What’s the difference between in time & on time?

Let’s imagine the following situation:
You’re in Tehran and you’re going to go to Isfahan by train (cities in Iran), Your train leaves the station at 6 PM.
1) You arrive at 5:50 PM. You say: I arrived in time.
2) You arrive at almost 6 PM (Like 5:59 PM) and the train is about to leave. You say: I arrived on time.

When we use in time, it means some minutes (like 5 or 10) before something starts, like a movie in the movies, a train at a train station, an interview in a company, etc. On the other hand, when we say on time, it means exactly or nearly at the time it starts. Like your train is about to leave, the doors are closing and you jump into the train, some situations like that.
Also, there are some time expressions like just in time, in good time, etc. You can watch one of my YouTube videos about “7 Time Expressions” Click to watch

See you next week

Most of you know about the passive voice. We use it when the focus is on the object of our active sentence. You know, we can use (By + someone) to talk about the person who does the action. But, sometimes it is obvious! Imagine you have crossed a red light and a police officer has fined you for it. After some hours you see one of your friends, he asks how you are doing and you tell him what happened to you earlier. You say: I was fined for crossing a red light by a police officer. Isn’t that sentence a bit weird? I mean, who else can fine drivers for crossing a red light? A doctor? A mechanic? A teacher? Nope! Just a police officer can find someone for crossing a red light. So, it is meaningless if you say “I was fined for crossing a red light by a police officer. Of course, your sentence is grammatically correct, but you have said something which was pretty obvious.

However, sometimes it is NOT obvious. Imagine your car has broken down. You took it to an auto shop and a mechanic fixed it. In this case, if you are telling a friend about your car and if you don’t mention the “Auto Shop”, they might think someone else like your father, brother, or even yourself fixed it.

That would be a good tip for a better speaking skill. You can speak better and more fluently by omitting not-important information in your sentences.

Now let me ask you something:
Please leave a comment and tell me what the subject of this sentence is:

My car was fixed by a mechanic.

There are 3 ways to talk about your plans and goals in the future. We can use “will”, “be going to“, and “present continuous“. The meanings vary and they are not the same. Of course, there are others ways to talk about a plan in the future, but here are the 3 main ones. We will learn this topic through a scenario. Imagine that you have set “learning Farsi” as one of your goals in 2024. If you say:

-I will learn Farsi: It means you want to learn Farsi but there are no actual plans or schedules for it. It is more like a thought and it hasn’t yet been planned. But, you may plan it later.

-I am going to learn Farsi: You have some plans and you are determined to learn it. We can say that you want to search on the internet about some good YouTube channels, or websites to find good Farsi teachers. You want to reschedule your time, so you can put some for learning Farsi. Or you want to learn it after you finish this semester, etc. The point is you haven’t yet started learning Farsi.

-I am learning Farsi: This means not only have you scheduled and planned for it, but you have also prepared yourself for it. For example, you have found a good Farsi teacher and you have paid the tuition, or you have bought some books to learn Farsi or you have installed some applications to help you learn Farsi. Also, we can understand the following concept too: You are in the middle of learning Farsi. Not only have you planned, bought some books and paid the teacher, but you have also participated at least one class already. So, you are in the middle of learning Farsi. (One of the reasons we use present continuous is when we are in the middle of doing something.) Both concepts are close to each other.

Now, you tell me, what are your plans in 2024? Leave a comment below.

You can also watch my YouTube video about Future Plans. (Click here)

See you next week.

We use “didn’t need” to talk about the reason we didn’t do it (i.e. It was unnecessary, so we didn’t do it.) On the other hand, we use “needn’t have” to talk about unnecessary actions which were taken anyway. (i.e. It was unnecessary, but we did it anyway.)