Just about just

My advanced level students keep having doubts when it comes to understanding and using certain adverbs such as: even, just, still or only. While having no problems grasping the general meaning of longer texts, sentences involving these words don’t seem to be easily translated into Spanish or Catalan and this fact often causes a great deal of confusion and a misinterpretation of details.
Quite often it is not really important that the learners get the whole message across, but what I am concerned about most is that such sentences might become a serious obstacle when they are doing a reading comprehension task in an exam, especially when reading for specific details is being tested.

Another situation in which  not understanding such words may have a more serious consequence is in a business context.

 
For this reason, I’ve decided to dedicate this post just to just.
Just has several meanings:
1.EXACTLY

This house is just right for our family.

2.ONLY

She isn’t a woman. She’s just a girl.

3. VERY RECENTLY

I’ve just tried phoning you.

4. RIGHT NOW

I’m just making a cake.

5.ACTUALLY, REALLY

You know I just might do that!

6. SIMPLY, ONLY

I just want you to leave the room.

7.EQUALLY, NO LESS

You’re just as bad as the rest of them.

8.TAKE THE OPPORTUNITY

Could I just ask how you found out where he was hiding?

9. SOMETHING THAT IS NEARLY NOT POSSIBLE

I can just reach the top shelf.

 

There’s more. Sometimes just doesn’t mean very much.It just emphasizes what you’re saying:

Just what do you think you’re doing?

It’s just unbelievable!

So now that you’ve got these notes, I recommend trying to translate these sentences into your mother tongue as precisely as possible in order to visualise how just is translated in each situation.

After a while you might want to take your translated sentences and translate them back into English. Comparing your results will help you to use and understand just better.

Well, that’s just about everything  I’d like to share with you today.

After the work you’ve done you might want to listen to some music. I have chosen just two songs, but there are many more which will help you think about this little big word!

Watch out for other key adverbs in our next blog post!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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