Are you using THIS, THESE, THAT & THOSE correctly in your Business English?

- This, that, these and those.

They're all words that we use

to indicate people or things.

And I'm sure you've studied them before

but you might not be super confident

that you're using them correctly.

When you get to an advanced level of English,

there are a few special situations

that you need to know about.

And let me help you with that today.

Hi, I'm your English coach, Christina,

and welcome to Business English with Christina

where you become better at English

and better at business.

What do you know already

about the words this, that, these and those?

They're all words that we use,

like I said, to indicate things or people,

and in English, we call these words demonstratives

because they're demonstrating or showing people or things.

And in general, how we use them depends

on whether we're indicating something

or someone that is near or far, for example.

And also it depends on how many things

or people we're talking about.

So maybe let's start with a general review

of the rules before we get into some specific situations.

Now, if you're talking about something

or someone that is near to you or closer to you,

you'll use this or these.

If you're talking about something singular, you'll use this.

For example, you might say is this your phone?

You left it in the meeting room.

Or this is my coworker, Sixtine.

And if you're talking about someone

or something close to you in the plural, we use these.

To introduce some members of your team

who are nearby to you, for example,

you could say these are my colleagues, Karyn and Matthew.

Or another example, imagine maybe a member of your team

is showing you some examples of a prototype

that your company has just built.

And you could say, yeah, these prototypes are great.

Or just these are great.

Oh, and did you know that I create some worksheets,

some free worksheets

for you on the topics of the weekly videos?

Because I know that just watching the video

is not enough to help you actually use

what you're learning correctly.

So if you want the free worksheet for this lesson,

go over to christinarebuffet.com/worksheets

to get that free worksheet on this video

so that you can practice what you're learning here,

test yourself, and start using it in real life.

Now, continuing on with our explanations,

for that, we use that to point

to someone or something that is singular

but far from you.

For example, with your colleague,

you're in a meeting room,

you might see a telephone over on the table

on the other side of the room,

and you could say is that your phone?

I think you forgot it over there.

Now, if it's farther from you and plural,

we use those.

So again, let's take an example,

you're at a conference and you want to tell your colleagues

about some posters that you saw on display

in another room in the conference venue.

So you might say something like did you see those posters

about climate change in the auditorium?

So there's more than one poster

and it's far away, somewhere else

in the conference venue.

Now, here are some special situations.

This plus time, like now.

So when you want to talk about dates or times,

and use words like morning, afternoon,

evening, week, month, year,

we use this if you mean the time

that we're currently in,

and this is an important one to note for scheduling things.

For example, I'm sorry, I'm not available.

I'm so busy this week.

And it's only Monday.

Or this month, we're focusing on our new product launch.

So here we're talking about the week

or the month that we're currently in.

It's the present time.

All right, now, this plus a time for the future.

Now, I know it sounds a little confusing

but we also use this

if we're talking about a time

that's coming with the expressions,

morning, evening and weekend.

So for example, will you be at the conference this weekend?

The weekend is in the future.

Or you could say this evening,

I have a meeting with the board.

So again, it's the evening,

it's a little bit in the future

but it's still the near future.

And this will help you to avoid confusion

when you're using next plus week,

or month or year to talk about the future time.

So for example, you could say I'll call you next week.

So it's the following week, the future week.

Or another example, let's meet again

next month to discuss our new strategy.

So again, not this month, the present month

but the following month.

And another special situation

is when we use that and those

for something in the past.

So when you're talking about something

or someone that you saw in the past,

we use that or those.

For example, to congratulate your team member on something

from yesterday that they did,

you could say that talk that you gave was really good.

And if you met someone the other day sometime in the past,

and you want to talk about them today,

you could say something like those people

from Awesome Corp were really easy to work with.

And here's special situation number four

when we use that and those plus a negative opinion.

So when you're not feeling so positive about a person

or a situation, you might use that or those

almost like you're creating distance from them.

For example, if your team has some difficult clients

to manage, you might say

those new clients are so difficult to manage.

Or if you're talking about, I don't know,

a restaurant that you went to,

and you just didn't appreciate it very much,

you might say oh, yeah,

you remember that restaurant with those rude waiters

and that expensive food?

I don't know why anyone would go there.

Maybe just don't say that if your boss

has just asked you to schedule a business lunch

at that restaurant.

And the opposite of that is if we have a positive opinion

of something, we tend to use this or these

almost as if we want to show our proximity

with that thing that we like.

For example, you might say to a colleague,

you know what?

I love these new slides

that you're using in your presentation.

Or this new office is great.

As I always say, if you don't use it, you lose it.

So here's how you can use what you learned today.

Write a sentence down in the comments

with this as if you were scheduling a business meeting

this evening, this week, this weekend,

maybe not on the weekend.

You get the idea.

And then see if you can use that sentence maybe later

in the week when you're actually speaking English.

And it's the perfect opportunity

to practice what you learned in the video

and then apply it to your real life.

Now, if this lesson was helpful for you,

I would love to know

and there are three ways that you can tell me.

Give me a thumbs up on YouTube

and subscribe to my channel

so that you can continue learning

and improving your business English with my lessons.

Go over to christinarebuffet.com/worksheets.

Get that free worksheet that goes with this lesson.

We create them for you, they're free,

they're to help you learn better with the videos.

So please, take advantage of that.

And you can go ahead and watch this lesson,

which explains another tricky little grammar point,

which is all about they as a singular pronoun.

And, of course, thank you so much

for improving your English and yourself

with Business English with Christina,

and I'll see you next time.