hello students welcome back today's lesson is about how to use can could and able to for ability
you can use can and could for general ability to describe a general ability in english
for the present tense talking about now we use can to talk about the present
or general ability for example i can do something i can read french but i can't speak it be able
be able can often be used here but i'll explain that later in the lesson the future after now
usually we use will be able to to talk about future ability
for example i'll be able to speak french in a few months but we can use can if we are deciding
something now about the future so deciding now about something in the future for example
i don't have time now but i can meet you later tonight here's an example as a question
can you come to my house on sunday the past before now we use could for general ability to show that
somebody could do something at any time whenever she or he wanted was able or were able is also
possible here example she could ride a bike when she was five years old or we could say
she was able to ride a bike when she was five years old here's another example my father
could speak four languages we don't normally use could to say that somebody succeeded
in doing something on just one occasion for this we use was able or were able or we could use
the word succeeded in something for example how many tomatoes were you able to get we don't want
to use could you get here we don't want to say how many tomatoes could you get so maybe
you just got home from shopping for food i can ask you how many tomatoes were you able to get on this
one shopping trip how many tomatoes were you able to get here's an example using succeeded succeeded
in after several tries i succeeded in climbing the mountain let's look at could used for particular
occasions in the past in certain cases we can use could to say that someone was able to do something
on one occasion we can use could with the words see hear taste feel smell understand remember
and guess i could smell the flowers i could understand everything the teacher said
this can also happen in subordinate clauses like i'm so glad that everyone could come could with
conditional use could can be used to mean would be able to for example i could get a better job
if i spoke another language right i don't speak another language but if i did
i could get another job now let's look at could have we use a special structure to talk about
some unrealized past ability this is to say that a person was able to do something but they didn't
try it for example he could have married anybody he wanted to here he didn't try to get married
but he could have gotten married if he tried we can also use could have passed structure
to criticize people for not doing something for example you could have fixed the broken door
why didn't you could have past structure can also be conditional
for example i could have won the contest if i had tried i didn't try but if i had tried i could have
won the contest so now you know more about how to use can could and able to for ability and that you
can use canon could for general ability thanks so much for watching i'll see you in the next video