Grammar is weird.
In school you probably learned all of the standard grammar forms but there are a lot of casual and spoken grammar forms that can express a specific feeling that your teachers never taught you.
Today we’ll show you one grammar form to express intensity.
This is a grammar pattern that Lindsay has been noticing herself using more and more when planning intensive projects or strategizing with people or working in a small group.
Today you’ll find out how you could use this grammar form to connect and collaborate with native speakers.
Let’s start with a quick example:
In this conversation we work for a new car technology company.
- A: What are we going to do? The first driver-less car just hit someone.
- B: Maybe we do nothing. Maybe we wait. We see how the news covers it. Then we decide on the angle we want to take.
Why do we use the present tense of the verb here?
How and why we might use a grammar form in the present that should be in the future?
You would do this when you’re strategizing on your next move on a project.
The stakes are high and there a lot of unknowns so you might use the present tense if you are making a suggestion about what your team should do next.
This is often accompanied with “maybe” but doesn’t have to be.
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More examples:
- A) We have no evidence but we have to solve this crime by the end of the week. What are we gonna do?
- B) Maybe we sit back and let the criminal reveal himself to us. We don’t act. Less is more.
Here it’s almost like we are predicting our future actions and putting them into words in the present tense.
Takeaway:
You might not hear this grammar form all of the time but you will hear it sometimes.
You definitely didn’t learn this in your English class in school but this is one of the grammar forms that will help you use language that reflects the situation so that you can connect better.
Plus, this grammar forms allows you to put more energy and life into your statement so it will get your colleagues motivated and ready to work with you.
What questions do you have today?
Let us know in the comments below.
