Grammar live stream is back, after a couple of weeks' break! These are the topics we have been asked to talk about so far: 1. When do you use ‘can’ or ‘be able to’? Are there situations where one is used and not the other? 2. Why do you say there are four of us and not we are four? 3. Can we use the past perfect continuous to indicate that the activity described using the past perfect continuous stopped days, months or years earlier before another event happened. Here's an example : I had been teaching English for 3 years when I started learning Spanish. In that sentence, let's say the speaker started learning Spanish in 2005 and the speaker had been teaching English from 2001 to 2004. And that means that the activity of teaching English continued only until 2004 although the speaker started learning Spanish in 2005 so the activity of teaching English stopped one year earlier and then one year later I started learning Spanish. Is that the other use of the past perfect continuous? Or am I mistaken? 4. - "Who's that man over there?" - "That's Mike." - "He's Mike." A dictionary I have says the latter is not correct. 5. Such verbs as "resemble and understand" are not used in the present continuous form. How about the following examples? "The baby is resembling his mother more and more. these days." "They have been understanding each other better day by day since then. It seems to me that they perfectly make sense. 6. 0ne teacher from UK told me that with "for + a period of time" we use the past simple and there's no need in the past continuous. I got very confused because how would we say "I read that book for 20 minutes" if I didn't complete it, he answered that it is correct because adding "for + ..." removes the sense of completion. Then I found this sentence in English Grammar in Use, by Raymond Murphy "Alex read a book while Amy watched TV" I, again, got really surprised, because "Alex", obviously, didn't finish the whole book but despite this the sentence is in the past simple. So I still don't know what tense to choose the past simple or continuous with "for + a period of time", "until", "from 2 to 4" and "while", the time markers that show incompleteness, at least as I've been taught. I read a book until I fell asleep. (can I say this?) I was reading a book until I fell asleep. (or is this the one correct?) ▼ Thank you to all of you who joined us for the first three live streams, which can be viewed here: https://tinyurl.com/anogrammarlive. The "members only" curated live stream playlist is here: https://tinyurl.com/anocurated. This playlist is open to full channel members, who also get priority responses to comments across the whole channel, access to members-only live chats, the full range of members-only videos and other perks - all for just a few dollars a month! Ask your questions in advance, and we will do our best to answer them in the live stream. Alternatively, you can ask during the live stream itself. © All rights reserved