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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