Confused Words: THEY'RE, THERE, THEIR

Hi, my name is Rebecca and today. We'll be talking about some commonly confused words in English

We have several words like this which can be quite challenging

So these words are called hominids a homonym is a word which sounds the same as another word

But it may be spelled differently

Okay, alright, so let's start with the first set for today

These are the ones which I've written on the board the first one is there

The second one is there and the last one is there so as you can see

They're all pronounced the same but they are quite different the meaning is different the spelling is different

And when you're writing you really need to know the difference because if you make a mistake in one of these words

They're fairly basic words, and you don't want to lose points in an essay or on your eye also on your toefl exam in one

Of these quite basic words okay, so let's examine them in a little more detail the first one is

there this one is a contraction. A

contraction is when we combine two words so this contraction there is a

Combination of they plus r. We take out the a and we have the contraction there

So that's the first one, okay?

Let's think of some examples with they're the first one for example

they're british

They're sitting in the car

They're international students in

Each of these cases we were trying to say they are they are

International students, they are sitting in the car, and so on okay

All right, let's go to the second one the second one is their

t h e i r

Their is a possessive adjective it means it belongs to them

alright for example. That's their house

That's their car. okay. Have you seen their new house and so on

Alright, so that's being used as a possessive adjective to refer to something that belongs to them

Okay, let's go to the third one there

There can be two things

in one case it can be used as an introduction before the verb to be

There's

John

There's Michael

there's my book or there is my friend, okay?

There is a sale at the mall things like that

All right, it can also be used as an adverb to say in that place

Your books over there

Your cars parked over there

okay, so this is another way in which we can use the word there t h e r e

All right, so now

If you've got these three clear, I'm going to ask you a few questions

And you tell me which of these is the right one that you would use in this example, okay?

so if we say have you visited their house?

Have you visited their house? Which one is that?

this this this

Have you visited their house or saying their house meaning?

The possessive form the house that belongs to them so we are talking about the middle one which is the possessive adjective

Okay

Here's another one

They're good friends

Okay, let me give it to you again. They're good friends. Which one is that?

Right it's the first one. They're good friends is a contraction of the two words

They are correct, so it will be the first one all right

Let's take another one there are many ways to improve your English

There are many ways to improve your English

Which there are we using now, okay? Have a look

alright, it's the last one

There are many ways to improve your english, okay, all right

So take a minute to review that when I come back, we're going to do a little test with one sentence

Which I'd like you to write down

Maybe you can grab a piece of paper and a pen in the mean time and I'll be right back

Okay, did you grab a piece of paper alright? So here's the quiz to see if you have mastered these three words alright?

They're sitting over there in their car

Got that they're sitting over there in their car

Write that down while you're writing it down. I'm going to write it on the board for you

Okay, did you get all the folks first one?

They're sitting they are sitting over

there in that place

in

Their car in the car that belongs to them okay, so if you got that one, right?

you've probably understood this concept very well if you want to do some more review write out some more sentences

With the three examples and this way you can be sure that you won't make a mistake in something quite basic

If you have any questions about this lesson or anything else to do with English, please feel free to go to our website

www.engvid.com

Alright. See you there. Thanks very much. Bye