had to guess why those verbs are included as irregular verbs I would imagine it's because these verbs all end in y and yes although the verbs do end in ed there is an irregular change that happens with verbs that end in y so that's to drop the Y and add i e

D instead of just an Eed D so we maintain that e sound like tid bar however the spelling of the word changes next question is from Poria Poria asks what's the difference between these words interior and internal exterior and external all right well there are grammatical differences interior and exterior are nouns uh internal and external are adjectives we use interior and exterior to talk about the inside and the outside of something but Internal and external are used those are adjectives we use them to talk about the qualities of something next question from stanislav hi stanislav

stanislav asks how do you politely address unfamiliar women and men lady Miss Mrs Mr and sir ah nice question all right if you're at a formal situation it's better to use Mister with men sir tends to be used more in like a service relationship so uh the same thing with ma'am for women Ms is used for married women if I Don't know if someone is married or not a woman is married or not I'll use Miss next question next question is from Leon hi Leon what are the differences between test exam quiz and questionnaire and

when should I use each of them nice question all right let's start with test and exam we use these two words quite similarly when we're talking about um tests of knowledge or like examinations at school we can use either of those like I have a test this week or I have An exam this week I think I think in American English test is probably used more commonly than exam or the long form examination however when we want to check the status of our bodies we'll often use the word exam so for example a physical exam

that's an expression we use to mean like a full check of the body which is commonly done maybe once a year or so so an exam um like a dental exam or an eye exam is a check of the condition of your body as well well a Quiz is essentially a mini test a questionnaire however is quite different from um the three that we've talked about thus far a questionnaire is something that's given usually to customers that is for feedback we use questionnaires for feedback so those are all the questions that I want to answer

this week thank you so much for sending your questions remember if you have not sent a question yet or if you just want to send more questions you can send them To me at englishclass101.com asken Alicia if you like the video please make sure to give it a thumbs up subscribe to the channel if you haven't already and check us out at englishclass101.com for some other good resources thanks very much for watching this episode of ask Alicia and I will see you again next week bye-bye expand your vocabulary with our core 2000w ebook it's free

and packed with Essential Expressions that you'll use on a daily basis start building your vocabulary today click the link in the description below to download your free free English ebook before it's gone