VOA · Ask a Teacher
Beginner · A2learner speed3:422024-10-29public domain
In Ask a Teacher, real learner questions about English grammar and usage get short, clear answers. Episodes are only a few minutes long and use simple classroom English — a gentle entry point if you are new to dictation practice.
Hit "Start dictation practice" — all 4 minutes are already sliced into sentences, so practice starts immediately. No wait.
Replay each sentence as many times as you need — beginner episodes use short sentences and simple vocabulary.
Switch to Dictation mode, type each sentence, and get a word-by-word diff with your accuracy score.
01Hello!
02This week on Ask a Teacher, we answer a question from Haruna in Japan about the usage of the words near and nearby.
03Dear teacher, today I have a question about two words, near and nearby.
04What is the difference between these two words?
05Thank you and best regards, Haruna.
06I'm happy to answer this question, Haruna.
07Both words can mean close in distance to something.
08The word near also has other meanings, as we will see.
09We can put the word nearby at the end of a sentence.
10For example, if you are in someone's house and a person in the house says, The market is nearby.
11That means the market is close to the house.
12The speaker does not need to say the word house, because the word nearby means close to the place already stated or known.
13However, when we use the word near to say where something is, we say both places.
14The following example shows this.
15Their house is near the market.
16The following two examples also show this difference in usage between nearby and near.
17The doctor's office is nearby.
18The doctor's office is near the bank.
19We can also use nearby as an adjective before a noun, as in this example.
20Pollution from a nearby factory makes the air unhealthy to breathe.
21Next, let's look at three other ways we can use the word near.
22We can use it as an adverb to express the idea that something will happen soon in the future, as in this example.
23The end of our trip is near.
24We can also use near as a compound adjective, as in the following example.
25That old car is still in near-perfect condition.
26Remember that when we write compound adjectives, we must put a hyphen or short line connecting the two adjectives.
27Lastly, we can use the word near as a verb, meaning getting close to in time, as in this example.
28For our readers and listeners, what are your questions about American English?
29We'd like to hear from you.
30Send us an email at learningenglish at voanews.com And please include where you are from in your email, too.
31And that's Ask a Teacher.
32I'm Andrew Smith.
// transcribed with Whisper AI — reading it is easy; catching it by ear is the skill
Practice it by ear
