 Hello everyone, how are you today? This is Marc. How are you doing? I'm doing great. Thanks for asking. He could hardly believe it. Politicians are seldom untrustworthy. Barely do newspapers influence society positively. I've got almost no energy to go to the gym tonight. In this lesson, we're going to look at broad negatives. So stay tuned. So I'm quite sure you all know how to make a negative statement, but I'm going to review it with you. So the subject goes first. Then we have the auxiliary and here we have not, obviously, because it's a negative statement. Then we have the verb that it could be a present or past participle or the base of the verb. Then we have an object and then the time expression. So the example that I wrote, we didn't, so we did not move to another city after all. In this case, we have the tense, the past simple. So we need the auxiliary of the past simple, which is did, then we have not, so the contraction didn't, and then the base of the verb to move, move. Another example, she isn't listening to the teacher during the lessons, and here we have the verb to be. So the verb to be in the third person singular is is, then we have not, so isn't, contraction. Then we have listen or listening in this case, because we're making the sentence in the present continuous. So listening, so it's a present participle, listening to the teacher during the lessons. So this is a normal negative statement. So I'm going to talk about broad negatives right now. And broad negatives are used with adverbs, such as hardly, scarcely, seldom, barely, etc. And these are used in positive sentences to make them more or less or almost negative. They are placed before the main verb, but there is one exception I will show you. So the example that I give you, he could hardly believe it. So he could hardly believe it. Where is the verb? The verb is believe. Yes, and the adverb in this case is placed before believe. So he could hardly believe it. That means, if I said he couldn't believe it, he couldn't believe it means that 100% he couldn't believe it. He could hardly believe it. There is a degree that he believed it. Here we have hardly, so that's why it's more or less not 100%, he couldn't believe it. But he could hardly believe it. There is a degree of believing in this case. Another example, she was barely ignored at the party. So that means that she went to the party and somebody ignored her, somebody didn't ignore her. So if I said she wasn't ignored at the party, that means that nobody ignored her at the party. But if I say barely, then there is a degree of the verb to ignore. So pay close attention here. So it's not 100% negative. There is a little bit of positive there. So with the verb to be, as I said, the adverbs hardly scarcely seldom barely are placed right after. So, for example, politicians are, the verb to be are, so in this case is the third person plural, politicians are seldom the adverb and trustworthy. So if I said politicians aren't untrustworthy, that means that they are not. So they are 100%. In this case, we have seldom. And that means that there are more or less trustworthy and trustworthy. So another example, he was scarcely aware of the danger. So again here scarcely is after the verb to be, as you can see. She was scarcely aware of the danger. So in former contests, the broad negative is placed at the beginning of the clause to give more emphasis. Let's look at my introductory example. Barely do newspapers influence society positively. Okay, so we have barely. Remember that after barely, we need the auxiliary of the sentence. In this case, we have do. So barely do newspapers verb influence society positively. So another example could be rarely did historians write about the real condition of poor immigrants. So in this case, we had did. And the verb stays the base of the verb because we have did, the auxiliary did of the past simple. So pay close attention to these formal contests if you want to use the broad negative at the beginning of a sentence. Okay, so if you don't want to use the broad negative, you can always use almost plus a negative word like no or never. I wrote two examples. I have got almost no energy to go to the gym tonight. I have got almost no energy to go to the gym tonight. So I cannot say I haven't got energy to go to the gym tonight. That means 100% I don't have energy. But if I said I have got almost not negative, there is a degree of energy there so I can go to the gym tonight, maybe. So another example, Peter almost never studies at home but in the library. So that means that Peter sometimes few times he studies at home but he studies in the library instead. So almost never in this case, almost no. So you can replace it with a broad negative like scarcely barely if you don't want to use them obviously. So now let's recap. So in this lesson we looked at broad negatives. There are adverbs that show a negative attitude and they're used in positive sentences. We need to remember that these adverbs go before the main verb or after the verb to be. These adverbs could be scarcely barely seldom etc. In formal context they are placed at the beginning of a sentence and they are followed by the auxiliary of the sentence. So there could be do, does, did, have, is, are etc. If you don't want to use a broad negative you can always use almost plus a negative word such as no or never. So that's it for today. I hope you enjoyed the lesson. If you have any comments, requests or if you want to type your own example you may do so under this video. Don't forget that next week we're having a new lesson. So if you haven't subscribed to my channel please do so. And if you haven't shared it please do so if you liked it though. Have a great week and see you next week. Take care, bye bye.