English Grammar - BEING & BEEN

Hey guys, this is Alex. Thanks for clicking and welcome to this lesson on "Being vs. Been".

Now this question was asked by Alejandro on our Facebook page. So Alejandro, pay special

attention as this is especially for you and every other user who has trouble with these

very common words in the English language. So first, we're going to begin by talking

about "being". Now I have three sentences on the board and they express three different

ways to use the word "being". So we have "Mark is being generous. Yesterday she was being

harassed by the police and being told what to do is not pleasant." So let's look at the

first sentence. "Mark is being generous." Now as you can see, this is using "being" in a

progressive tense, okay? So you can use "being" and follow it with either an adjective or

a noun to talk about how someone is acting, okay? So "Mark is being generous." Again,

generous is a word that means giving, like he's generous, he gives gifts to people, he

gives money freely, he is not stingy, is what we can say, okay? So one way is you can use

it with the progressive tenses. You can also say "Mark was being generous" or in the future

it doesn't really make sense, it's not used very often to say "Mark will be being generous."

Technically you could say that, but it's not very common to speak in that way. So when

you're using "being" in the progressive tense, usually you want to use it in the present

or the past. So remember, when you're doing progressive, it's subject, the verb "to be"

followed by "being" and then you can follow that with either an adjective or a noun. So

you can say "Mark is being a jerk." Okay? So he's not being nice. If you want to make

a negative, you can say "subject to be" add "not" and "being" and then an adjective or

a noun. Okay, the second sentence, "Yesterday she was being harassed by the police." So

here, the subject "she" is receiving the action, okay? So you can use "being" in a passive

sense. When an action is happening to you, or has happened to you in the past, you can

use "being." She was being harassed by the police, means the police were harassing her.

Okay? So you can say "I was being," let's see, the classic example is "The girl hit

the ball." Okay? Or "The girl was being hit by the ball." Okay? So she didn't like being

hit by the ball. So if you're using "being" in a passive sense, make sure you use "being"

followed by a past participle. Okay? And the final example is the same thing as the previous

one but we're using "being" at the start of a sentence. So you can also use "being" in

a passive sense, but you can use it to make generalizations about something. Okay? "Being

told what to do is not pleasant." Okay? So again, you are not really the subject in this,

the person is receiving the action. So "being told what to do is not pleasant." Okay? So

just to review, you can use "being" in a progressive sense. Again, follow it with an adjective

or with a noun. You can also use it in a passive sense where you are receiving the action.

And you can use "being" to make generalizations. Okay? And when you're using it to make a generalization,

you can only do it when you follow it with a past participle, with a past, past verb.

Okay? Now let's move on to "been." Okay guys, now let's look at "been." So we have three

sentences on the board. "She has been to Alaska." "The students had been studying for five hours."

And "She will have been accepted by the college at that point." Now, what do you notice that

is similar in all of these sentences? Well, aside from the fact that they all have "been"

in them, they're all perfect tenses. Okay? So we have an example of the present perfect

tense. "He has been to Alaska." And we have an example of the past perfect progressive.

"The students had been studying for five hours." And we have an example of the future perfect.

"She will have been accepted by the college at that point." Now, here, we're having the

future perfect used in a passive sense. So here, again, what we're saying is the college

will have accepted her at that point. So she is actually receiving the action from the

college. Whereas in this case, "He has been to Alaska." This is the indefinite past. Now,

there are other lessons on Angbid that teach you all of the tenses, the perfect tenses,

the present perfect, past perfect, past perfect progressive, the future perfect, and the future

perfect progressive. So, when you're using "been," you're basically going to be using

the perfect tenses in the English language. Okay? And all of the perfect tenses always,

always, always begin with some form of "have." Okay? So if you're using "been," make sure

that you're always using "have" before it. So, never say, "I've been to Alaska." "I have

been to Alaska in the past." Okay? You would never say, "The students been studying for

five hours." In the past, the students had been studying for five hours. Now, this is

the past perfect progressive. This means that at some point in the past, the students were

studying and an action started at this point in time. So, this is the present, this is

the future, this is the past. They started studying here. They studied, studied, studied

for five hours. They're continuing to study. The students had been studying for five hours,

so maybe they're continuing to study even more. Just at this point in time, they had

been studying for five hours. Now, for a stronger example, because again, the perfect tenses

are a huge topic, please check out the other grammatical lessons on www.engvid.com. And

if you'd like to check your understanding of using "been" versus using "been," please

do the quizzes on www.engvid.com as well. Good luck and take care.