How to Improve Your English Spelling Skills
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hi everybody welcome back to ask alicia
the weekly series where you ask me
questions and i answer them
maybe okay let’s get to your first
question this week
first question this week comes from
hamza hi hamza
hamza says hello alicia thank you so
much for your great efforts my question
how do i tell time in informal speech
okay the simplest way is just to say
it’s
number plus number so two numbers
if however you’re at the top of the hour
which means like the minute hand and
the hour hand are at the top of the
clock then you can just say
it’s plus number like it’s 12 or it’s 6
or it’s 7.
so for example you could say it’s 2 45
or it’s 6 15 or it’s 8.
this is the simplest way to describe the
time to share the time in
informal speech it’s not necessarily
more formal to use expressions like
quarter till
or quarter after or half past and so on
it’s not more formal to do that it’s
just a different way of expressing it so
please feel free to use those
expressions like it’s a quarter after
two or it’s a quarter till six those are
fine
you can use those i will say however
that we don’t use
a clock very much we don’t really say
like seven o’clock
that much we tend to just say it’s seven
or it’s eight
again it’s not incorrect to use these by
any means you can
totally use them feel free to use them
but i would say the most direct way
to tell the time is just to say it’s
plus the number so i hope that this
helps you thanks for the question
okay let’s move on to your next question
next question
comes from chris hi chris chris says hi
alicia
i would like to know what that’s that
sorted means
this may be more common in british
english i try to google it but i can’t
find its meaning can you please explain
thanks sure we can talk about it so
first let’s take a look at the word
sorted so sorted comes from originally
the expression
sorted out so as you mentioned this is
more commonly used in british english
so sorted out or to sort something out
means to take
care of something usually like to solve
a problem
or like to finish a task or like take
care of some kind of
challenging or difficult activity so
sorted comes from
sorted out so even though we’re using
just sorted here it still
keeps that same meaning of to take care
of something
sorted so let’s add one word here so
that’s sorted means that task is sorted
or
that task is taken care of or i took
care of
that task then we add this that’s
to the beginning of this so that’s that
sorted so
that’s refers to a situation
like okay by doing this or through this
situation
that task was taken care of so this may
be easier to understand if we have a
situation
let’s imagine you need to give a report
to your boss
and the report has some negative
information in it so you don’t really
want to do it
but it’s your responsibility so you go
meet with your boss you share the
information
after the meeting you tell your
co-worker well that’s that’s sorted
which means that task has been taken
care of or
with this action that task has been
taken care of
so that’s that sorted is a as you said
kind of british way to express this
feeling so i hope that this helps you
thanks for an interesting question okay
let’s move on to our next question
next question comes from raya akaputra
hi raya
raya says what are the differences among
perhaps
probably and maybe okay let’s talk about
probably
first we use probably to refer to
actions that have a very
high chance of happening like 80 or so
we often use probably with future tense
expressions with like will
or going to like i’ll probably go
jogging tonight
or we’ll probably watch a movie later or
we’re probably going to go to the beach
this weekend so we’re expressing a
high chance of something with probably
perhaps and maybe on the other hand
refer to something that just has a
chance of happening we’re very unsure
about that thing
in terms of meaning these two are the
same they have the same meaning
but perhaps sounds more formal than
maybe we use maybe in everyday speech we
use perhaps
in like writing for example if you want
to write a more formal letter you want
to sound a little bit more polite
you might use perhaps you can also use
perhaps in speech too to sound a little
bit more polite
but again these have the same meaning
they just sound a little bit different
in terms of their formality so some
examples
perhaps we can talk about this next week
maybe we can discuss this after lunch
okay so i hope that this helps you
understand the differences between
probably
maybe and perhaps thanks for the
question okay let’s move on to your next
question
next question comes from so van hi
sylvan
so van says i have a question about
these two sentences
should i say i went to the store this
morning
or i went to the store last morning i’m
wondering if
this can be used with past tense ah yeah
nice question we use this before morning
afternoon and evening with those time of
day expressions like this morning this
afternoon this evening
we can also use it with future tense
expressions like future tense time of
day expressions
we can also use it with a future week or
day or month
expressions too we do not however
use last with time of day expressions we
don’t say
last morning or last afternoon or
last evening instead when we’re talking
about
the day before we just use yesterday
like yesterday morning or yesterday
afternoon or yesterday evening
so when you’re talking about today
something that happened today
and you want to talk about something
from that day’s morning use
this make sure you use this in contrast
then you can use
last when you’re talking about almost
any other time period so you can use
this with a day of the week like last
monday last tuesday
you can use it with a weekend last
weekend you can use it with a month like
last month
like that or you can use it with the
name of a month last april
last september you can use it with years
last year or
decades last decade if you want to for
some reason but we use
this when we’re talking about a time
period
in the day this morning this afternoon
this evening and we also will use this
to talk about future time periods to
know the difference we just depend on
the context we look
at the context clues to understand if
it’s a
sentence or an expression about
something that happened that day
or something in the future so i hope
that this helps you thanks for the
question
okay let’s move on to our next question
next question comes from
samuel hi samuel samuel says how do i
improve
spelling read reading is the most
important thing you can do i think to
improve your spelling
so especially with english english words
are often
not spelled the way that they sound and
so reading words in books
will help you to identify over time the
correct way to spell
a variety of different words and a
variety of different sounds as well
so think of it not just as reading like
one word at a time and memorizing the
way that that one word is spelled which
sometimes is useful as you read you’ll
start to identify or you’ll start to
find
patterns in the ways certain sounds are
spelled so over time you’ll start to
notice some things are spelled similarly
some things are just totally irregular
but one thing that you can do that will
really really help your spelling
is read the other thing you can do is
write so after you read
make sure you spend some time writing
those words
so writing will help things stick a
little bit better in your brain take the
time maybe to write a note
or to write something down write an idea
down that uses that word
so just make sure that you practice
reading and writing this will help you
with your spelling
i hope that this helps you thanks very
much for the question 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
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thanks very much for watching this
week’s episode of ask alicia and i will
see you again
next week bye