“I USED TO”, “I GOT USED TO”, “I’M USED TO”: What’s the difference?!

Many English learners are confused by “used to”. “I am used to waking up early” has a different meaning than “I used to wake up early.” In this important English class, I will teach you about the grammar of “used to”, “get used to”, and “be used to”, with plenty of examples and practice. You can then make sure you’ve understood by testing yourself with the quiz. https://www.engvid.com/i-used-to-i-go...

More of my grammar videos:
The Most Common Preposition Mistakes in English: AT, ON, IN, TO, WITH…    • The Most Common Preposition Mistakes ...  
LEARN ENGLISH MODALS with Sherlock Holmes    • LEARN ENGLISH MODALS with Sherlock Ho...  

In this lesson:
0:00 "Used to" or "get used to"?
4:03 "used to" examples
6:40 "get used to" examples
10:35 "be used to"

TRANSCRIPT

Hi, everyone. My name is Emma, and in today's video, I am going to teach you the difference between "used to", "get used to", and "be used to". Many learners have trouble with these different phrases, and the reason is they are so similar, but they have very different meanings.

So, let's get started by talking a little bit about the difference between "used to" and "get used to". Okay, when we talk about "used to", this is the one you might already know. We use "used to" to talk about the past. We use "used to" to talk about something we did in the past. Usually, it is a repeated action. This means it happened more than once, or it was a routine in the past. I also want you to pay close attention to my pronunciation. "Used to", okay? So, even though there's an "ed", we're not pronouncing it like "used", we're pronouncing it as one syllable as "use", "used to".

Okay, so now let's talk a little bit about "get used to", and then I'm going to give you some examples so you can understand the differences between these two phrases. So, "used to", we use to talk about the past. "Get used to" can be used to talk about the past, the present, or the future. We use "get used to" when we are talking about something we have become accustomed to, something we've become familiar with, something that might have been strange at first, but then it became normal. These types of situations are when we use the phrase "get used to". So, let's look at some examples.

So, we'll start with "used to". In the past, you see I have the music symbols here. How do you think I used to listen to music? Well, when I was in high school, I used to listen to CDs. For those of you who are really young, you might not know what a CD is, so let me grab one for you. I have here my Guns N' Roses CD. So, I used to use a CD player, and I used to lie down on my bed and listen to Guns N' Roses. I'd listen to their CD. So, that's how we use "used to".

Now, you might see here a funny picture. I'm not a great artist. I'm a terrible artist, actually, but this is supposed to be me, and that thing on my head, that's a mask. So, during the coronavirus, at the beginning, everyone had to start wearing masks in my city, like this blue one. At first, it was very strange. It felt uncomfortable. It was weird. I was not used to it. But then, because I wore the mask every day, it became normal for me. I became accustomed to it. So, in this case, what I can say is I got used to wearing a mask during coronavirus. So, now we're going to look at some more examples of the difference between "used to" and "get used to" to really help you understand the differences between these different phrases.

Okay, so now let's look at some examples of "used to" and "get used to". These examples will really show you the difference in the meaning of these two phrases. So, and actually, I have some things to show off in order to demonstrate "used to". The first sentence, "I used to read this book." What book am I talking about? Let me go grab it. Okay, so this is a book from my childhood. I used to love this book. It's called Mr. Bell's Fix-It Shop. When I was a child, I used to read this book. So, notice how we have "used to", and then we have a verb, "read". Is there anything strange about the verb "read", or do we have -ing at the end? Do we do anything with this verb? No. It's actually really simple. We keep this verb in the base form. We don't do anything to it. "I used to read this book."

"When I was a child, I used to watch cartoons." Now, I don't, really, because I don't have time, but when I was a child, I used to watch cartoons. Every Saturday morning, I used to watch cartoons. So, again, I have my verb here, "used to", and then the verb that comes next, "watch", is in its base form. We don't do anything to it. We just use the base form of the verb, nice and simple.

Okay, this is a fact for you about me. "When I was in high school, I used to have red hair." So, "I used to have red hair." Again, we're talking about something in the past that is not true now, and if you look at the verb I'm using, "have", we are not putting it in the past tense. We're using the base form of the verb. Why? […]