TRANSCRIPT OF THE ABOVE VIDEO: 'Different Ways To Use ‘Suggest’ in English - Natural Communication Examples and Explanations'

Hi everyone, its Nicole here and I'm here quickly answering a question that one of you recently asked.

One of you was a little bit confused by the verb ‘suggest’ because there's so many ways to use this word. There's many many different forms when you speak, when you write, and, you know, being aware of these different forms of the verb ‘suggest’ can really help lift the level of your English, if you use them correctly, of course, so I thought that I'd quickly talk about the word ‘suggest’ and teach you the different ways that it can be used so that life is a little bit easier for you, so that you better understand when you hear it, but, more importantly, so that you are able to use it correctly when you write and when you speak, you ready?

Ok. So, the first form of suggest is TO SUGGEST DOING SOMETHING to suggest doing something. So, there after suggest we're using the verb ing form.

Next TO SUGGEST THAT SOMEONE DOES SOMETHING, so there, after suggest that someone does something.

Next TO SUGGEST SOMEONE DOES SOMETHING the same as the previous but without that.

We could also say SOMEONE SHOULD DO SOMETHING We don't need the word suggest for that, the idea behind it is that it's a suggestion

or to suggest something, and the something there is the noun form.

Yeah, so, look, they’re the different forms, I think it's best if I give you some examples.

So, let's have a look first ‘to suggest doing something’. Are you ready? ‘I suggest going to the Italian restaurant on the corner’ or ‘He suggested reading this book’ or ‘Our teacher suggested doing 30 minutes of homework every day’ So, all of those examples are ‘to suggest doing something’ - the interesting thing here is if someone uses the suggest plus the verb ing, it means that they're including themselves in the suggestion, so, if I say ‘I suggest going to the Italian restaurant on the corner’, I'm inviting myself along. I'm not saying you should go to the restaurant, I'm saying you and I should go together to that restaurant. So, whenever you're making a suggestion with that verb ing form, you’re including yourself in that suggestion, just be aware of that.

The second one ‘to suggest that someone does something’ we could say ‘I suggest that we go to the Italian restaurant on the corner’ or ‘He suggested that I read the book’ or ‘Our teacher suggested that we do 30 minutes of homework every day’ - there you go, we can also use the same form without that, so we could say ‘to suggest someone does something’ so, for example, ‘He suggested I read this book’ or ‘I suggest you go to the Italian restaurant on the corner’ or ‘Our teacher suggested we do 30 minutes of homework every day’. So, you're not including yourself in that suggestion.

Next, ‘someone should do something’. So, the idea, the suggestion, is already included. You don't need to use the the word suggest, so, ‘You should go to the Italian restaurant on the corner, or ‘He said I should read this book’ or ‘Our teacher said we should do 30 minutes of homework every day’.

Finally, we could use the word suggest with a noun to suggest something, so we might say here ‘I suggest the Italian restaurant on the corner’. That's your noun phrase there. There's no verb after suggest, or ‘He suggested this book’ no verb after suggest, or ‘Our teacher suggested 30 minutes of homework’.

So there you go. There's the word suggest and all the different ways that you could use it. I hope that you enjoyed that.

My suggestion, now, I'd like you to write some example sentences using the word suggest. So, I suggest that you write some example sentences, or I suggest writing some example sentences because I used the ing, I will help you, or I suggest you write some example sentences. I suggest example sentences. There you go. That's my input. So, seriously, write some sentences using suggest for each of those different forms, and it will click, it will make it a lot lot easier.

Anyway, I hope that helped. I hope you enjoyed it and see you again soon. Bye.