Give instruction how to … Boil an egg
Make a cup of tea Make soup
c. Advice and Warning
The speaker is directing the attention of the person addressed to do something that is for his or her benefit, not the speakers’. It is up to the
person who receives the advice, recommendation, or warning to decide whether to follow it.
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a. Keep your options open.
b. Remember, always buy low and sell high.
d. Suggestions
A suggestion that the speaker and the hearer go together, and so in meaning is very like French 1
st
imperative. In poetry, of course, Let us go can still have the meaning of Let’s go, as in:
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Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table Use let’s or let’s not and the base form for suggestions that include
you and another.
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Examples: Let’s go
Let’s no stay
Use why don’t you and the best form to give advice to another
person. And put a question mark at the end of sentences with why don’t we
and why don’t you.
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11
Ron Cown, the Teacher’s Grammar of English …, p. 116.
12
James R. Hurdford, Grammar a Student’s Guide …, p. 96.
13
Irene E. Schoenberg, Focus on Grammar: a Basic Course for Reference and Practice, New York: Addison Wesley Longman, Inc, 2000, p.186.
Examples: Why don’t we go to my office?
Why don’t you look on the internet?
And here is its negative form:
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Let’s not stay here any longer or, less likely Don’t let’s stay here any longer.
These, of course, function often suggestions, not commands. They can be seen as functioning more like commands, however, when the us is
not contracted and the Let us is seen as an exhortation to follow the speaker’s instructions or to agree with the judgment that the speaker
expresses:
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Examples: Let us pray.
Let us never forget the brave men and women who made the ultimate sacrifice.
The comments to introduce common expressions for making suggestions such as following.
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Examples: You could put one lamp next to the chair
You might put the coffee table in front of the sofa.
14
Irene E. Schoenberg, Focus on Grammar …, p. 186.
15
Marianne Celce Murcia and Diane Larsen Freeman, the Grammar Book: an ESLEFL Teach
er’s Course, United State University: Heinle and Heinle Publishers, p. 233.
16
Marianne Celce Murcia and Diane Larsen Freeman, the Grammar Book …, p. 233.
17
Sandra L. McKay, Teaching Grammar …, p. 72.
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