Reporting Things You Saw and Heard Learn English Grammar

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hi everybody my name is alicia in this

lesson i’m going to talk about ways to

report the things that you saw and that

you heard

i’m going to talk about a basic pattern

and then introduce a more advanced

pattern

let’s get started first i want to begin

this lesson with a verb

review there are four key verbs i’m

going to use

in this lesson the first pair is this

one

to see and to watch so what’s the

difference between to see

and to watch generally when we use

to see it just means information enters

our eyes so for example i see the camera

or i

see the marker just the information goes

into my

eye watch however has this meaning

of focusing our attention on something

so when we focus our attention on

something it’s usually because it’s

moving for example when we watch a movie

or maybe we watch an

animal in the forest we focus our eyes

on something so to review to see is just

information comes into our eyes to watch

is to focus our attention

so for example you are watching this

video right now

this pair then is very similar to hear

and to listen this follows the same

pattern

when we hear something information

enters our ears

we just hear it so maybe i can hear

an air conditioner or i can hear someone

outside to hear is just information

entering the ears

when we listen however or listen to

something

we are focusing our attention we are

trying to use our

ears to gain information somehow so

again we are focusing our attention on

something

so here is just information entering the

ear

listen is used to talk about focusing on

trying to use our ears to gain

information so please keep this in mind

for this lesson

let’s look now at a basic pattern for

reporting

something for this lesson i’m going to

focus on using

i as the subject so this is for when you

want to share something that you saw or

that you

heard so the basic pattern here

is i plus the past tense form

of the verb plus a simple noun so this

is our direct

object remember the direct object is the

thing

upon which the verb is acting so this is

like receiving

the activity happening here this is

receiving the action

in this verb so i saw a noun

i watched a noun i heard a noun or i

listened to a noun please be careful

don’t forget this

too here i listened to something

and also i listened i listened sometimes

people forget to make this past tense i

listened

to something let’s look at some examples

first i saw my mom or

i saw a cat it’s a very simple

expression

again just communicating this

information

entered our eye i saw my mom i saw a cat

these sentences use watch i watched

a movie i watched a basketball game

so these sentences show the speaker was

focusing their attention on a movie

and a basketball game i watched a movie

i watched a basketball game

here i’ve used heard the pronunciation

is

heard not heared heard i heard

the news and i heard a loud noise

so i heard the news so from tv

or radio maybe and i heard a loud noise

somewhere i don’t know what it was

but a loud noise that information came

to my ear

i heard a loud noise finally listened to

i listened to a podcast and

i listened to the presentation so again

we are focusing our

ears on something so i listened to a

podcast i

wanted to focus my attention on the

podcast

i listened to the presentation i focused

my attention

on the presentation focused my ears and

probably my eyes too

maybe okay so these are basic patterns

basic reporting patterns

in this lesson i want to introduce a

more advanced

pattern so this is an advanced pattern

that you can use

to describe the specific details

of something so the verbs will remain

the same

we’re not going to change the verbs at

all what we

are going to change is the part after

the verb

here we’re going to use something called

the subordinate clause

so a subordinate clause is a big word it

just means

a part of a sentence that cannot be

alone

it must have another part of a sentence

in order to be a full idea so it needs

something else

it’s like a mini sentence or part of a

sentence

we need some other information to finish

this idea

so we’re going to use this part of an

idea this subordinate clause

as our direct object so again this

direct object

is what we talked about up here the

thing that’s receiving the action

so let’s take a look at some examples of

what i mean here

and the special special sorry the

special gram

grammar rules special grammar rules that

we use

in these cases let’s begin here i saw

a man walk into the office

i saw a man walk into the office

so here we’re seeing this i saw

is in past tense again and a man

so this is just a simple noun but we see

all of this extra information and a key

point for this pattern is this right

here

this verb remains in the present tense

or in the infinitive form there is no

change to this verb this part is a past

action yes we’re using saw here

which tells the listener or tells the

reader that this action is finished this

is done

but we do not change this verb here

i saw a man walk into

the office so this action is done but

in this report of this we

do not change this verb i saw a man

walked is not correct we cannot use that

i saw a man

walk into the office that is an action

that happened

i saw it i used this expression to

report it

let’s compare this then to the other

type of reporting expression we can use

a new example sentence i saw

a woman jogging in my neighborhood

i saw a woman jogging in my neighborhood

again we used simple past tense here to

make the report

this information entered my eyes a woman

yes we have a simple noun here and this

is the information

that tells us the specifics what was the

woman

doing here however i’ve used this

continuous or

progressive form jogging in my

neighborhood

i saw a woman jogging in my neighborhood

so i’ve talked about up here using this

form

the infinitive form or present tense

form

if however you want to emphasize

that an action was continuing

at that time you can use the progressive

form

here so in this sentence the speaker

mentions that

at this point in time maybe this morning

i saw a woman jogging in my neighborhood

at that time the woman was jogging it

was happening

at that moment so i saw a woman jog

in my neighborhood sounds like maybe the

action is finished it’s done

but if the speaker wants to emphasize a

continuing action they can

with this progressive form so please

keep this in mind we can use progressive

form

to emphasize continuous actions but in

other cases we use just the simple

infinitive or present form let’s look at

another example

i watched my cat jump off the roof i

watched my cat

jump off the roof so here the verb watch

is showing that the speaker

focused his or her attention on the cat

as the cat jumped off the roof so again

you’ll notice i watched my cat jump

there is no change to this verb

jump off the roof this part does not

have any

changes there is no conjugation

happening there

i watched my cat jump off the roof

another example i watched a car roll

into traffic

i watched a car roll into traffic so

this means

the speaker focused their attention on a

car

as the car slowly rolled into other cars

traffic

so i watched a car roll into traffic

again

please keep in mind the difference

between saw

and watched and how these can make these

sentences sound a little different

for example if you say i watched a woman

jogging in my neighborhood it sounds

like you

focused your attention on the woman

jogging which can sound a little strange

sometimes if you saw a woman jogging in

your neighborhood

that sounds quite normal but in some

cases if you say

i watched someone doing something it

sounds like you’re focused on them which

can sound a little scary sometimes

so please be careful when you’re using

saw and

watched in these cases okay let’s

continue

to the next group let’s look at heard

now

i heard my friend trying to negotiate

a discount i heard my friend trying to

negotiate a discount

so again negotiate a discount means get

a lower price trying to get a lower

price

so i heard my friend here again the

progressive form

trying to negotiate a discount so maybe

you’re shopping at a market somewhere

the speaker can hear their friends

somewhere else

asking for a lower price or trying to

negotiate so

maybe it’s successful maybe it’s not but

at that point in time

a negotiation was happening so i heard

my friend

trying to negotiate a discount another

example

i heard my dog whining in the living

room i heard my dog whining in the

living room

so maybe i’m in my bedroom but my dog is

in the other room

i can hear something it’s the sound of

my dog

whining so to wine is like crying

but usually used for pets or for little

kids or for people who are complaining a

lot

to whine so i heard my dog whining this

was happening

at that point in time my dog was whining

let’s look at the last examples i

listened to

my teacher talk about grammar

i listened to my teacher talk about

grammar

so listen to is perhaps one that you

won’t use

so much with specific details maybe

you’ll use listen to more

with a basic pattern but these are some

examples of cases where you

might so i listen to my teacher talk

about grammar so as i said before

you can use that basic form this

infinitive form

or the progressive form like i listen to

my teacher talking about grammar

that’s fine too so maybe after you watch

this video

after you have finished watching this

video you could say

to your friend oh today i listened to my

teacher talk about grammar

and that would be natural because it’s

finished you finished watching this

lesson

if however you want to emphasize for

some reason

that i’m talking and something else is

happening

you could use the progressive form like

i listened to my teacher

talking about grammar and i got bored

or i thought it was interesting so you

could use something like that to show

that an action is happening at the same

time

too okay finally i listened to a

customer

complain about a problem i listened to a

customer complain about a problem

so here again the action is probably

finished i listened to a customer

complain today

so this is something that happened to me

so

please keep this in mind it’s kind of a

strange grammar point but we use

these style verbs when we’re talking

about the specific

details of something we saw or heard

in the past of course this is for

reporting

things there are other situations where

you may want to

report other like information like maybe

something you ate

for example or a place that you visited

so please keep this in mind when you’re

reporting

these kinds of things about the past so

i hope that this lesson was helpful for

you if you have any questions or

comments

or if you want to practice making some

sentences with this stuff

feel free to do so in the comment

section of this video

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lesson and i will see you again soon

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