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Hello students! Today we're going to learn about distancing, something that you're going to need for your final projects that you've just embarked on.

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Remember, stop this video whenever you need it to take notes.

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Also remember to visit the Google Drive folder that we have in common or our Facebook group to download the extra materials, like extra grammar explanations that you might need.

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When you finish the video, you're going to do the exercises on Google Drive on that very same shared folder to come to class next day and see if you've understood everything that you'll see and you'll learn today.

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Okay, what is to distance?

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When we distance ourselves, we're not talking, we're not giving information as a universal truth.

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When we say things like boiling water burns your skin, well, that is actually 100% sure.

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But what happens when we are sharing pieces of news of which we're not really sure about?

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Well, in English, we have different structures and verbs to signal this to a reader,

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to tell a reader or a listener that what we're saying is not necessarily 100% sure.

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So, if you're ready, we're going to start.

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The first structure I'm going to teach you is SEEM and APPEAR, two verbs with which you're very familiar, for sure.

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Let's take a look at this first example.

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It seems, it appears, that the less children sleep, the more likely they are to behave badly.

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What is the difference with a statement like, the less children sleep, the more likely they are to behave badly?

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Well, both are statements, that's for sure.

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But when we introduce the verb seem and the verb appear, what we're doing is distancing ourselves from the information.

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That is, we're giving information without us stating that we definitely know it is true.

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And this way, we distance ourselves from the information.

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In other words, we're telling the listener, listen, here, I've heard this, I've read this somewhere,

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but I'm not really 100% sure this is actually like that.

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because I'm not an expert. Let's take a look at this second example. It would seem that someone's

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been stealing personal items from the changing rooms. Okay, this is a very serious accusation.

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Someone's been stealing personal items from the changing rooms. But we don't want to be very

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straightforward. We don't want to point at anyone and we don't want to sound very authoritative

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or um aggressive so we soften it in some how right um we could do this only by using same

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or appear it appears or it seems that someone's been stealing personal items from the changing

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rooms that would be perfect by adding would we are adding more information what we're doing

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is distance ourselves even further from the information and to make it sound less sure

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So, I've heard it, I think I've seen it, someone's told me, but I'm not 100% that there is actually someone stealing from the changing rooms.

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Mind you, that the use of would is a little bit more formal than the use of it appears or it seems.

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The second structure that we're going to see are reporting verbs.

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But not reporting verbs like say and tell in examples like, Jenny told me she's not coming.

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John said that the party was awful.

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No.

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When we mean reporting verbs, we mean reporting verbs with more meaning, a deeper meaning than that.

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There are a little bit more functions because the point at functions in the language.

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We're talking about reporting verbs like warn, suggest, explain, etc.

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We're going to see two structures that can be used with reporting verbs in their passive form.

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This is the first example. The first example is it followed by the passive verb, the reporting verb in the passing form and a that clause.

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Mind you that not all the verbs can be used with this structure. Pay attention to this list.

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Also, we may use their instead of it to express exactly the same idea.

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The second structure, subject plus the passive verb plus to plus infinitive.

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As in, my Miss and Mr. Right is thought to be hitting it off with Miss Wrong.

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Now, mind you that as it happened with the previous structure,

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this structure is restricted to a limited list of reporting verbs, the most common here.

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Other ways of distancing.

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We have adverbs like apparently.

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Apparently, Maurice and Yvette have separated.

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We can use it at the beginning or at the end to show, to mean that we've heard, we've read something, but it might not be true.

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Very commonly used in informal conversations.

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According to new research, drinking beer is more beneficial to drinking water.

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We use according to when we want to point the source of information

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and therefore distance ourselves as the source of that piece of information.

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And last but not least, the use of the modal verbs may or might

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to express or to suggest that something is possible, but not necessarily 100% sure.

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That would be all. You will find more information in our share folder and in our Facebook group.

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Thanks very much for watching.