I suppose you're listening to this podcast to learn something about English. I also
suppose you'll be taking notes. Why, well, suppose you want to remember
these English points. You're supposed to do that, you know, let's discuss.
Welcome to another Happy English podcast, coming to you from New York City.
And here's your English teacher, Michael. All right, thank you John,
and thanks everyone. It's Michael here from Happy English and I help people
speak English better. And this is Happy English Podcast, Episode six ninety seven.
I suppose I'm supposed to I suppose you are wondering what I'm supposed to
be talking about today. Well, last week one of my students asked me
about the difference between these two phrases, and I thought this would be a
good time to talk about the word suppose here in the podcast. By the
way, if you have a request for a topic here on the Happy English
Podcast, please do feel free to send me a DM at Myhappy English dot
com. Basically, the verb suppose means to guess or think something, even
though you do not have exact proof or knowledge about that thing. When you
suppose something, you're assuming that it is the case, either based on some
evidence you have or probability based on your experience. If you open the curtains
in the morning and look out the window and you see very very low and
dark clouds, you would probably say something like this, I suppose it's going
to rain. You can use suppose in this case because even though you haven't
checked the weather forecast, you have enough experience to know that when the clouds
are dark and low, it's probably going to rain. I suppose it's going
to rain. Here's another example. Imagine for a moment that you work in
an office and the starting time is nine o'clock in the morning. Well,
you might have a coworker that often comes to the office late. If you
look over at that person's desk at ten minutes after nine and they're not there,
there's a high probability that the person is going to come late. So
in this situation, you can say to your coworkers, I suppose Jack is
going to be late again today. The other way we use suppose is to
introduce a guess or a possible situation. Let's say you're planning on a road
trip with some friends to the mountains to go skiing. There are a number
of things that could happen along the way, and you could talk about those
with suppose. In this way, the meaning of suppose is similar to imagine.
You can use suppose like this. Suppose there's a snow storm while we're
on the way. What would we do? Suppose there's not enough snow in
the mountains for skiing? How can we spend our time up there? Did
you notice how I used suppose? When you use suppose like this, there
are two points to keep in mind. First, the grammar is suppose,
followed by a subject and a verb. Suppose there's a storm on the way.
Suppose there is not enough snow in the mountains. Suppose we get lost.
The second point is after you use your sentence with suppose, there's generally
a question to imagine or discuss the result. For example, suppose there's not
enough snow in the mountains, how can we spend our time up there?
Suppose we get lost on the mountain. Do you think there are any wild
bears or other wild animals? Suppose there is one more point in this lesson?
Would that be okay? I'm glad you said yes. We also use
suppose with the pattern be supposed to do something. The grammar is the bea
verb followed by supposed than the infinitive you know the two verb. For example,
I am supposed to go there. She is supposed to train the new
staff. Nobody is supposed to know those secrets. By the way, in
casual conversational American English, supposed to is often pronounced as supposed to, supposed
to. I'm supposed to go, you're supposed to go too. I'm going
to use this pronunciation in the next part of this lesson. There are actually
three different ways that we use the pattern be supposed to. First of all,
we use be supposed to when something is expected or required because of a
rule or an agreement. Here are some examples. Everyone is supposed to be
at the office no later than nine o'clock. The itinerary says that we're supposed
to check out of the hotel at eight o'clock in order to get to the
airport in time for the flight. We also be supposed to when something is
expected to happen or intended to happen, often when that thing did not happen.
For example, the train was supposed to be here ten minutes ago.
I don't understand why it's late. Why did you take the laptop home over
the weekend, you were supposed to leave it in the office connected to the
server. And finally, you can use be supposed to when you talk about
something that many people think is true, or say is true, or believe
is true, even though you may not think so or you may have doubts.
Here are some examples. That restaurant is supposed to have the best pizza
in the city. Do you want to check it out? According to the
guidebook, this building is to be the oldest in the city. Keep in
mind the best way to remember this or any English point is to take the
word or phrase, write it in a sentence that's true for you or true
in your world, and then memorize your sentences. Well, I suppose that's
all the time we have today for this English lesson. By the way,
if you'd like to get more practice using your English, you need to join
my podcast Learner's Study Group. There you can make new international friends join me
for live group coaching every week. Plus get the pdf transcript and audio download
for every Happy English podcast in the past and in the future, and each
episode has exercises where you can practice this English point with speaking and writing checked
by me. To learn more, or to see some of the example sentences
from this lesson, just visit Myhappy English dot com and choose podcast lesson six
ninety seven. Remember, learning another language is not easy, but it's not
impossible, and I'm here to help you on your journeys. This podcast is
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