USED TO and WOULD Learn English with Dan

Improve your English today at ANGLOPOD.COM. Hi everyone, I’m Dan and today we’re going to look at the difference between USED TO and WOULD in English. You might think these two words are very different but actually we use them both to talk about past habits. Let’s learn more…
So, in the last lesson, we learnt that we use USED TO to talk about past habits. “I USED TO PLAY football” or “I USED TO GO swimming”. But there is another way to talk about past habits. You could use the modal verb WOULD.
For example, “When I was a child, I WOULD PLAY football” or “I WOULD GO swimming”. It’s another great way to talk about your past habits. “When I was a student, I WOULD GET UP late, I WOULD GO to lots of parties, I WOULD have too much homework!”
However, there is one main difference. We can use USED TO to talk about actions and states in the past, but we can only use WOULD to talk about actions in the past. So we can say “I USED TO PLAY football” or “I WOULD PLAY football” because they’re both actions, but you can’t use WOULD for a state. You could say “I USED TO BE shorter” but not “I WOULD BE shorter”, because the verb ‘be’ refers to a state, not an action.
One final rule. When you write USED TO in a negative sentence or a question, you write USE TO (without ‘d’), so “I USED TO PLAY football”, “I DIDN’T USE TO PLAY football” and “DID you USE TO PLAY football?” But the good news is that the pronunciation is exactly the same. You can’t hear the difference. It always sounds like USED TO.
So, I USED TO PLAY football a lot at school. I WOULD PLAY lots of different sports. How about you? Go to ANGLOPOD.COM and tell us about all the repeated actions in your past, the actions you did as a habit, but you don’t do now. See you soon!
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