Hello!
In this video we're looking at the difference between 'he speaks' and 'he is speaking' - between
'he speaks French', that's what he does, it's his language, and 'he is speaking French'
- that's what he is doing now.
Hope you enjoy it!
So, we're looking at the difference between 'he speaks' and 'he is speaking'.
So here's a picture to get us started, this is Liz, she's carrying a newspaper Le Monde.
Now that's a French newspaper, so perhaps she can speak French.
So I'll just write here 'Liz speaks French.'
And she's with a friend of hers, and they're talking, I wonder what she's saying.
She's saying - oh, she's saying 'How are things?', she's speaking English.
So I'll just write here, 'she's not speaking French'.
She speaks French, but she's not speaking French at the moment.
Now here's another conversation that Liz is having, here's another picture, and here she
is talking to someone else, and this time she's saying, 'Comment ca va?'
Now I don't know much French, but I know that that's French, and I know it's the French
for 'how are things?'
So we can say, 'Liz is speaking French.'
So we can say that she speaks English and she speaks French - that's past, present and
future.
But in the top picture she's speaking English and in the bottom picture she's speaking French.
Now that's one way of looking at the difference - here's another way.
Here's a time chart - past, now, and future, and I'll write up a sentence here.
'Dr Burns is working at Barts Hospital' - that's a big hospital in central London.
And here's another sentence about someone else - 'Mr Lall works at Barts hospital'.
OK what's the difference between those two sentence.
Dr Burns 'is working' and Mr Lall 'works'.
It's about temporary and permanent, it's about short term and long term.
So I'll just write next to Dr Burns, I'll just draw two lines there and that's because
I see it as having very much a beginning and an end.
I'll write 'temporary' and I'll write 'short-term' there.
Now Mr Lall is rather different.
Mr Lall, I'll spread it out a little bit, we don't know when he begins to work and we
don't know when he will finish - it's permanent, it's long term.
So Dr Burns is just there for a short time, perhaps a few weeks, whereas Mr Lall is based
there permanently.
Now to finish, here's a little chart, which I hope will show the difference.
The top group is temporary, short-term, time-limited and 'around now', whereas the second group
is permanent, long-term, no time limit, and centred on now.
If you want to pause the video for a bit, just to look at the difference between those
two, please do.
But now I want
to move onto a test.