“My giraffe has had an operation, and now must wear some protection”. Why do we use ‘has had’ here rather than just ‘had’? Which of the following sentences do you think makes more sense? My giraffe had an operation, and now must wear some protection.My giraffe has had an operation, and now must wear some protection. Actually they both work equally well in this case, but only because we have added more information about the time of this event (now). Without this time information, the statements would be ambiguous: My giraffe had an operation– when was this, recently or years ago? My giraffe has had an operation– implies that the…

“There weren’t many people in London yesterday” When it comes to describing amounts of things, there a number of ways in English. But when we describe uncountable things there are no strict rules to follow, so how do we decide on which one to use to get our meaning across. Consider the following sentences and see if you can decide on the amount of people that we are describing: There weren’t many people in London yesterday. There were many people in London yesterday. There were a few people in London yesterday. There were a number of people in London yesterday. There were loads of people in London yesterday. There weren’t…