Hi, I'm Rebecca and in today's lesson we'll be talking about some more commonly confused
These words are normally called homonyms.
A homonym is a word which sounds the same as another word but has a completely different
meaning and very often a different spelling.
For you, it's really important to be able to differentiate between these words because
when you make a mistake like that, they're usually pretty basic words so you want to
make sure that you don't lose points in an essay or in an exam for making a mistake with
words that are fairly simple, okay?
So let's look at two that are often confused by ESL students and sometimes even by native
The first one is "whose" and the second one is also "whose".
So as you can see, they sound pretty much the same but the meaning is completely different.
The first one "whose" is a contraction of two words "who is", right?
But when we say it together and quickly, we say "whose".
Examples of this can be questions or statements.
By questions, I mean something like this "Who's the boss?", "Who's your friend?", "Who's
in charge of this department?"
In each of these examples which were questions, we were really saying "Who is in charge?",
"Who is your friend?", correct?
We could also take a sentence and use "whose".
For example, "He's the man who is in charge", "He's the man who's in charge of this department",
"He's the man who is or who's in charge of this department", okay?
The second one is also a relative pronoun.
It's called "whose" and this one refers to something that belongs to someone.
For example, in other words, it's showing possession.
For example, "Whose book is this?", "Whose house is this?", "Whose car is this?", okay?
"I'm the man whose car is parked over there", okay?
You see examples again with questions or with sentences, alright?
Now we're going to do a little quiz.
I'm going to say a few sentences and you tell me which one of these is being used in the
Let's start with the first one.
"Who's the general manager of that company?", "Who's the general manager of that company?",
okay?
"Which one is it?", do you know?
"Who's the general manager?", the first one, that's right, okay?
"Who's the general manager?", "Who is the general manager?", very good.
"Let me introduce Mr. Williams, who's the main speaker at the conference.", "Let me
introduce Mr. Williams, who is the main speaker at the conference."
Okay, if you chose the first one, you're right again, "Let me introduce Mr. Williams, who's
or who is the main speaker at the conference.", okay?
"They're announcing the names of the passengers whose suitcases were lost.", "They're announcing
the names of the passengers whose suitcases were lost.", which one this time?
"We're trying to show possession.", "They're announcing the names of the passengers whose
suitcases were lost.", the suitcases that were lost belonged to the passengers, so we'll
Good.
If you got all of those right, you're on the right track, keep going.
If you get confused, don't worry, it happens.
Just practice a lot, write out different examples, get someone to check if you have a teacher
nearby or an English speaker who you know, all right?
When I come back in just a moment, I'm going to give you one last one, which is sort of
like a review quiz, so maybe you can grab a piece of paper and write it out, and I'll
Okay, are you ready for a little quiz on what we've just done?
Yes?
Okay.
So write this down, "Who's the person whose picture is in the paper?", "Who's the person
whose picture is in the paper?"
"Who's the person whose picture is in the paper?"
While you write that down, I'm going to write it on the board and then we can compare, okay?
"Who's the person," as in, "Who is the person whose," possessive, "whose picture is in the
paper?"
So the first one was, "Whose," "Who is the person whose picture is in the paper?"
When we say "paper," of course, we mean newspaper.
Lots of times we don't say "newspaper," because it's a bit longer word, so we just say "paper,"
It's also kind of good for pronunciation practice, right?
"Who's the person whose picture is in the paper?"
"Who's the person whose picture is in the paper?"
Good.
So I hope this lesson has helped you.
If you have any questions about this lesson or anything else to do with English, I'll