6 Ways to Use the Word "As" | Learn English Grammar for Beginners

Hi everybody. My name is Alicia. In this video, I'm going to talk about six ways to use the word as. Let's get started.

Okay, the first use I want to talk about is to show the role or the purpose of someone or something. We often use this as before job titles or other roles in our community, in our company, or in an

organization. We can also use this as to express the way we use something or the purpose of something. Let's look at some examples. First, a job example.

He's been working as a salesman for about 6 years. He's been working as a salesman. So, this as comes before the job title. And in this case, we have our article before salesman. He's been working as a salesman for about 6 years.

So, we do this to show the person's role. We do the same thing in our second example sentence. She was hired as the new creative director. She was hired as the new creative director. So, in this case, we have as the new creative

director. So, this is the job title, creative director, and we have new to show it's a new position or a new role. We also have the here.

So, the shows that there's just one creative director. She was hired as the new creative director. As comes before all of this. This is one phrase expressing this new role. Okay, now let's look at this use of as to

talk about a purpose. So, this room can be used as a meeting room or as a break room. This room can be used as a meeting room or as a break room.

So, in this case, we are talking about the purpose of a room. So, a multi-purpose room. We can use this room for many different things. In this case, we can use this room as So,

for the purpose of a meeting room or as a break room. So, this shows the different functions or the different purposes. So, we can use as in this way to express our roles, our our jobs, and the ways that we

use different things. Okay. So, with this in mind, let's continue to use number two, which is quite different. Use number two is as to mean while or to

mean at the same time. So, in this case, we have two things occurring at about the same point in time, and we want to express that. So, first example here.

They arrived as we were leaving. So, these two actions are they arrived, past tense, as we were leaving. So, this means maybe we're in the process or we were in the process of leaving.

We were still there, but we were just about to go. So, we connect these with as to show that these two situations or these two actions happened at about the same time.

So, we can think of this as kind of like while or at the same time. Let's look at the second The fire alarm started ringing as we sat down in the restaurant. The fire alarm started ringing as we sat down in

the restaurant. So, again, we're showing two actions happening at about the same time. So, the fire alarm started ringing at the same time as we sat down at the restaurant.