ways to give emphasis.
Now, I’ve just got back from holiday and I’m gonna tell you all about it. But I’m gonna
give you two versions of this story. Version number one will have normal sentence structure.
Then version number 2 – I’m gonna add more emphasis. I’ll do this by adding cleft sentences
with ‘what’. Listen carefully to the two versions of the story. How are they different? We’ll
find out afterwards.
I had the worst holiday. We got to our hotel and realised that our room had been double
booked, so they moved us to a different hotel in a different town. It was horrible, noisy
and dirty and there were insects everywhere. And the bathroom was awful. I touched the
shower and it exploded and flooded the room.
I went to complain to the manager and he offered us another week there for free. I need a real holiday.
I had the worst holiday. So what happened was we got to the hotel and realised that
our room had been double booked, so what they did was move us to another hotel in another
town. It was horrible, noisy and dirty, but what I hated most was the insects everywhere.
And in the bathroom, all I did was touch the shower and it exploded, flooding the room.
I went to complain to the manager and what he did was offer us another week there for
free! What I need now is a holiday!
OK, so when I emphasise nouns, I use this structure:
What + understood information + is/was + the information that I wanted to emphasise
So, for example, instead of “I hated the insects,” in the second version I said, “What I hated
most was the insects everywhere.”
Notice that even though it’s plural, we use – normally use – ‘was’ here because we’re
saying ‘the thing I hated most was the insects everywhere.’
Again, instead of “I need a holiday,” to emphasise, I said, “What I need now is a holiday.”
Finally, you can also replace ‘what’ with ‘all’ meaning ‘the only thing’. For example
in the famous song, “All I want for Christmas is You.”
To emphasise a verb, I use this structure:
What/All + subject + do/does/did + is/was + the verb we want to emphasise
So, instead of saying, “They moved us to another town,” I said, “What they did was move us
to another town.” So that highlights the verb. Again, we can use ‘all’ instead of ‘what’
to say ‘the only thing.’ So for example, “I touched the shower and it broke,” I emphasise
using, “All I did was touch the shower and it broke.”
Finally, to emphasise the whole sentence, we can use this structure:
What happens/happened + is/was + the clause that we want to emphasise
For example, I started my story with, “What happened was we got to the hotel and realised
that our room had been double booked.
OK, so this structure is really useful when you’re writing because when we’re writing,
we can’t stress or give intonation. It’s also used a lot when we’re speaking. But remember
to stress the key information. So not, “What I need now is a holiday,” but, “What I NEED
now is a HOLIDAY.”
So go back, watch the video again and practise copying the sentences with stress. Now, what
you need now is practice. So go to our website bbclearningenglish.com to practise the structure.
Goodbye!
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