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Learn English- Online English
Courses - Unit
17
Grammar
1. There is / there are
"There"
is a kind of pronoun used to show something
you know exists.
Compare these two
sentences:
- "A fly is in my soup."
- "There is a fly in my soup!"
The first sentence is factual and impersonal.
The fly is the subject, and the soup is the
object. In the second sentence the object is
"a fly in my soup", so the subject
is "There". "There" functions
as a kind of dummy subject that represents a
more personal perspective, rather than a factual
statement.
Especially in spoken
English we usually use the contraction "there's",
rather than "there is".
Here are the forms
of "there" in the Simple Present.
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Statements
There's a tree
in my garden.
There are books on the desk.
Negatives
There isn't
a computer in my bedroom.
There aren't any cinemas here.
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Questions
Is there a
restaurant here?
Yes, there is. / No, there isn't
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There is usually
subject-verb agreement when using there is/there
are. For example:
- There are ten students in my class.
- There is ten students in my class.
Sometimes however
we can use "there is" with compound
subjects, for example:
There's a bank and a post office near my house.
Click below for exercises!
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