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  • In today's lesson, you're going to learn

  • how to use the present simple tense to talk about the past.

  • Are you ready?

  • Now, this lesson was inspired by another

  • video I did for you in which I taught you how to use the past to talk about

  • the future. If you want to watch that video, click up there.

  • But today, we're going to look at how to use the present tense,

  • the present simple tense, to talk about the past.

  • Now, this is quite a strange concept using the present simple to talk about things

  • that happened and we only use it in certain situations.

  • So I'm going to give you these four

  • different situations that we use the present tense to talk about the past

  • and give you a few examples so that you can see it in action.

  • And the first one is related to football.

  • And when you're watching football

  • on television in English, or if you're listening to football

  • on the radio in English, the commentator, the person who is describing what is

  • happening uses the present simple to talk about things that have just happened.

  • So the commentator doesn't say things like

  • Henderson passed it to Salah, Salah shot and Salah scored,

  • even though when he's speaking, these things happened in the past.

  • Nope.

  • Instead, he says, Henderson passes it to Salah, Salah shoots

  • and scores... Where each action is in the present simple tense.

  • The second situation where you will see the present tense being used to talk about

  • the past is in newspaper headlines or not necessarily newspapers,

  • but if you read the news on the Internet, the headline,

  • which is the title of the news article, this uses the present tense to describe

  • something that has already happened in the past.

  • So, for example: Man saves cat in tree.

  • Lion escapes from London Zoo.

  • Politician lies about money.

  • These are all stories of things that happened in the past.

  • But because it's a newspaper headline, they use the present simple.

  • The next scenario is with anecdotes,

  • an anecdote is just a funny story, something that really happened to you

  • in your life, which is funny, and you tell your friends about it, an anecdote.

  • And often when we're telling an anecdote

  • to somebody, we use the present simple tense,

  • even though it happened in the past. For example...

  • So I walk all the way to his house and knock on the door and guess what?

  • He's not there.

  • And then a minute later, someone taps me on the shoulder and it's him.

  • Look at all the verbs in that story.

  • They're all in the present simple tense,

  • even though this story clearly happened in the past,

  • simply because it's an anecdote and it's a funny story that I'm telling to a friend.

  • Now, a really, really interesting alternative of this...

  • I don't recommend you speak like this...

  • I don't speak like this but

  • I know people who do.

  • This is what happens.

  • They use the third person singular when they're talking about "I".

  • So instead of I go, they say "I goes", yep, it's crazy.

  • I'm not sure if it's a regional thing,

  • it's definitely not formal,

  • every English student learns that it's not "I goes", it's "I go".

  • Yet some native speakers, when they're telling an anecdote use "I goes".

  • So I goes all the way to his house, I knocks on his door

  • and guess what, he's not there. Crazy.

  • But hey, don't be surprised if sometimes

  • you hear native speakers saying: I goes, I walks,

  • I takes. OK, another situation where we use the present

  • simple to talk about the past is with jokes, and we love telling jokes.

  • We do. There are many types of jokes and

  • some of these types of jokes always begin the same way.

  • Like, for example: A man walks into a bar...

  • That is a very common way of starting a joke.

  • A man walks into the bar... And not just

  • in that type of joke, but in most types of joke you will use the present

  • simple, even though we're talking about a story,

  • an imaginary story that happened in the past.

  • A horse walks into a bar,

  • takes off his coat, orders a beer, and the barman says, Why the long face?

  • So now you know how to use the present to talk about the past,

  • I really want to teach you how to use the past to talk about the future.

  • So join me in that lesson and I will teach you all about that there.

  • And if you want to learn more English tenses, click down there.

  • Thanks for watching. And bye for now!

In today's lesson, you're going to learn

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【英語學習】用「現在式」談論過去!(How To Use The PRESENT TENSE To Talk About The PAST ?(Advanced!))

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    王盈程 發佈於 2023 年 07 月 15 日
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