Impersonal Passive - Smrt Live Class with Shaun #29

hey everybody there we go yeah all right hi happy Thursday Thursday morning I'm still kind of getting used to it as I almost said almost said Wednesday but no it's Thursday here nine o'clock my time 's here Anthony's here lots of people are here Anna Maria hello Rosa's here so many people Steve Lynn is back anupam welcome cool so lots of lots of familiar names in the chat lots of a few new people there yep rack hi sign up yeah um yeah if it's you if it's your first time welcome welcome to the class um I am Sean I'm going to be your teacher for the next hour or so and I'm coming to you live from the studio at ccel the Canadian College of English language um in Vancouver all right so um we're going to start the class in a minute but I thought when we're warming up and saying hi to everybody I thought I would just mention that we've got some exciting stuff going on here where we are starting to offer more classes right some of you guys know that um Mark and I do classes every week free classes free for everyone to join around the world you guys can pop in and we can help you we can answer your questions and teach you a thing or two lots of fun for me we've got oh we got Seoul from Ecuador cool my your first class well welcome good to see you all right so I'm here every Thursday morning Mark is here every Wednesday morning we're going to continue these classes because well they're they're a lot of fun for me I enjoy them but we're also adding new classes and what we're doing is we're actually offering closed classes meaning classes that you actually have to to join and you can pay to join these classes and there's they they involve more they involve quizzes and listening exercises and homework and lots of stuff in this I believe a certificate when you've done the course so if you're interested in any of that stuff ask Zach Zach is the moderator he's in the chat there and he can answer your questions um if you uh if you have questions if you want to learn more about any of these other classes so a lot of these extra classes that you guys may have seen that we're offering this week some newer faces like Neil or Nicole they're going to be teaching some more classes come mid-september okay so um yeah if you're interested if you're curious ask Zach and he'll he'll direct you to the information okay but for now as usual I'm just going to do my thing here okay so yeah as I said it's nine o'clock where I am I'm not sure what time it is where you guys are I'm still a little bit sleepy not used to teaching in in the morning I'm used to my my afternoon spot got my coffee I'm ready all right let's jump into it shall we all right here we go so today I thought we would start by talking about talking about Superstition okay a superstition the belief that um objects or or certain things can affect luck right there's belief in luck this idea that um that certain objects are considered lucky or or to be bad luck like the Horseshoe right maybe not so much anymore but traditional Western superstition is that the Horseshoe was thought to be a lucky object that if you put a horseshoe above your door um it was it was somehow we would keep evil away or something like that so this is I don't know how many people still believe that if you do that's great um but this is as I said a traditional Superstition now I'm what you guys can do while I'm talking about this in the chat my question is what are some objects in in your culture what are some things that may be considered um good luck or bad luck what are things that people believe yep rock is yeah the black cat of course is thought to be unlucky the number 13 is believed to be uh bad right well let's start with the good stuff I noticed somebody actually I don't know if it was yeprak or Rosa or somebody in the chat even put a four-leaf clover in there right for for uh for good luck right um it is thought that the four-leaf clover is a lucky object although I actually don't technically see any four-leaf clovers in this picture they're all three but if there's a four leaf one in there somewhere it's lucky all right apparently another maybe a strange one is the rabbit's foot right it is thought by some people that keeping a rabbit's foot in your pocket uh will will bring you good fortune for some reason all right I'm not exactly sure about that one where that came from I'm not sure all right so those are good luck charms right but we also have things that we we think of as as bad luck right um like walking under a ladder right walking under a ladder is considered to be an unlucky thing yeah you're saying that my my audio is a little low here I'll turn that up a bit for you all right what else is yeah breaking a mirror is also considered bad luck right exactly good um Tuesday the 13th and of course opening an umbrella in indoors is considered to be bad luck by some people again I don't know how many people in the in the chat here today are superstitious or if you have things in your culture that are specifically thought to be bad luck all right but I mean some of these things I think what's interesting is to try to think about or to to think about look at where these ideas came from originally right now I mean the four leaf clover I understand why someone would say that that's lucky because they're not super common right they're kind of special most clovers have three leaves if you find a four-leaf one it's unusual so hey it's a good thing I guess right sure the rabbit's foot I'm not exactly sure where that idea came from why it is it's thought that the rabbit's foot is a good thing to have in your pocket if anybody if anybody knows the answer to that you can feel free to tell me in the chat too right now the umbrella I actually do know well I actually don't I don't know if I know for sure but I have been told certain theories okay so the idea behind the umbrella being open inside right why why is that thought to be bad luck well um some people say that it goes back to to Egypt right back not currently but many many years ago back in the days when people believed um in the the Sun God right it was believed that that raw was the the god of the sun and you use the umbrella to protect you from the sun right okay so it was thought that if you open an umbrella inside that this guy would get angry that it was kind of an insult to him to open an umbrella inside right so that's that's where this idea comes from why why the the idea of the umbrella is lucky now I don't know if that's true or not what I just said maybe that's just a story I have no idea but what I'm doing is I'm telling you what other people have said I'm telling you what other people believe okay specifically not exactly what I believe okay now why am I doing this why am I talking about luck and Superstition well as usual what I talk about at the beginning of class leads into the topic for today's class right so today we are going to be talking about how to use specific structures to talk about what other people say or think or feel okay so today's lesson is something called the impersonal passive okay the impersonal passive voice sometimes also called impersonal reporting so this is a report structure okay now usually when we talk about reporting we're talking about you saying what someone else said right my dad said that I should study harder for example that's that's report right that's that's a report structure that's reported speech okay so what we're talking about now today is a specific structure called impersonal reporting where we use this to um report what other people feel or or think or believe okay so we're going to look at two specific sentence structures today that you don't use when you're talking about your opinions okay you're not talking about what you think or what you feel but you are going to be reporting what other people think what their opinions are what their thoughts are their beliefs and their feelings okay now before we continue we're not specifically talking about you know what one person thinks or what one person feels but the the structure we're looking at today is going to be about what many people think right so Superstition is a good place to start because it's it's a shared belief right something that many people think for example the number 13 many people believe that the number 13 is unlucky or depending on your culture maybe the number of four right okay so let's get started the impersonal passive reporting now this is a slightly more advanced structure it's a little bit more formal right but we do use it and in fact I have been using it for the last five to ten minutes when I've been talking to you so let's look at an example so this is a good one it was once believed that the world was flat right a long time ago hopefully nobody thinks that now but at one point in time many people thought that the world was flat and then if you just got on a boat and went straight you would eventually just fall off the side okay so this is something that many people believed in the past so this is an example of the impersonal passive to report another person's beliefs Cairo says you don't believe in superstitions yeah sure yeah some people do some people don't athletes professional athletes are very superstitious people I find yeah okay so here's one example here's another one and then we'll break down the sentence and really look at how it's constructed okay so it is often said that practice makes perfect right it is often said I mean people say this I guess I mean you could also say it has often said that nobody's perfect so practice makes perfect but nobody's perfect so I guess don't don't practice too hard right don't hurt yourself okay all right so the structure is this this is as I said kind of advanced but the structure the formula is very very simple okay so it it looks like that you start with it then you have the passive voice and you follow it with a that Clause okay it plus passive plus that Clause Okay so before we look at the structure again when we're talking about report structures or report verbs these I would say are the most common verbs you use to talk about what other people believe or feel or say or think you've got the real common ones up top like say and think okay um believe obviously and then you've got a couple other ones that you may not have seen before allege for example allege and claim and rumor are all similar ideas allege means that a person says it but they don't necessarily have have the proof right it's a claim okay so these are common oh there's the there's the four leaf clover in the chat there okay Kyle thanks for that all right so these are report verbs let's let's see one in action so back to this sentence it was once believed that the world was flat Okay so you start the sentence with with the word yet it is your subject okay followed by the passive voice okay now as you guys know I'm sure by now that the passive voice includes the verb to be right in this case was and Then followed by a past participle now in this case it's just an ed verb but you know that for passive voice you have to use the third form of the verb right your your past participle which some of you call uh PP right okay so it plus your passive voice I put once in there is the adverb okay don't worry about that too much and then you've got that followed by a Clause right the world was flat so you've got a subject and a verb there so that is a clause in itself okay what we call it that close so you've got it passive that Clause to report what people used to think it was once believed that the world was flat so what we mean here what you guys might say is people once believed that the world was flat okay people once believed that the world was flat in this sentence there's nothing wrong with saying this it's fine but again as you guys know in this class I'm always telling you guys to to try to um expand your range of sentence structures right um show people what you can do with the language don't just stick to the simple structures try to go beyond it so it goes to that it was once believed that the world was flat both of these sentences mean the same thing this one I would say as I said before is a little bit more formal Maybe but you might want to use it if you're focusing more on the belief itself rather than the person or people that are that are doing it okay that's that's typically what you would use this structure for all right let's look at one more example oh yes and of course I should also mention here obviously you could put it was once believed by people that the world was flat sometimes people want to put that that agent in there but if you're just talking about people in general as with most passive sentences you don't really need to say people right I mean obviously people believe or people think people say if you're not being specific I don't think you need that in there at all I would take it out and just say it was once believed and that we know you're not you're not really talking about cats or dogs or anything like that all right Rosa has a question impersonal passive is used more in written than spoken language is that right yeah typically I would say that this is more common in writing um or in some kind of formal formal speech right but you might not say it was once believed the world was flat if you're speaking to your friend at a cafe or something maybe I don't well I don't know what you guys discuss with your friends so maybe you would I don't know but I think yeah Rosa I'd say it's more common in written English for sure good question okay so one more example and then I'm going to get you guys to do some work for me all right so it is often said that practice makes perfect again this is a report structure I'm telling you what other people say right not what I think but what other people say so this is um the the active voice right people often say that practice makes perfect again there's nothing wrong with that it's great it's fantastic but what I've done is I've flipped it around right and added it so it then you've got your passive structure again right is said again I put an adverb in the Middle with often and that's fine and then you've got your that clause and it's as simple as that right okay now one thing I'll show you oh Mohammed you like my you like my haircut yeah I got that for you yesterday yeah it was fresh fresh for you guys okay so let me go into some notes Here because as I said if you're just talking about people in general you don't have to include people in your sentence right you don't have to say it is believed by people but if you want to qualify the statement with a word like some people or most people or many people then you may want to include it so let's let's give an example here so some people believe that what can I say some people believe that Sean is the best teacher on the internet some people I didn't say most people some basically it's me and my mother and maybe a couple other people but uh we'll go with this for now right some people believe that Sean is the best teacher on the internet all right you can you can discuss that in the chat if you like so because I'm saying some I may want to include that when I turn it into this impersonal structure and you could say it is believed by some that Sean is the best teacher on the internet okay good example Kyle believes yeah good important to again this is not fact this is opinion right so in this case I have put by some now you could say again you'll notice that I didn't include the word people there you could say that it is believed by some people that Sean right but you don't need it if you just say some because again in this in this case sum can function as kind of that that pronoun right and you could do that with with um other words right it is believed by many yeah maybe maybe not we'll keep it simple okay so you may want to qualify the statement with words like this some or something like that right you could also say something like this if you want to qualify your statement take that out and say it is what can we say it is um widely believed that Sean is the best teacher on the internet hi Tara how are you hey she's here cool all right so just the whole point of that was just to say that if you need to include some or many or something like that if you want to qualify your statement you can do that but if you're just talking about what all people believe or people in general you don't have to include that in your sentence okay so how about this let's get down to business if Zach can please put that that link in the in the chat all right two the exercise now I'm going to get you guys to do some work for me all right Rose is saying we use it in opinion essay to do introduce your arguments I wouldn't use it to introduce your arguments you could do it to introduce the the opinions of other people right but it's definitely not used to to to express your own opinion right and that's that's an important distinction right this is not what I'm saying this is what other people think so I'm not I'm not saying that I agree with them Rosa okay so be careful with that Donnie D has a question coming in by most is possible as in it is believed by most sure I would say that's possible yeah go for it cool okay so Zach you got that uh got that link in the chat for me he's about to put that in there for now when he puts the link in the chat to my exercise you guys can open it up and make a copy or I'm just going to leave this up on the screen here so you've got four sentences we'll keep it simple for now and we'll we'll expand on it okay I'm going to disappear from the screen I'm going to go take a break yeah sip sip my water and look at your your answers coming in I would like you guys to take these four sentences all right and rewrite them with this impersonal passive structure so for the first one I'm only going to start you off with the word it okay so for all four of these sentences I want you to start with it and I want you to rewrite it with the passive to express what other people say think or feel okay so again I'm going to pop off the screen I'm going to put the happy little monkey dancing funky music on there and I would like you guys to take your answers put them in the chat and then we'll go over them together okay and if you guys have questions while you're doing it if you're stuck if you're scared if you're lost or Alone um yeah put it in the chat and we'll help you out okay I'm gonna pop out get to work [Music] thank you [Music] thank you foreign [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] hahaha [Music] foreign [Music] thank you all right guys good stuff lots of lots of great answers coming into the chat let's go over some of this stuff together so hey we said people say that drinking a glass of red wine a day reduces one's chances of heart disease yeah okay um yeah a glass not a bottle necessarily okay so and and yes it's good for the heart I don't know what it does to your liver but that's what they say a glass of red wine a day is good for your heart so yeah Rosa got it goodre said it too yeah so what you guys did was it is said right it is said now some people said it is said by people now I'll come back to that that drinking a glass a red wine a day and then I'm gonna get lazy okay forgive me I can do that I'm the teacher I can I can be lazy that's fine so it is said by people that drinking a glass of red wine a day reduces one's chances of heart disease now this is this is fine this is good um tierno got it too that's great now I would say if you included by people in this sentence it's unnecessary and it even seems a little bit awkward a little strange just because we know that it's people because if it's people in general people are really the only thing the only species that really says anything right so if we say it is said that drinking a glass of red wine a day helps your heart then we know that it's people and there's no need to include that what we call the agent there okay so good stuff um yeah zainab the same same thing yeah with that one Jose got it good great work so what about B now people of ancient times believed that the planets and stars were Gods right a long time ago that's what they thought of um had names for all of them and everything so how are you going to turn that into this impersonal reporting structure um what do we have here let's see another one okay how about Jose Jose says it is believed oh okay now this is good now one thing we this is we didn't really talk much about this but but this is a good opportunity so for some reason it's not blue that's fine you see it it is believed we'll say bye people of ancient times that the planets and stars were Gods okay now there is one problem with this sentence right it is believed by people of ancient times that the planets and stars were Gods now in this case you have to be careful of your tense right now in the first sentence when we're talking about wine we're using the present tense because we're talking about what people believe now right now people say that wine is good for you yeah but in this case we're looking at in letter B we're talking about what people used to think people in the past right so yeah some people are putting the answers in good stuff guys thanks for that and you'd say it was believed right it was believed by people of ancient times that the planets and stars were gods if you want to take bi people out that's fine but I wouldn't I wouldn't take all of this out now some people said it was believed that the planets and stars were Gods but it's still a little bit unclear as to when or by whom so if you don't want people there you could just say that it was believed in ancient times that the planets and stars were Gods you could go with that and that's good too okay good stuff all right what's this question here Steve is saying I also want to know like tierno is the word that let's so it is said it is said drinking yeah yeah so you're asking me if you need the word that I would say in in most cases no you don't really need the word that that is especially in report structures um with uh reported speech for example you don't often need the the the that right I said that I like it I said I like it it's the same the same thing so that is one of those extra little words that we like to toss in there that is not completely necessary good question Steve Lynn all right so letter c letter C got me some interesting responses so some people expect that the world will end in a zombie apocalypse all right so a bunch of people said it is expected that the world will end in a zombie all right it is expected that the world will end in a zombie apocalypse now this is grammatically this is a great sentence perfect right if if this is what you wrote that is that's good all right um and Kyle I noticed you said like it is often expected Jose said it is expected okay now Jose yeah he he got it there too and I know Marianne um qualified it maybe it's by optimistic people I don't know I don't know what what pessimists think if the optimists are are hoping for a zombie apocalypse I don't know what what you're hoping for Mary problem with this sentence is that um it's not expected by most people I don't think not at this point okay maybe people that watch The Walking Dead yeah but in this case you really have to qualify it and say it is expected by some by some people that the world will end in a zombie apocalypse I don't think the majority of people believe that yet okay good and the last one the BBC has reported that the Prime Minister will announce his resignation tomorrow now let me find another example here [Music] okay BBC yeah okay Marianne you got it good goodrea you you've got it you have an extra little verb in there right so you're saying um be careful of that you're saying it's has been reported now you need that pres that present perfect in there but get that part out of there right because that's that s there is actually is or has right so take that out and say it has been reported that the PM will announce his resignation tomorrow now actually Marianne where's your sentence because do you say it has been announced now your sentence Marianne is good by saying it was announced that the PM will announce his resignation but you've got announced twice in that sentence which is sounds a little bit awkward right I would just say use reported and announced and instead just to switch things up a bit good so it has been reported and if you wanted to specify here by the BBC it has been reported by the BBC that the Prime Minister will announce his resignation tomorrow I should put a period there right yeah right good good good good all right so this is just the beginning but this is a good start guys okay so I want to look at another possibility okay another way of using this impersonal structure so one thing that I didn't really talk about but you guys kind of caught it anyway is that for these impersonal structures you can use different tenses as we just saw right you can use the present tense to talk about a general belief now or what people are saying now it is said that you can talk about the past it was said present perfect it has been said or even past perfect it had been said um arguably you could you could also talk about the future and say it will be said I guess that was a little bit of a strange one that you probably won't use very much but tenses are okay you can talk about different times with these report structures so how about let's look at one other way of using this impersonal passive voice okay option number two yeah let's go back to Superstition so remember the latter we were talking about bad luck so we said this or I actually said this at the beginning of class today I said it is believed by many that walking under a ladder brings bad luck well yeah I guess so some people still believe it I think I don't know if it's many or by some but It is believed that walking under a ladder brings bad luck for whatever reason okay probably because hundreds of years ago somebody walked under a ladder and somebody dropped a hammer on his head and people said yeah that was unlucky you shouldn't you shouldn't do that and that's that's probably where that Superstition came from but here's another option this sentence is great we just talked about this type of structure Murad hayi thanks for joining us here's your other option okay walking under a ladder is believed by many to bring bad luck both of these sentences are the same meaning both of them are report structures talking about what other people think what other people believe okay is just one more option right to add to your to your range of structures Okay so let's talk about the breakdown now what we just talked about before was it plus passive plus that Clause right you can do the same kind of thing but a little bit differently here you say subject the subject being not something other than it right you want the the clear subject plus the passive verb that report verb in the passive voice and then a two infinitive now Rose is asking me a question did I ask about this before there are specific verbs we use yes yeah I gave a list of specific ones Rosa like say no believe think expect consider claim alleged report there is a list for sure yep good question so in this case subject passive to infinitive so let's break it down walking under a ladder walking is your subject followed by a prepositional phrase a walking under a ladder could be maybe considered the complete subject because it's it's quite specific right so walking under a ladder is your subject is believed there's your passive structure right your B verb plus your past participle with that report verb and then of course I I qualified it with by many because it's not everybody and then you've got your infinitive there okay so walking under a ladder is believed by many to bring bad luck and what I mean there is many people believe that walking under a ladder brings bad luck now the the difference between the passive and the active the main thing that you need to watch out for where the mistake might happen with the grammar is that in the active you just you're going to use your regular verb conjugation right and in the passive structure you use the infinitive so brings becomes to bring and that's it easy is easy as that right piece of cake but maybe we can look at a another example okay so where are my notes at let me go back in here okay well I mean we could even we could even play around with this right we could say why not let's continue talking about how amazing I am not I like that I like that plan so let me make this a little bit bigger so everybody can see it so it is widely believed that Sean is the best so Sean is believed to be the best blah blah blah okay and there I didn't I didn't bother saying buy some but that's all you're doing so Sean is believed subject passive infinitive okay now the tricky thing with this and then I'll get you guys to do um another practice exercise for me is that you have to be careful with the tense okay now if you look at these three sentences people think he is the best player okay maybe it's soccer or tennis or whoever so whatever you want to talk about so in this case in this sentence I'm talking about people thinking now about something that's happening now right so people think now he is the best player now so you keep it in the present tense right and say he is thought to be the best player right now in this case let me make that let me change the colorless at least so it stands out a bit so in in this case I'm using the present tense for my passive structure here right I'm using the B verb and present and then the past participle and then the infinitive he is thought to be right good here yeah Tiano you got it but in the next one I say people thought he was the best player now I'm talking about a past belief about a past thing okay past and past so in this case I'm going to say he was thought to be the best player now again this is this is fun this is good the only thing here I had to change was the verb to be right because I'm talking about the the the thought being in the past right people used to think this so he was thought but you'll notice that it's still the infinitive right good and Kyle got that there Sean is known to be the humbliest humblest maybe the most humble teacher on the internet yeah yes modest and humble that's me absolutely um now the tricky part is when you look at the next sentence sentence C right is when I'm saying people think now that he was the past the best player right so this is a little bit different because the tenses of the belief and the thing that is believed are different times so you have to be a little bit careful with that because I cannot say I can't just say he is thought to be the best player I can't just say that again because it looks it looks exactly the same as this one right so people would be confused they might think he is the best player now but I'm saying he was the best player okay so this is where it gets a little bit tricky yeah I know some some of you are trying to change this but don't change this this is where it gets tricky he is thought to have been he is thought to have been the best player okay in this case you're changing the infinitive and you're keeping it two but you're changing it to um your your kind of present your perfect um participle okay so he is thought to have been the best player yeah he is thought that he was nasty that doesn't quite work you would have to say it it is thought that he was is fine right if you said that and I'll put that up there just to be just to be clear that the previous structure if you said it is thought that he was the best player that's fine it is thought now that he was the best player in the past or as I've said here he is thought to have been the best player okay so again you just you're just tossing something else in into your into your uh Your Arsenal right all your your language weapons all these wonderful sentence structures that you can use Okay so how about this let's do some practice I want you guys to write a couple sentences for me with this structure okay so go back into that into that document that um that I shared with you guys okay now if if for some reason um you're maybe if you're just joining if Zach maybe could pop that link back in the back in the chat to that um document again just in case some people missed it the first time open that dock make a copy so you can write on it or again I'm just going to leave these sentences here okay and you'll notice that the first one is the same as the previous exercise but I want you to write it in a different way so again I'm giving you four sentences okay and I want you to rewrite them with this second option for impersonal passive so I'll help you out a little bit and with that first one I would start with drinking a glass of red wine and then continue from there okay and how about I'm gonna make that blue just to make it nice and pretty oh look at that that's nice okay so finish that sentence um and the other three I'm gonna pop off again and I'm going to sip my water and and put your answers in the chat and then we'll go over them okay guys get to work and if you have questions put them in the put them in the chat all right [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] thank you [Music] let's suppose that you're writing a really important email to a colleague thank you [Music] foreign [Music] 's ticking along let's go over some of these I'm I'm seeing some good answers in the chat here so the first one people say that drinking a glass of red wine a day reduces one's chance of heart disease so for okay let's go to Seoul Seoul says drinking a glass of red wine a day is said good good start is sad to reduced ones chances of heart disease okay now this soul is almost perfect this is good this is what I what I like to call a good mistake because other people can can learn from this now be careful with the infinitive here okay when you're using the two infinitive you have to take that d off of there you don't want it in the past tense right so you want to say drinking a glass of red wine is said to reduce one's chances of heart disease okay and if you take that d off take that past tense off that is um Perfecto yeah good stuff all right thanks for that what about B why why is this this isn't this isn't blue let me go in here there we go okay so many people consider Jonathan Franzen one of the most talented American novelists of his day so who's got it Luis says JF okay he's getting you know you can get a little lazy with that that's fine what happened to my my blue my blue went that's fine JF he says is considered to be one of them the more talented and then I'm gonna get lazy there too okay just for for time reasons here okay so that is great if you said Jonathan Franzen is considered if you said considered by many that's fine too if you want to qualify it is considered by many to be one of the most talented writers of his day one special thing with the with the verb consider that's a little bit different from most of the other report verbs is you actually don't even really need the infinitive with consider if you want to leave it there that's great if you want to take it away and just say Jonathan Franzen is considered one of the most talented writers of his day that's fine too okay but if you want to leave it there that's great really good and I see lots of people got it yeah right signab got it so you got it yeah like Steve Lynn you you nailed it there good okay so what about C people believe Halloween originated in the 9th century now again this is what people think it's hard to to prove exactly when people started to celebrate Halloween now this one I got a couple of you got a little tricky let me hear so but I think Steve Lynn I couldn't I couldn't trick you you got it so we said Halloween I lost it is believed now right people believe now to have originated in the 9th century I think Steve got that did you Halloween is believed to have originated in the 9th century that is perfect now some of you you want to be careful of this a few of you use the the kind of the passive voice with the infinitive there and you you wouldn't do that so I saw some people said that right Halloween is whoops my mistake I need that d on there right Halloween is believed to have been originated in the 9th century originate is one of those verbs that we don't typically use in the passive voice it's more of one of those intransitive verbs it does not you can't originate something else right something originates itself it's a intransitive verb so don't use the passive there and just say Halloween is believed two have originated in the 9th century good all right and how about this last one here some people think Toronto is that capital of Canada I made a little mistake there that should be that Capital it should be the some people think Toronto is the capital of Canada but it is not no it's the biggest city it's an important city right but it is not the capital of Canada Ottawa is the capital city of Canada but many people from other countries think that Toronto is the capital that's fine I'm not I'm not angry if you do doesn't hurt my feelings everyone that's great so let's start with Toronto and a lot of you guys got got this one too all right yeah right zainab you got it you said Toronto is thought I think he missed the T on thought though you want to put that T at the end 2B the capital of Canada but it is not right now with this one you could say is thought by some to be the capital of Canada okay you can you can qualify this in many ways thought by some to be the capital I like this little adverb here I'm going to say this Toronto is often mistakenly thought to be the capital of Canada and then I don't even need them but it is not at the end look how look how fancy I'm getting with my report structures Toronto is often mistakenly believed or mistakenly thought to be the capital of Canada all right good stuff all right any questions in there not so much okay so wow we have very little time there's one more thing I want you guys to do before we go I don't think we're going to have time for the mistake of the week this week but I do have another thing here that I want you guys to do for me instead okay so this is who are you okay I'm gonna put I'm gonna put three sentences on the screen okay and all three sentences are about a famous person just read the sentence and if you know who this person is you can put the answer in the chat and if you whoever gets it first is the fastest student on the internet okay let's let's practice these report structures here so can you guess the famous person all right first one again these are three sentences it's all about the same person okay so the first person to get it is is the best the first person to get it will be thought to be the best student on the internet okay he is considered to be one of the greatest living actors okay the greatest living actors one of the greatest okay is considered by many okay next one it was felt for years that he deserved an Academy Award before he finally got one okay so it was felt for years people thought for many years that he deserved the best actor award before he finally won okay and now your last clue no answers yet in the chat it is rumored it is rumored that he will make another movie with Revenant director Alejandro Gonzalez inaritu oh wow Eduardo got it wow you guys are fast Kyle you're out of here all right see ya now Eduardo nailed it Rosa came in in second good for you yes because the answer is DiCaprio right Leonardo DiCaprio there you go tear no got it too yeah good so dreamy so talented okay so how about this this is what I I'm going to propose sign up Tom Hanks that's a good that's a good guess that's a really good guess actually because Tom Hanks is is good too so I'm going to put this on the Facebook group because I would like you guys to practice this type of sentence structure not just changing sentences that I give you but but coming up with your own sentences so I'm going to put this Challenge on the learn English on Facebook group and I'm going to put the Leonardo DiCaprio as an example but I'd like you to choose a famous person they could be living they could be dead they could be real or not it could be a cartoon it doesn't matter but I want you to write three sentences using the report structures that we've talked about today to put on the Facebook group for other people to guess who you are describing okay so that's all a little complicated I'll put the instructions on the Facebook group a little bit later today and I want to see some examples of impersonal passive report structures okay yes I know but you guys are too distracted by DiCaprio behind me you're not listening to me at all you're just looking at him so I can't compete it's hard to compete with the Caps all right so how about this I I will pop out of there so that you guys can can pay attention to me for a minute so I'm going to put that on the on the Facebook group learn English on Facebook if you're not a member uh join up you can put your English questions on there and we'll answer them we'll help you out Mark or Karim or myself or or anybody who's available will will help you out even other students can can help you out um Steve Lynn is saying it is rumored and rumor has it yes same same meaning Steve yeah that's a good question all right I may have made up that rumor actually or I mean I may have read it somewhere I don't know if it's true but I guess that's that's what we're doing here today in in class is learning how to learning how to gossip learning how to make up rumors and spread them on Facebook okay so um in the meantime keep watching marks open class on Wednesdays at nine my class next Thursday at nine same time same place which is everywhere in the world at the same time okay and again if you have questions about any of those closed classes where you get homework assignments and quizzes and listening practice reading practice and uh more attention from from the teacher you can ask Zach Zach will direct you to the website where you can sign up for that okay so in the meantime keep practicing your English keep using your passive report structures and we will see you here next time okay guys always a pleasure thank you so much for joining and we'll see you here next week okay and I should say there are going to be classes all next week at different times too so keep an eye on the schedule we've got classes almost every day next week okay so keep watching see ya [Music] foreign [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: Smrt English

Views: 44,189

Keywords: English, English Lesson, Live English, English Class, Articles

Id: XCRVoZ5jpQs

Length: 67min 24sec (4044 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 01 2016