tailieunhanh - A complete English language course part 15

We will see some more short forms in the next unit. It is important to know how to use them as they form a common and typical feature of colloquial English everywhere. | 124 Scott OK OK. Well . we could go to Maria s party. Justine That s fine but only if you promise to be nice to her. Scott I ll try but it s very difficult. I just can t help laughing at her pictures. Justine You ll have to avoid looking at them or pretend to like them. If you can t manage to do either of those then I m not coming. Scott You re really putting me off going now Justine. Justine OK what else could we do Scott Well why don t we just decide to stay in I don t mind ordering a pizza for us. Besides Maria s parties are usually pretty useless aren t they Justine True. Idiom pretty useless means not very good or even quite bad Language point 49 - more about state verbs In Language point 45 in the last unit we saw that state verbs in English describe a situation that exists permanently or for a long time and that these verbs usually don t appear in the present continuous I like curry not I m liking curry This book belongs to me not This book s belonging to me See and feel are on the list of state verbs in Language point 45 but in Dialogue 4 of this unit Sarah uses both of them in the present continuous She s not feeling very well She s seeing him later on In the first sentence Sarah is talking about a temporary situation -a situation that won t last long so the usual state meaning of feel doesn t work here and we can use the present continuous. 125 Now look at the second example. Some state verbs in English have secondary meanings which describe actions. Here are some examples state action have have possess receive eat food state think believe have an opinion action think think about something turn something over in your mind state look have appearance action look use your eyes to see state see understand action see visit So when Sarah says She s seeing him later on she s using the action meaning of see visit and so the present continuous is correct. Here are other examples using the verbs above Adrian has a yellow car Adrian s having eggs for lunch I think .