手把手教你学口语31

“try” plus an infinitive¹, that is, “to” plus a verb, such as “try to learn” “try to open” “try to read” means to make an effort to do it. “try” plus a gerund, that is, verb-ing, such as “try opening”, “try turning on”, “try giving” means to experiment with a new or different approach to see if it works.

Let’s look at some examples. “I’m trying to learn Taiwanese.” This means I’m making an effort to do it. I’m taking a Taiwanese class, doing my homework and speaking in Taiwanese whenever I can. Here’s another example. “I tried to open the window.” This sentence means I pulled the window up, but it did not go up, so I pushed the window up, but it still did not open. I made an effort to open the window, but I could not open it. On the other hand, “I tried opening the window” means that I did open the window and that I opened it for a reason. I was hot and I wanted to cool off. I tried opening the window, but that didn’t help. So I tried turning on the fan, but I was still hot. So I tried taking off some of my clothes, but that didn’t work either. Finally, I turned on the air conditioner, and that finally succeeded in helping² me cool off. I experimented with many things to see what would work.

So remember, “try to do something” is to make an effort, and “try doing something” is to experiment with different way to achieve your purpose. This has been today’s daily tip on learning English. Tune³ in tomorrow for another tip.

1 infinitive   

n.不定词；adj.不定词的

参考例句：

• The use of the split infinitive is now generally acceptable.分裂不定式的用法现在已被广泛接受。
• Modal verbs generally take the bare infinitive.情态动词通常用不带to的不定式。

2 helping   

n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的

参考例句：

• The poor children regularly pony up for a second helping of my hamburger. 那些可怜的孩子们总是要求我把我的汉堡包再给他们一份。
• By doing this, they may at times be helping to restore competition. 这样一来, 他在某些时候,有助于竞争的加强。

3 tune   

n.调子；和谐，协调；v.调音，调节，调整

参考例句：

• He'd written a tune,and played it to us on the piano.他写了一段曲子，并在钢琴上弹给我们听。
• The boy beat out a tune on a tin can.那男孩在易拉罐上敲出一首曲子。