The Little-Known Secret of "There is"

The Little-Known Secret of "There is"

Teacher Rowena

• 25 years of experience teaching English to adults, HKALE candidates, and various student groups.
• Founder of the Double R Amalgam Method (www.doubleramalgam.com).
• Author of the Penguin Buddies and Double R Kids-Professions series.
• Provided after-school English support for secondary schools and developed senior primary grammar curricula using Double R Amalgam materials from 2017-2019.

In the last issue, I mentioned that when you encounter something in your studies that you don't understand and others cannot explain, you should not simply follow the crowd or adopt a "forget it, that's just how it is!" attitude. Instead, you should proactively seize the opportunity to use critical thinking to carefully analyze the problem, which might bring significant progress to your academic journey.

I believe that the greatest gain in the learning process comes from correcting errors. This does not mean encouraging everyone to make mistakes constantly, but rather encouraging everyone to conscientiously identify their errors and analyze them, especially repetitive ones. The mystery I want to unravel for readers this time is the common mistake of "there have".

The Unsolved Mystery

Whenever many students think of writing "There is a girl", they naturally write "There has a girl / There had a girl", but teachers always instinctively correct it to "There is a girl / There was a girl". I used to make this same mistake repeatedly when I was a child. The question that often appeared in my mind was: "There" means "那兒"; "have/has/had" means "有", so why is it incorrect? I asked several English teachers, and the answers I received were either that "there is/was/are/were" must be used for "there is/are", or simply a "there's no explanation". Not truly understanding "where it went wrong," I continued to make the mistake until the day the secret was revealed.

Unveiling the Answer

In my previous articles, I mentioned that English is like colors; there are very few primary colors, and most new colors are created by mixing existing ones. For example, if you mix red and yellow, you get orange; if you mix red and blue, you get purple.

When two primary colors are mixed, you can no longer see the original red, yellow, or blue in the resulting color. In other words, when a word is used independently, it has a certain meaning, but when used in combination with other words, it is very likely to take on a different meaning. Therefore, "there is" is a combination; to express its meaning, you must rely on "There" plus an appropriate tense of the verb "be", for example:

Albert Einstein once said: "It’s not that I am so smart, it’s just that I stay with the problems longer." Today, I am fortunate to share these tips for learning English with you, simply because I have spent more time helping myself or my students solve English grammar problems.