Today, I’m going to talk about the family of ‘there is’! At first, that might seem very basic English grammar. Indeed, the phrase ‘there is’ is A1 level. However, at B1 and even B2 level, I must admit there are few students who talk about this family. Why? Because it’s not a structure that has a literal word for word translation in many other languages. 

Anyway, let’s meet some of the family first of all. I can’t name all of them because it’s a very extended family tree. But here are some you might often meet while reading or listening to native English speakers.

There is, there are, there was, there were, there has been, there had been, there will be, there won’t be, there can be, there can’t be, there may be, there could be, there might be, there must be, there would be, there should be…

Read the transcript: https://www.practisingenglish.com/podcast-246.htm

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Mike Bilbrough (Secondary school English teacher and Doctor in English philology)