#107 Already, still and yet in English

Hi, dear listener! I'm Georgiana, founder of the Speak English Now podcast. My mission is to help you to speak English fluently. Speaking English is way easier when you use the right material and techniques.

Do you have a hard time using the words Already, Still and Yet?  

Well, today I’ll help you to understand how to use these three words.

And with a point of view story, you will learn grammar without memorizing any rules.

As you know, I don't teach grammar to my students. However, many of you have difficulties using the words: already, still, and yet. So in this episode, I'm going to explain how to use them.

Before I go any further, I want you to know that native English speakers do not learn these words by studying grammar. Not at all! 

What’s the secret then? Well, they learn new words and expressions in context. And that's exactly the way you learned your own language.

Let's see some examples:

My idea is to give you a general sense of how to use these words. So I won't go into details, exceptions, etc. Because the only effective way to learn these subtleties is to listen and read in context. 

Let's start with an example:

"It's 11 o'clock in the morning, and Finn is still in bed." 

So here we have Finn. It's 11 o'clock, but Finn is STILL in bed. Here we emphasize the idea that the situation hasn't changed (Finn didn't get up.) even though it's late (it's 11 o'clock).

Now, let's say that Finn is a responsible guy and doesn't want to oversleep because he has many things to do. 

 

For example:

"It's 6 o'clock in the morning, and Finn is already up and ready to go."

See? It's very early (6 in the morning), and Finn is ALREADY up. Since it's so early in the morning, we didn't expect our friend Finn to be awake.

Now back to the first example. This time I'm going to use the same example to explain how to use "YET."

"It's 11 o'clock in the morning, and Finn is still in bed."

(this was the first example)

If I want to use "YET," it will be something like this:

"It's 11 o'clock in the morning, and Finn's not up yet."

See? If we compare these two examples, they look very similar. 

 

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