 Hello students, it's Shayna, your teacher from espressoenglish.net and today I'm going to teach you how to form sentences with the construction not only but also. So first of all, when do we use not only but also? Well we use it when we have two things and we want to give a little extra emphasis to the second thing because it's even better or even worse or more surprising or more impressive or more shocking than the first thing. I think you'll see as I give examples throughout this lesson. So there are two ways to use not only but also you can use it in the middle and end of a sentence or you can actually use it to start a sentence with not only and there are some grammatical considerations we have to keep in mind. Okay so using not only but also in the middle and end of a sentence I can say I've taught English not only in the US but also in other countries or you could say let's say you're talking about someone who is a model you could say she's not only beautiful but also very smart. Okay so as you can see in both these examples the second part the part that comes after but also is just a little more interesting or better than the first part and so we just want to give a little extra emphasis because of course you could simply say she's beautiful and smart that's just neutral but if you say she's not only beautiful but also smart it kind of gives a little bit of extra emphasis to that second part being smart. Now the key if you use not only but also like this is that the two parts of the sentence have to be parallel so if you use an adjective after not only you need to use an adjective after but also. So beautiful and smart those are both adjectives she's not only beautiful but also very smart. It would sound strange if you said she's not only beautiful but also a singer because beautiful is an adjective and a singer is a noun and it's not parallel. You could have two nouns you could say she's not only a model but also a singer. Okay that would be it all right that sounds natural because we have a noun and a noun. Another example of a sentence that sounds strange is don't say this don't say he ate not only the pizza but also the soda. That doesn't make sense because you eat pizza but you don't eat soda you drink soda. So we can fix this sentence by using two different verbs after not only but also. So you can say he not only ate the pizza but also drank the soda. Okay so I hope you can see that when you use not only but also like this the two parts of the sentence need to be parallel so that it makes sense and it sounds natural. Okay how about using not only to start a sentence. So an example of this would be not only does he play guitar but he also writes his own songs. Now notice in the first part of the sentence we don't say not only he plays. We actually have an auxiliary verb does we say not only does he play guitar. This is just a special thing that we do with not only but also sentences. Normally we would say he plays guitar but when you start it with not only you say not only does he play guitar he also writes his own songs. And in sentences like this that start with not only the but is optional. Some people eliminate it and just say he also writes his own songs. So that's an example in the present tense. If we're talking about the past we can also use this construction but now we need to use the auxiliary verb did in the past. So not only did she fail the course but she also dropped out of college. That means she completely left the program of studies. Okay not only did she fail okay don't say not only she failed not only did she fail the course but she also dropped out of college. Okay the second part of the sentence is normal. Second part is just but also after but also just use the simple past you don't need to use an auxiliary verb there. And you can also use this construction in the future. So not only will you learn grammar in my advanced English grammar course you'll also put it into practice. So in this case the auxiliary verb is will not only will you learn grammar but you'll also or you'll also put it into practice. And this is true by the way. So why don't you try writing a couple of not only but also sentences in the comments based on what you learned in today's lesson. And as I mentioned if you'd like to get more practice with grammar check out my advanced English grammar course because it's designed as I said not only for you to learn about grammar because you don't just want to learn about English you don't just want to have an intellectual knowledge. You want to use it right you want to speak it and write it and use it yourself. So the grammar course helps you do that through quizzes short answer exercises and writing tasks so you can put that grammar into practice. Click on the link in the video for more information and I hope to see you inside the course.