Ask Alisha: Your English Questions Answered #235 - How to Sound More Natural in English
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Hi everybody, welcome back to Ask Alisha, the weekly series where you ask me questions and I answer them. Maybe. Let's get to your first question this week. First question this week comes from Ramzad. Hi Ramzad. Ramzad asked, "I have been to London. I have been in London.

In these two sentences, is the speaker currently in or out of London? Okay, interesting question. So again, these two pieces we are going to talk about are I have been to London and I have been in London. Okay, so first, they could both be part London.

of another larger sentence. And to answer your question, they could both be said in London or out of London, okay? We need a little bit more information about both of them. So let's break down the first one and what they could be saying here. "I have been to London" could be a sentence on its own.

In this situation, it means the speaker is just talking about their life experience. I have the experience of visiting London. That's what this means. Like you could say, I have been to London two times. You could say, I have been to London before, or I have been to London many times, right? We simply want to talk about our life experience. You could say this

In London, if you wanted to, like someone might say, "Oh, have you been to London before? Is it your first time here?" They might say, "Yes, I have been to London many times." You can say that in London. You could also say the same conversation outside of London, okay? So,

Both of those are possible, 100% possible. So let's compare this to "I have been in London." This piece is probably just a piece of a sentence. We probably would not say this alone. We need a little bit of extra information here. For example, you might say something like "I have been in London since 2010" or "I have been in London for three months," something like that.

that. Or you could say like, I have been in London since I was a child, right? So we probably need some kind of time marker if we are going to use this. So personally, I would probably say this if I am currently in London, that's probably the most likely situation. But it is possible that we might use this sentence outside of London as well. If you are visiting another location, although you live in London, and someone says, Oh, how long

been in London? You might say, oh, I've been in London since 2010. And that's another way to say that I have lived in London since 2010. So you could use this inside London. You could use this outside London as well. Again, what we need here in both of these example sentences is a bit of context, right? So yes, the grammar of these two pieces is very, very similar. We just have those preposition differences.

to London and in London, but they could both possibly be used inside the city and outside the city and to express different ideas as well. So please try to think a little bit about how you can add more information around these pieces, what you'd like to communicate and what it's

it's possible to communicate with these ideas as well. So this is a good just quick reminder about some differences with the present perfect grammar point. So if you want more information about this, I would highly recommend you do a quick search on the English Class 101 YouTube channel or on our website to find more videos and more lessons all about present perfect tense and how you can use it.

So thanks very much for sending this interesting question. Let's continue on to the next part. Next question comes from Kwong. Hi Kwong. Kwong asked, "If my mobile phone has a low battery, what should I say?" Which sentence here is correct? My mobile phone's battery is low. My mobile phone is running out of power. And are there any ways that native speakers often say this that sound kind of natural? Does this sound natural? My mobile phone's battery is out of power. Or my mobile phone's battery power is 5%.

And what sentences should I ask to know how much power is left? Okay, great, great question. I would suggest you just make all of these shorter. So everything that you said was fine. You know, my mobile phone's battery is at 5%. Great. We just make it really, really short. Usually when we say this, we go, ah, ah, ah.

"My phone is dying." Usually we say this, which means my phone's battery is very, very low. Or we just say, "My battery is at 5%." So oftentimes we just cut mobile phone out of the sentence because it's usually very clear when we're holding this. We might just say, "Ah, like I'm at 5%" or "Ah, my battery is dying." It's usually very clear from context.

you're texting somebody and you're worried your battery is going to die, you can say I'm so sorry my battery might die or my battery is at 5% so use that preposition at there. My battery is at 5%, my battery is at

eight percent. My battery might die. So you can use all of those and I would recommend you just take out mobile phone if you want to be really really really specific for some reason just say phone like my phone's battery is at five percent or my phone's battery is going to die my phone's battery might die

These are usually the expressions that we use. If you want to ask someone this as a question then, if you want to ask them about the battery percentage on their phone, you can just use a simple question like, "How much power do you have left?" or "How much battery life do you have?" There are a couple of different ways that we can ask that. Some really, really quick questions that you could ask if you need to know someone's phone battery information, you could say, "What percentage are you at?" or "How much battery power do you have left?"

or "What are you at right now?" if you're like gesturing to someone's phone or like "How much power do you have?" as well. So usually we say like "How much power?" or like "What percentage are you at?" Those kinds of things are probably the most common ones. We usually don't say

how much battery percentage does your phone have right now? That's very, very long to say. Instead, just say like, how's your power? If you wanna make it really, really easy to do. So those are a few different ways that we can say, you know, battery power and like battery power related questions too. Usually in my case, I will just share my own opinion here. Usually I will just say like, my phone is about to die or my battery is dying or my phone is at 5%. I will use those very, very short,

easy to understand ones that don't have anything to do with like my mobile phone, but I just say my battery because usually it's very, very clear. That's what I'm talking about. So that's what I would personally recommend for you. So I hope that this gives you some ideas for how you can express this with your mobile phone as well. Thanks for an interesting question. Okay.

Let's move on to the next question. Next question comes from Zachary. Hi, Zachary. Zachary asks, "If I want to talk about an action in the future, but I don't know who is going to do the action, how can I explain it? For example, I will check your bags in the lobby or a person will check bags in the lobby.

Okay, so this is an interesting question because there are a few different ways that we can answer this question. There are a few different ways that we could solve this problem. So if you know that something is going to happen in the future, like at your workplace or at your school, but you don't know who exactly is going to do that, you could use your second example. Like in your example sentence, someone will check your bags in the lobby, or someone is going to check your bags in the lobby, or a person will check your bags in the lobby.

What I would recommend here, just to make the sentence very efficient, try a passive sentence structure, like "Bags will be checked in the lobby." Something like that is very, very clear, like what is going to happen is the focus of the sentence, and we don't need to know exactly who is going to do it.

So if you find yourself in a situation where you need to describe something that is going to happen but you don't know who is going to do it, so you can use a passive sentence structure like this because one of the uses, one of the key important uses of passive is for when the subject is unknown, when we don't know who is doing the thing. So this is a perfect example of when it's a great idea and a very natural idea to use passive to express that and

Another benefit of using passive here is that the thing that is happening takes the focus in the sentence instead of the person who is doing the thing. So in this kind of situation, like a customer service situation, it's great that the action is taking the focus there and not the person who is going to do the action in the future. So I would definitely recommend if you don't know who is going to do the thing, instead of using like someone will check your bags in the lobby, I would recommend using that passive sentence structure to do that.

bags will be checked in the lobby. Something like that sounds super, super natural. So I hope that this answers your question. And I hope that this is a good reminder to go and do a little bit of review of passive sentence structures as well. They are super, super helpful. So thanks very much for sending this interesting question. Great, that is everything that I have for this week. So thank you as always for sending your great questions. Thanks very much for watching this week's episode of Ask Alisha, and I will see you again next time. Bye.