Hello and welcome to this podcast brought to you by That’s English! The Spanish Ministry of Education’s official distance learning English course. To find out more about That’s English! go to www.thatsenglish.com or contact your local Official School of Languages. Today’s podcast is about the intensifiers so and such. Sometimes it’s a little bit confusing to know which one to use so we hope this podcast will clarify the situation. First or all, what do we mean by intensifiers? Listen to these sentences and tell us what the difference is when you hear so and such being used. · I’m happy. · I’m so happy. · It’s a beautiful day. · It’s such a beautiful day. What do so and such do to the sentences? I’m so happy. It’s such a beautiful day. That’s right, they give emphasis to the sentences, making them stronger, they intensify the meaning. Instead of using so and such you could use ‘very’ or ‘really’ instead. I’m very happy, or it is a really beautiful day. Ok, so now we understand why we use so and such and now we’re going to learn how to use them. We use so with adjectives or adverbs on their own. For example,: he is so nice or They’re so intelligent. So is also used with adverbs, for example: she plays the piano so well or that scooter goes so fast So can only be used with a noun, if it is used with the quantifiers much and many. Listen to these sentences: · They earn so much money. · There are so many people in the centre of Madrid today. Remember, so is used before adjectives or adverbs or with much and many before nouns. Let’s listen to some more examples with so. · It’s so cloudy today, I think it could rain. (so before adjective) · They danced so beautifully in the ballet. (so before adverb) · So much time is wasted on social media. (so before quantifier plus noun) · I’ve told you so many times to stop talking in the classroom! (so before quantifier plus noun) Do you remember the sentence He is so nice?. There is no noun, therefore so is used. But in the sentence he is a nice man, as we are using an adjective followed by a noun, then we need to use such because this intensifier modifies nouns. These nouns can be also modified by adjectives. The important thing to understand here is that if there is a noun, we need to use such. Let’s listen to some sentences with such. · It is such a pity that he didn’t get that job. (such before noun) · It was such a fantastic concert! (such before adjective plus noun) · It is such a lovely day, let’s have a picnic in the park. (such before adjective plus noun) · They are such fortunate children. (such before adjective plus noun) In these sentences we have added the noun after the adjective. That means we use such. Let’s do a final recap. Remember, if you are only using the adjective or adverb, you use so, and so is also used if you are using many or much in a sentence with a noun. On the other hand, if the sentence has an adjective followed by a noun, and you want to use an intensifier, then you use such. That’s so easy! It’s such an easy rule to remember, isn’t it?! We are so pleased that you listened to our podcast today. We hope you have such a wonderful day! We hope you have enjoyed this podcast, brought to you by That's English! Please follow us on social media. We look forward to hearing from you. Bye for now!