Practising English
Listening practice for learners of B1 intermediate and B2 upper-intermediate levels of British English. Learn British English by listening to stories. Original and exciting stories written for learners and students of British English. Practise and prepare for Cambridge: B1 PET Preliminary and FCE First Certificate exams. IELTS: level 4, level 5 and level 6. Includes English grammar explanations and practice exercises, examples of vocabulary use, phrasal verbs and collocations help, British English pronunciation practice, advice and help for passing B1 and B2 English examinations: Cambridge, IELTS and Trinity. Start practising and improving your British English listening, vocabulary and speaking levels today!
Practising English
246. There is / are and extended family
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Today, I’m going to talk about the family of ‘there is’! At first, that might seem very basic English grammar. Indeed, the phrase ‘there is’ is A1 level. However, at B1 and even B2 level, I must admit there are few students who talk about this family. Why? Because it’s not a structure that has a literal word for word translation in many other languages.
Anyway, let’s meet some of the family first of all. I can’t name all of them because it’s a very extended family tree. But here are some you might often meet while reading or listening to native English speakers.
There is, there are, there was, there were, there has been, there had been, there will be, there won’t be, there can be, there can’t be, there may be, there could be, there might be, there must be, there would be, there should be…
Read the transcript: https://www.practisingenglish.com/podcast-246.htm
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For very young learners (from 8-10), I recommend my picture reader book for children learning A1 to A2 English. It comes with a fully dramatised audio version: https://amzn.to/46TCWvv
At https://www.practisingenglish.com/ I offer learners of intermediate-level English, free grammar help and exercises and other English learning pages.
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Be back soon with another podcast!
Mike Bilbrough (Secondary school English teacher and Doctor in English philology)