This is an All Ears English podcast episode 2165.
You won't be disappointed by this English grammar.
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Don't get burned when it comes to past tense verbs that can also be adjectives.
Have you ever said you were boring when you meant to say you were bored?
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Hello, Lindsay.
How are you today?
Hey there, Aubrey.
I'm feeling good.
I'm feeling good.
What are we getting into today on Allers English?
Let's start with a question that definitely has to do with what we're talking about today.
Would you rather be disappointed or disappointing?
That's a toughie.
That's a tough question.
I would say I hate to disappoint people, so I would rather be disappointed by someone else rather than be disappointing to someone else.
Does that make sense?
Yeah, I am exactly the same.
I would prefer someone else disappoint me.
I would rather be disappointed than be disappointing.
Yeah.
That's interesting.
When we talk about be disappointing, I mostly think about like parents, like disappointment to my parents.
Am I disappointing to them?
Oh my gosh.
There's nothing worse.
I remember when I was growing up, um, it was the worst thing in the world.
Like my dad's sign face of disappointment.
He wouldn't like yell.
He wasn't a yeller.
He wasn't a screamer.
Um, it was more like he just looked sad and disappointed.
There's nothing worse.
Same, same.
My dad was quiet, but if he ever said I'm disappointed in you, or just even in his face, you could just see the disappointment.
Nothing was, there's nothing worse.
He wanted to make him proud of you.
Of course.
Of course.
I feel like a lot of people would say, but maybe other people would have different opinions.
Maybe we'll ask that in a question for a poll today, right?
Yes.
Stick around until the end.
We'll share the poll.
You can find those on Spotify.
We love when you guys answer our polls so that we can interact with you, find out your opinion about what we're chatting about here.
Yeah, we love that.
So guys, go ahead and hit, follow right now, right here, wherever you are listening, so you don't miss a single episode of All Ears English.
This is going to be a great one for anyone at the intermediate to advanced level, B1, B2, C1.
This episode is for you guys, okay?
Right.
We got a great question here about difficult grammar, because these words disappointed disappointing, we use them both as adjectives here, but they can also be participles, present or past participles.
So they can be verbs.
So what really is tricky can be really confusing is if you start to think of a word as just a verb or just an adjective.
English is going to burn you because so many words can be a verb, an adjective, a noun.
It gets complicated.
Right.
So let's not get burned by these adjectives, right?
Let's do it right.
And also, you know, for my days I'm sure for you too, for my days teaching English in New York And Japan, more so New York City, having students at that intermediate to advanced level.
I got this question all the time.
We worked on this stuff a lot.
Very, very common.
If you can nail this, it's going to be a big boost for your fluency, guys.
Should I read the question then?
Yes, we have some pro tips today.
Such great advice.
And this was all sparked by a very good question.
Yeah, Lindsay, if you could read it, that'd be awesome.
Yeah, this is a great question from Sebastian Alcaraz from Mexico.
Here we go.
Hey, good day, Lindsay and company.
I hope you have a great day.
Here's my question.
I'm confused about adjectives ending with ed, adjectives ending with ing.
The past simple ed and the past continuous was plus ing.
For example, I'm so tired after a long day at work.
This example is an adjective ending with ed.
I just heard the exciting news.
Congratulations.
This is an adjective ending with ing.
Last year.
He always played football on saturdays.
This is an example of past simple tense.
Sam was eating popcorn at the movie theater, right.
Oh my gosh aubry, it's a lot.
It's a lot.
Where, when and how can we use the ones mentioned above?
I'm stuck and i'm trying to figure it out, but i can't.
I don't know what to do.
Hope you have a nice day.
Thanks in advance, sebastian alcoraz from mexico, nice.
I love this question.
Thank you for sending it, Sebastian.
But I also really love reading where he's saying, I'm stuck trying to figure it out.
I don't know what to do because this makes me feel like I'm so excited.
We can help.
We can break this down, because this is the kind of thing that no amount of Googling would really make it simple.
And break it down for you.
Whereas we can take this one quick episode.
And by the end, you guys are going to be really clear on how to use these.
I'm excited.
Exactly.
Exactly.
So we're going to break it down really clearly for you guys here.
Let's start with why it's confusing.
Aubrey?
Yeah, I think that helps.
If you start to think of every word that ends in ed as a past tense verb right, you see parked or jumped, and you imagine okay, past tense verb then this will confuse you, because they can also be adjectives words that end in ed.
They're called participial adjectives.
Yes, yes.
Or also ing words, right?
If you think of words that end in ing as verbs, no, they can be adjectives.
They can be nouns as gerunds.
So this is one trap that learners fall into is to target that ed and ing and feel like oh, that's a verb, not necessarily.
Right.
And it seems like we could end up in that trap if we're not looking at the context, right?
Exactly.
That's exactly right.
Yeah.
So like I said, these are participial adjectives, kind of a tricky word to say.
What that means is they're in the same form as a past participle or a present participle, which is that past tense verb right.
So Sebastian used a couple examples here.
And he said, you know, this is a past simple, a verb in past simple tense, right?
Played, played football.
And he's showing that. this can be confusing if it's also used as an adjective.
Now, not every word can be a participial adjective, right?
There is quite a list.
There are hundreds, but it's not every verb.
So that makes it tricky too.
You can't take the verb played and turn that into an adjective, right?
Played or playing.
That one doesn't exist as an adjective, but there are a lot of participles that are also adjectives.
All right.
So let's give some examples and compare a few.
Shall we go into it, Aubrey?
Absolutely.
Yeah.
So we're going to start with E-D words that end in E-D and then we're separating and we'll go into I-N-G next.
All right.
Okay.
So shall I give the example first for the first one?
Yeah.
So first, we're talking about these E-D verbs that can be adjectives.
So let's first start with the examples of verbs, right?
Sentences that have a verb that ends in E-D.
These are in simple past.
They're past participles.
Okay, here we go.
So, the lesson bored him.
So, verb, right?
To bore.
Exactly.
Here, bored is a verb.
It's in simple past tense.
The lesson is doing the action.
It is boring him.
The lesson bored him.
Right.
Simple past tense.
Or he surprised her when he showed up.
Okay?
So, surprise is the verb in the simple past tense.
Right?
Exactly.
Now we use these when we're talking about actions in the past, but both of these participles, bored and surprised, can also be adjectives, adjectives that end in ed.
Now, these generally describe emotions.
They tell us how people feel.
So we're going to take these exact two sentences and change them so that now that participle is used as an adjective.
Give us the first one, Lindsay.
Yeah, and before we do that, I would just say this is linked to what we talked about at the beginning of the show.
Disappointed, right?
My dad was disappointed.
That was the worst thing to see, that disappointed face.
So here it is.
I was bored during the lesson.
Right, so here bored is an adjective.
It's describing me, right?
Was is a linking verb.
Bored is an adjective.
So you can see how the lesson bored him.
Oh, it's a verb there.
I was bored is an adjective describing me and how I feel.
Emotions.
I like how you highlighted that.
Emotions, how we feel, how we react to something, like the results.
Right.
It's always going to describe a person when a participial adjective is used in a sentence.
Right.
Or when... It has to be an emotion, how something feels, a person or an animal.
How something feels.
And usually an emotion is a result of something else.
So it's like a response to something most of the time, right?
Exactly.
Right.
So the lesson is boring you.
You were bored.
You are bored by the lesson.
Or the noise surprised you.
You were surprised by the noise, right?
So she was surprised when he showed up, right?
She was surprised when he showed up.
Now, surprised is a participial adjective.
Ends in ed, but it's an adjective describing her.
She was surprised.
Yes.
All right.
Okay, Aubrey, let's go into the other side.
Let's flip over to the ing verbs.
And the adjectives, they also, you find ing in there.
So let's do it.
And everything's very similar as ed.
These just end in ing.
So we have verbs that end in ing.
These are also participles, but they're either present or past continuous.
So for example, give us the first one.
All right, here we go.
He was annoying her with his passive aggressive behavior.
All right.
So.
Annoying is a verb here, right?
He was annoying her.
He is doing this action.
So annoy is a verb.
It can be an action.
Okay.
Or what's the next one?
Disappointed.
We're going back to the... She disappointed her parents when she broke curfew.
Here is a verb.
It's an action she's doing.
She is disappointing someone.
Okay.
Now let's look at adjectives where we use the same core of the word, but totally different.
Exactly.
It's the same participle.
But now it's a participial adjective.
It's used as an adjective, ends in ing.
And these always describe the thing that causes the emotion.
So it's not going to describe a person.
It's going to describe whatever.
That is the lesson, the thing that causes a person to feel that emotion.
Okay.
Important difference between what we said, how a person feels at the top when we talked about the ED surprised bored, different right.
Exactly.
So a boring lesson makes you feel bored, right? right?
The thing, the thing here is the lesson.
That's what's causing the emotion.
Exactly.
All right.
So should I give the first example for this?
These are those same, the same two examples where we had the verb.
Now we'll, we'll have them with the adjective, same word.
Okay.
That noise is really annoying, right?
Okay.
So instead of, you know, the annoying noise and there it's an adjective, right?
That noise is really annoying.
All right.
Or her parents told her that her actions were disappointing.
Oh, the worst.
Exactly.
Right.
And here we have disappointing as an adjective.
So it's interesting how the meaning is really the same.
It's just how you say it.
Right.
If you diagram a sentence, it's like, OK, she disappointed her parents.
Disappointment's a verb.
Yes.
Her actions were disappointing.
Disappointing's an adjective.
Same word.
Yes.
You know for our listeners.
I have a suspicion that many of them have had this lesson before, right.
We've taught this lesson over years and years.
We've heard it, but Aubrey, how can we solidify?
I think this may be something that doesn't seem to catch on, that for some reason we're not able to get traction.
It is.
I mean, it's complicated, right?
You guys might want to listen to this whole discussion again, come back to the blog.
So we have it written out, but we have a pro tip that might really help solidify this in your brain.
And this is an Aubrey Carter original.
I came up with this.
So it may not be perfect, but I kind of like it.
Here's my pro tip.
Ing for things and Ed for Fred.
Fred's the name of a person.
So if it's an adjective that ends in ing, that's going to be describing a thing, a thing that causes an emotion.
And then ed, if it ends in ed, ed for Fred.
Ed is going to describe how a person feels, a person's emotions or feelings.
I love that.
I love that.
That's good.
Love the pro tips, especially when they're originals.
So good.
I know.
I was like, what can I do that has some alliteration that'll be a good memory trick?
Ing for things and Ed for Fred.
Love it.
Guys, write that down.
Now let's get into a role play because this is really the context we need, right?
To start to look at the words not as just words on a list, but in the context of what are we even talking about here?
Who's feeling something?
What's the thing that's getting impacted?
Okay.
How does this work in a conversation?
Yeah, yeah.
So what are we doing in this conversation?
So here you and I are discussing our homework.
Maybe we're college students here.
Okay.
And we're going to use new participial adjectives because there are hundreds.
So these are ones that we haven't covered yet in the episode.
All right, here we go.
All right, I'll start us out.
I'm confused.
Are you confused?
Yes.
These instructions are so confusing.
It's an interesting class, but the homework is so frustrating.
Exactly.
The lesson really interested me.
Then the teacher confused me when he explained his homework.
The homework, yes.
It really frustrated me when he was unclear.
Oh yes, so many words.
The first half of the role play all adjectives and then the second half are all verbs.
So let's go through.
Hopefully that will help you guys as you listen to the sentences here.
Oh okay interesting yeah, this is another way to break it up.
Right, so i'm confused.
Again, adjective right, exactly.
I'm describing my emotions, how i feel i'm confused.
And then i ask you are you confused?
Both of these are adjectives ending in ed and then another kind of adjective ending in ing.
I said yes, these instructions are confusing.
Okay, so it's the thing that's making me feel confused right, Exactly.
Ing for things, right?
What's confusing?
The instructions.
So adjectives describe nouns and here confusing isn't an emotion.
You could never say, I feel confusing.
That wouldn't be, that wouldn't really make sense.
That would, then you'd say like, I am being confusing.
Sorry.
That's.
Yeah.
And I was going to say the famous kind of mistake that can lead to laughter, right?
Is when you say I'm boring, right?
Instead of I'm bored, right?
Yes, exactly.
If you accidentally say I'm boring or I'm not interesting, what do you mean to say I'm not interested?
Right.
That's what then when you need this ing for things, ed for Fred, right?
Don't use ing verbs or ing adjectives to describe how you feel.
That will be incorrect.
Exactly.
All right.
Let's keep going.
So you said then it's what?
It's.
Yeah.
So I use two more adjectives ending in ing here.
It's an interesting class, but the homework is so frustrating.
So these are describing things.
The class is interesting.
The homework is frustrating.
Right.
Okay.
And here now we're going to verbs, right?
So I said, exactly.
The lesson interested me.
And this is an interesting use of interest as a verb.
I would tend not to use this quite as much, right?
In this way, but it makes sense and it works.
Interest is a verb.
To draw my interest.
Exactly.
To draw my interest or to interest me.
But you're right.
Native English speakers often would instead say the lesson was interesting, instead of saying the lesson interested me.
Or we could give our listeners as a bonus another option.
The lesson really caught my interest.
Caught my interest.
Drew my interest or caught my interest.
You're right.
It's interesting how It's interesting.
We'll change that.
It just sort of sounds more needed to use like a more informal verb.
Yeah.
I mean, you can do it.
It's correct.
It's just not very natural for some reason.
Sounds a little more formal.
A little more formal than what you would use in daily conversations.
For sure.
And then I said, but then the teacher confused me when he explained the homework.
Just simple past verbs.
This is where it does get tricky when, if you're trying to break down a sentence and it's like okay, the teacher confused me.
Oh, is that an adjective?
I'm talking about how I felt.
I was confused.
But in this sentence, if you look at it, the teacher is doing the action.
The teacher is confusing someone.
The teacher confused me.
So it's a verb.
I think we should dive into a pro tip here.
We just had that one last one, frustrated me as a past tense verb.
Again, it really frustrated me when he was unclear.
It's still a verb in this sentence.
It's what the teacher was doing, right?
The lesson frustrated me.
But what can really be confusing is if you're trying to diagram sentences, these are difficult.
It's difficult to look at confused and, okay, is it being used as a verb or an adjective there?
And that doesn't really help your fluency.
So what's the answer, Aubrey?
What should be our connection mindset?
How do we, I mean, we're not diagramming sentences anymore, right?
We're not in school anymore, thank goodness.
Right, if your goal is fluency, you want to do what is going to give you the most benefit.
And instead of trying to figure out if a word is a verb or an adjective in a sentence though that is interesting for you know, just to know, and for grammar teachers is it helping you move toward your goal of connection right?
Of connection, fluency, connection.
Exactly.
Yes.
And so a lot of these.
As you listen to us talk about these, one will sound correct because you're taking in a lot of English.
You're hearing these adjectives and verbs used correctly.
So the main thing to keep in mind is that very common error that you were talking about Lindsay, is accidentally describing yourself or describing a person's emotions with a word that ends in ing and saying like I'm not interesting or I'm boring.
That's a mistake you want to avoid.
That's unclear and you're accidentally saying something you know unkind about yourself and that's not what you mean.
Yeah yeah totally, I love this.
This has been a really good breakdown of the differences here.
Right now, your job guys, is to go out into the world, listen to English, then identify when are we seeing a verb, when are we seeing an adjective, with the ed or with the ing?
Then we can start to use these and produce them correctly.
Right absolutely yes, this is a lot.
I read that question.
It's such a good question.
Like you said lindsay, so many of our students have this question and it is one of the most confusing things about english.
So a couple of pro tips here definitely don't see a word that ends in ed and think past tense verb 100.
No other option.
Yeah.
Don't be robotic in the way you think.
Look at it in context.
It's all about the situation.
Good stuff, Aubrey.
We are going to come back.
We're going to do lots of good grammar stuff this year in 2024.
So guys, hit that follow button on All Ears English to get every single episode we publish.
All right.
Awesome.
Thanks, Lindsay.
I will see you next time.
Take care.
Bye.
Bye.
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