Tuesday, February 2, 2010

How to use 'There is' and 'There has'

Very often my students who are Chinese will write 'There has a computer laboratory.' This probably is the direct translation from the Chinese sentence 'Na li you yi jian dian nao shi.'

In this post, I would like to show how to make sentences using 'There is' and 'There has'. 'There is' is more common and 'There has' has limited usage. Look at the following sentences with 'There is' at the beginning.

1 There is a pharmacy near my house.'
2 There is a book on the table.
3 There is no one in the house.
4 There is no shortcut to success.
5 There is little water left in the bottle.
['There is' is followed by a subject singular in nature.]

As for 'There has', I can only thing of the sentences below:
1 There has to be a way to solve this problem. [It means there must be a way to solve this problem.]
2 There has to be a key to this room.
[It means there must a key to this room.]

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