Hi everyone and welcome back to my channel Learn Academic English where I teach lessons
for intermediate and advanced English learners who want to take their English to the next level
in today's lesson I have a quick video for you about how to answer questions like have you ever
these are super common questions that we use in speaking but the way that you answer them
might be a little bit more complicated or different than you might expect so let's take a
look first at what these questions are we use have you ever questions to ask about something that you
have done at some time in your life notice the timeline here that this event happened at some
time in your life in the past but when you ask this question the exact time is not known and
that's why we use present perfect for example you can ask have you ever ridden a motorcycle
so I'm asking about some time in your life we usually add the word ever to ask at some point
you can also take the word ever out and say have you ridden a motorcycle that's fine too
and the quick answer is just yes I have or no I haven't so use the same helping verb
notice also that we're using the present perfect not the present perfect continuous
for these types of questions okay now notice also that you cannot ask these questions with a past
time word this is a common mistake that I see sometimes for example have you ever met this
teacher last year you cannot add this past word if you want to add a past word you need to use simple
past so for this tense you cannot add a past time word to the question okay next let's look
at how you can respond so again you can respond with a short answer yes I have no I haven't or
you can also respond in past tense to give more detail so what's happening here again
the question is asking about some time in the past but when you answer you might want to be specific
and tell yes I did that two years ago so let's take a look have you ever ridden a motorcycle
yes I have I rode one when I was 20. I wasn't a fan so you can see here that we're using the same
verb to answer but then we switch to past tense to give more detail about that event
I rode one when I was 20. now we know the time and I wasn't a fan I didn't like it
let's take a look at some more examples and we'll practice answering them together so now
that you know what these questions mean and how to answer them let's practice with some examples
have you ever been to California now in this one I actually took out the word ever to show you
that we can use the question without ever but it is more common to use ever because
it emphasizes that meaning of some point in time in the past so have you been to California
I'm gonna answer yes I have in fact I live here I moved here 20 years ago have you ever eaten snake
how about you have you ever eaten snake I haven't have you ever ridden a roller coaster
notice that the voice goes up because this is a yes no question
and I can answer yes I have in fact I rode a lot of roller coasters when I was a teenager
next one have you ever played tennis
how about you have you ever played tennis I'm gonna answer no I haven't I have practiced a
few times but i've never actually played a real game of tennis have you ever taken the TOEFL
i haven't but my husband has my husband took the TOEFL about 20 years ago
and have you ever wanted to live abroad to live abroad means to live in another country
how about you have you ever wanted to live abroad I'm going to answer this and say yes I have
in fact I lived in the Czech Republic when I was in my early 20s
but I would love to live abroad again so again notice with our responses that we can give
more detail in the past tense to talk about the specific event that happened in the past or we can
even use present tense to talk about something that we may want to do again in the future
I will leave a few more examples in the description box below as well as a link to my
other grammar lessons if you would like to learn more please don't forget to give this video a like
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