Speak Better English with Harry | Episode 59

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• 00:10

  Hi there.

• 00:10

  This is Harry, and welcome back to the English podcast where we try to help you understand english language by using sentences and explaining the grammar points and other relevant points in those particular sentences.

• 00:23

  The sentence I have for you now is as follows.

• 00:27

  You would expect him to be looking tired because he has been studying for his final exams for the past three weeks.

• 00:38

  Okay, so a long sentence.

• 00:40

  You would expect him to be looking tired because he has been studying for his final exams for the past three weeks.

• 00:51

  So what are we exactly saying in this sentence?

• 00:53

  Well, with saying that somebody has been studying hard for the past three weeks for some final exams, and as a result of studying hard, you would expect him, you would perhaps notice that he should or would be looking tired, maybe falling asleep at the table or just looking in a slightly distressed way because he had been working very, very hard.

• 01:22

  But when we say at the beginning, you would expect him to be looking tired, you could read this in two ways.

• 01:29

  You would expect him, but perhaps he's not looking so tired.

• 01:32

  You would expect him to be, or you're just confirming what you see.

• 01:37

  Well, you would expect him to be looking tired.

• 01:40

  So you could interpret it in two ways.

• 01:42

  Either you see him looking very tired, but you're not surprised, or you are surprised that he's not looking so tired because you know that he's been working very, very hard.

• 01:52

  Okay, so let's look at the grammar in this particular sentence.

• 01:57

  So here we're using and talking about possibility.

• 02:00

  Yeah.

• 02:00

  So we're using the word would, you would expect.

• 02:03

  So you're not certain.

• 02:04

  You would expect it might be 50 50, 60 40 chance that he, that he would be tired.

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