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• English Grammar

Verbs in time clauses and 'if' clauses

Level: beginner

Verbs in time clauses and conditionals usually follow the same patterns as in other clauses but there are some differences when we:

• talk about the future
• make hypotheses.

Talking about the future

In time clauses with words like when , after  and  until , we often use present tense forms to talk about the future:

I'll come home when I finish work. You must wait here until your father comes . They are coming after they have had dinner.

In conditional clauses with words like if , unless , even if , we often use present tense forms to talk about the future:

We won't be able to go out if it is raining . I will come tomorrow unless I have to look after the children. Even if Barcelona lose tomorrow, they will still be champions.

We do not normally use will in time clauses and conditional clauses:

I'll come home when I finish work . (NOT will finish work ) We won't be able to go out if it rains .  (NOT will rain ) It will be nice to see Peter when he  gets home .  (NOT will get home ) You must wait here until your father comes .  (NOT will come )

but we can use will if it means want to or be willing to :

I will be very happy if you will come to my party. We should finish the job early if George will help us.

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Level: intermediate

Making hypotheses

Some conditional clauses are like hypotheses , so we use  past tense forms .

We use past tense forms to talk about something that does not happen or is not happening in the present:

He could get a new job if he really tried .         (= He cannot get a job because he has not tried.) If Jack was playing , they would probably win.         (= Jack is not playing so they will probably not win.) If I had his address, I could write to him.         (= I do not have his address so I cannot write to him.)

We use past tense forms to talk about something that we believe or know will not happen in the future :

We would go by train if it wasn't so expensive.        (= We will not go by train because it is too expensive.) I would look after the children for you at the weekend if I was at home.        (= I cannot look after the children because I will not be at home.)

We use past tense forms to make suggestions about what might happen in the future :

If he came tomorrow, we could borrow his car. If we invited John, Mary would bring Angela.

After I/he/she/it , we can use were instead of was :

If Jack was/were playing , they would probably win. We would go by train if it wasn't/weren’t so expensive. I would look after the children for you at the weekend if I was/were at home.

We use the past perfect to talk about something which did not happen in the past :

If you had seen him, you could have spoken to him.         (= You did not see him so you could not speak to him.) You could have stayed with us if you had come to London.         (= You could not stay with us because you did not come to London.) If we hadn't spent all our money, we could take a holiday.         (= We have spent all our money so we cannot take a holiday.) If I had got the job, we would be living in Paris.         (= I did not get the job, so we are not living in Paris.)

If the main clause of a hypothetical conditional is about the present or future , we use a modal :

If I had got the job, we might be living in Paris now.         (= I did not get the job so we are not living in Paris now.) If you had done your homework, you would know the answer.         (= You did not do your homework so you do not know the answer.)

If the main clause is about the past , we use a modal with have : 

If I had seen him, I would have spoken to him.        (= I did not see him so I did not speak to him.) You could have stayed with us if you had come to London.        (= You could not stay with us because you did not come to London.) If you had invited me, I might have come .        (= You did not invite me so I did not come.)

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Q. Mrs. Kanwal is ............ principal of this school.

(1) no article

Some people say that there should be "no article" before the noun "principal". They say the reason is that the noun "principal" has a fixed position in this sentence "this school", so there should be no article.

However, ChatGPT-4 and some books state that the article "the" is right, and most English teachers also give "the" as the right answer.

So please give an answer with reasons as it will be very important for many students.

Please give a strong valid proof for "the" also can be taken as a right answer. For this question I failed a government exam . It will be very helpful if anyone give me a proof. Thank you sir!

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Hi Safikamal Sk,

I would say that 1 and 4 are the best answers, and 2 is possible too.

• No article - Professional positions are often used with no article (e.g. She is captain of the national team / He is professor of history at City University ).
• "The principal" - normally there is one principal in a school. "The" is used to show that there is only one of this thing (e.g. the moon / the king / the sky ).
• "A principal" - if a school does have more than one principal, then this is fine.

Sorry to hear about your exam result. I should point out that my explanation above is about general English usage, but usage naturally varies in different contexts (e.g. within different groups of people and institutions, and when communicating for different purposes) and specific contexts may have their own norms or standards. We have no idea about the specifics of your exam, so we cannot really comment on why your exam answer was considered incorrect.

Also, if you have more questions about this, please post them on a relevant page (e.g. Our page on The definite article would be a great place for this question). Thank you!

LearnEnglish team

Hello! Could you please help me to clarify the following? Which option is correct: - If she knew we can hear/ could hear her, she wouldn't be singing in the next room - If he understood what we are talking / were talking about, he wouldn't be laughing - I wish you were serious when you are talking/ were talking about children

What is the rule of the tense sequence in subordinate clauses in conditionals if these clauses represent real situations in the present (e.g. we really can hear her, but she doesn't know it; we are talking about something which he doesn't understand; the person is talking about children, but isn't serious)?

And what is the rule for past situations? Is it correct to say: - If I had known you were going to arrive sooner, I would have waited for you (the real part is "you were going to arrive sooner")

Hello Oksa2024,

The key here is to understand that it is the first verb in each example which expresses unreality. The other verbs are governed by the rules of reported/indirect speech.

For example, in the first sentence the unreal element is expressed by knew ; the form of the other verb is determined by whether or not the action is still true, not whether it is real or unreal:

If she knew we can hear her, she wouldn't be singing in the next room > we can still hear her now

If she knew we could hear her, she wouldn't be singing in the next room > it's not clear if we can still hear her now or only then

You can compare it to these examples of indirect speech:

If she knew I love her, she'd wouldn't have left.... > I loved her then and I still love her now

If she knew I loved her, she'd never have left.... > I loved her then; it's not clear if I love her now

The second example is similar:

If he understood what we are talking about, he wouldn't be laughing > we were talking about it then and the conversation is ongoing

If he understood what we were talking about, he wouldn't be laughing > we were talking about it then; it's not clear if the conversation is over

Your third example is a little bit different. Here the choice depends on whether 'talking about children' refers to one conversation or means something more akin to 'expressing your views on children' in an ongoing sense:

I wish you were serious when you are talking about children > 'talking about' is not a conversation but something like 'giving your opinion on'

I wish you were serious when you were talking about children > here 'talking about' could refer to a particular conversation or to a person's ongoing views/opinion.

I hope that clarifies it for you.

The LearnEnglish Team

Hello Peter, Thank you so much for the explanation!

Could you, also, comment on the tense usage in past situations, please? For example,

- If I had known you weren't in the room, I wouldn't have waited for you (I waited, but I didn't know you weren't there) - If I had known you wouldn't like this idea (future from the past), I wouldn't have even suggested - If I had known you had already bought the present, I wouldn't have spent the whole day looking for one (you (had) bought the present before, but I didn't know it)

Hello again Oksa2024,

Your explanations are good here - I'm not sure what I can add.

- If I had known you weren't in the room, I wouldn't have waited for you (I waited, but I didn't know you weren't there) That's correct. This is an unreal past situation (in reality you didn't know) with an unreal past result (in reality you waited).

- If I had known you wouldn't like this idea (future from the past), I wouldn't have even suggested As above, an unreal past situation (in reality you didn't know) with an unreal past result (in reality you suggested).

- If I had known you had already bought the present, I wouldn't have spent the whole day looking for one (you (had) bought the present before, but I didn't know it) And again, an unreal past situation (in reality you didn't know) with an unreal past result (in reality you spent the looking).

Hello Peter,

Thank you so much for your comments and explanations! May I ask just a few more things, to make sure I understand everything correctly?

1. “If he hadn’t asked me whether I will report/ whether I would report tomorrow, I wouldn’t have had to check my notes” (in this situation, the moment of speaking is still today, but “I will report tomorrow” refers to the future action from the point of view of the moment of speaking, so, can we use “will” here or we need to use “would” as in the indicative mood (for example, in the indicative mood we’d say “He asked whether I would report tomorrow” to make the sequence of tenses correct)?.

And is the following correct? In conditional sentences the usage of tenses in past situations doesn’t follow the rules of the sequence of tenses in the Indicative mood: in conditionals the tenses in clauses depend on whether the situation is still ongoing (or referring to the present) or is finished.

2. Is it possible to say “You will wish you hadn’t followed this advice” (meaning: ‘you will regret following it’)? 3. What is the difference in meaning: “He behaves as if he is a clown/ as if he were a clown” (Indicative vs. Subjunctive)?

Thank you so much for all your help!

Hi Oksa2024,

1. Yes, that's right. Using "will" is fine and it makes it clear that "tomorrow" refers to the day after saying this sentence. It seems to emphasise the urgency of the report more than when using "would".

2. Yes, right.

3. Firstly, we should say that there is little practical difference. Both sentences compare this person's behaviour with that of a clown. The second sentence communicates the unreality of the idea more clearly than the first one, since it uses "as if" and also the subjunctive form "were" (whereas the first sentence only uses "as if"). Both sentences are acceptable, but the subjunctive one may be judged as ideal or more correct because of the harmony of idea between "as if" and the subjunctive verb.

I hope that helps! It seems like you have gained a good understanding of these structures.

Hello Jonathan,

Thank you so much for your help!

In these sentences, which one is correct please, and why? There should be enough cars so a taxi won't/wouldn't be necessary. If Johnson wins the next election he will/would scrap the taxes.

Hi Gezza,

In both sentences, the first clause shows something that the speaker/writer considers as a realistic possibility or a likelihood (because of "There should" and "wins", present simple), rather than using a past form to show something unrealistic or imaginary (e.g. "If there were enough cars ..." / "If Johnson won ..."). So, "won't" and "will" are the best options because they also show a realistic or likely future action. 

In everyday conversation, it's somewhat acceptable to use "would" too. However, using "would" makes it unclear whether the speaker/writer considers this to be realistic or just imaginary. If this was in a language test, "would" may not be accepted as an answer.

You can find more examples using "will/won't" and "would" on our Conditionals page (linked) . I hope it helps.

Hello Pundits,

My question is about the use of Future and Present Simple after 'when' in different clauses, as in:

- When you start cooking, I will come in from the garden. In this example 'when you start cooking' is an adverbial clause of time, it indicates the time (not defining any part of the sentence), the structure is similar to a conditional sentence. It answers the question: 'when?' We can only use Present Simple here, correct?

- I look forward to the day when this application is available. Here 'the day' is a direct object, and we explain or define it using the adjective clause 'when this application is available', it answers the question: 'what day?' As far as I know, we can use Present Simple or Future Simple here. What is the difference between the two? When should I use one or the other? - I look forward to when we get to work together again. 'When we get to work together again' is a noun clause, it answers the question: 'what?' We can rebuild the sentence into: - I look forward to our future cooperation. Having done my research on COCA, I can conclude that, in general, people prefer Present Simple in such clause, but there were some examples with Future Simple as well. What is the difference between Future Simple and Present Simple here?

Thank you very much.

Hello Tony_M,

- When you start cooking, I will come in from the garden. In this example 'when you start cooking' is an adverbial clause of time, it indicates the time (not defining any part of the sentence), the structure is similar to a conditional sentence. It answers the question: 'when?' We can only use Present Simple here, correct?

It's possible to use other forms after when here, such as present perfect to emphasise completion ( When you have written the report.... ) or present continuous to show an event in progress ( When you are peeling the potatoes... ). In the second clause, the present simple is possible if you are describing typical behaviour rather than a particular instance.

- I look forward to the day when this application is available. Here 'the day' is a direct object, and we explain or define it using the adjective clause 'when this application is available', it answers the question: 'what day?' As far as I know, we can use Present Simple or Future Simple here. What is the difference between the two? When should I use one or the other?

The present simple is more common here but both can be used, as you say. I think modal 'will' (it's not, strictly speaking, a tense at all) suggests less certainty regarding the matter. In other words, to my ear the present simple suggests that the application will definitely be available, while 'will' here is said without that certainty. You can perhaps see it more clearly in these examples:

I look forward to the day when we finally meet. [I'm confident we're going to meet] I look forward to the day when we will finally meet. [I don't know if it will actually happen] - I look forward to when we get to work together again. 'When we get to work together again' is a noun clause, it answers the question: 'what?' We can rebuild the sentence into: - I look forward to our future cooperation. Having done my research on COCA, I can conclude that, in general, people prefer Present Simple in such clause, but there were some examples with Future Simple as well. What is the difference between Future Simple and Present Simple here?

As above, I think the use of 'will' suggests hope rather than certainty. Note that these are very subtle distinctions rather than any kind of rule.

Sometimes there is a clear difference in meaning. Take a look at these two sentences:

I'll finish it tomorrow when I have less work. I'll finish it tomorrow when I will have less work.

The first sentence can be understood to mean 'At some point tomorrow I will have less work and I will use this time to finish it'.

The second sentence can be understood to mean 'Tomorrow I have less work, so I will finish it then'.

Thank you very much. You've cleared everything up.

Hi The LearnEnglish Team, thank you for your summary, which is very helpful. My question is what is the difference between if sentence to talk about future (if +present simple+(then)will do) and if+past tense to give suggestions about what might happen in the future (hypotheses)? I used to think in the latter case it means what is indicated in the main clause is not likely to happen, but in daily use I've heard people discussing a very possible future event using if+past tense. Can you shed light on this? Thank you very much!

Hello Ivy Z,

The past tense in if-clauses is generally used, as you say, for conditions we consider unlikely, impossible or hypothetical. When giving suggestions or advice we often use formulations which contain or imply a hypothetical:

If I were you > I'd.... (If I were) In your place > I'd... (If I were) In that situation > I'd... If that happened to me > I'd...

Perhaps what you noticed is something like this, but I can only speculate without knowing the particular example.

Hi Peter. Thank you for your response and explanation. The past tense in if-clauses I referred to was used by our lawyers to indicate the possible outcomes under each action plan. So an example would be:

If the company chose / decided to hold off from making a claim against B, the company would likely to benefit ...

What confused me was that 'making a claim against B' was exactly what was suggested and was also the plan favoured by the company and the lawyers knew it, so to me, using past tense in this case seemed to imply that the likelihood for it - namely holding off fire against B - to happen was small but in fact it was most likely to happen. Thus I was wondering if, in this situation, the past tense in if-clauses only mutually indicates a possible result.

Hello again Ivy Z-1,

The past tense in the if-clause makes the action more distant. This usually means more distant in terms of likelihood – i.e. less certain or probable. However, other forms of distancing exist, such as social distancing in terms of formality or politeness. This is why forms such as 'Could I...' and 'Would you...' are more polite/formal than 'Can I...' and 'Will you...'

In the context you describe I think the distancing is more social or professional. While it's perfectly fine to say 'If the company chooses... they will likely benefit...', the past + would form is more neutral in terms of leaving the decision up to the company. In other words, the speaker (the lawyer) may use this form to maintain a certain distance and make it clear that the decision is up to the company. These are very subtle nuances, of course.

One point to note: the 'to' is incorrect in the second clause of your example. It should be '...would likely benefit'.

Thank you very much Peter. This is very clear and helpful!

Hello, Since I am hungry to learn, I would ask more about the Future and 'if' clauses. As it is written above, "in time clauses and conditional clauses, with words like if, when...we often use present tense forms"... but we can use "will" if it means want to or be willing to. This means that: I will be very happy if you will come to my party. I will be very happy if you come to my party. Are both sentences correct? I am a bit confused because with the if clauses, I normally use the present tense forms to talk about the future. Is that an exception to the general rule? Thank you!

Hi User_1,

Yes, that's right. Both are correct and they mean basically the same thing, although "if you will come" may give the idea of "if you want to come" or "if you are willing to come". In comparison, "if you come" is simply the action of coming.

Here is an example where "will" cannot be used in the "if" clause, because the idea of being willing is not relevant to the action.

• Even if Barcelona will lose tomorrow, they will still be champions. (incorrect)
• Even if Barcelona lose tomorrow, they will still be champions. (correct)

If you have doubts, it's always fine to just use present tense forms, as you normally do!

Hi Jonathan, Thanks for your help! Since the present is the correct form, I keep on using that to avoid grammar mistakes.

I know that in time clauses with words like before, when, after, and until, we often use present tense forms to talk about the future, but could you explain why or if it's something idiomatic?

Hello CarolinaRuiz,

I'm not sure I can say why this is the case. Language doesn't really work like that - it evolves rather than being planned with identifiable purposes.

What I can say is that, unlike many languages, English does not have a future tense. Instead, we have many ways of talking about the future. These include present tenses, modal verbs (like will or might) and even past tenses (for unlikely or hypothetical futures). Using present tenses for future meaning is nothing unusual - it's part of the normal language system of English.

Hello. I'd like to ask there is written "I'll come home when I finish work." As i know /finish/ is a gerund so why there is /work/ not /working/ ( it seems like infinitive without to) or i remember not correctly¿ I have an exam and I am trying to learn in all situations. (I think i have to improve my writing also) I'm really grateful for your help.

Hello alice.wu,

I think you mean that 'finish' is followed by a gerund and that is correct: I finished working late last night.

However, 'finish' can also be followed by a noun: I finished the project yesterday.

In your example, 'work' is a noun and it is the object of 'finish'.

The LearnEnglish

Why is it not "Barcelona loses" in your example? Why is the verb plural?

Hello m6769,

The names of institutions and organisations can often be either singular or plural, so you can say 'Barcelona loses' or 'Barcelona lose'.

Some other examples of this include the army, the police, the government, the European Union, the judiciary, the media and the BBC .

If a "would have V3" sentence is used alone, should we take it as a sentence about an unreal past situation?

For example ... "the landscape would have been open" ... does this sentence mean that ... in fact landscape was not open in the past?

Thanks a lot.

Hello Ilter,

It certainly could be talking about an unreal past situation, and I'd even go so far as to say it probably is talking about an unreal past situation, but what exactly it means really depends on the context. The context and the verb forms make meaning together.

If you can give us the context, then we can tell you more.

All the best, Kirk The LearnEnglish Team

Hello Kirk,

The complete paragraph is ...

"Walking back through the menhirs, Agogué explained while the Alignments are reasonably well preserved, both nature and humans have altered the appearance of the site over time. When the Alignments were constructed, the landscape would have been open, without the trees that now divide and flank the sections, and the sea would have been further away. And in the past 6,000 years, some of the menhirs have toppled over – including one last year."

In this context, I think that it does not talk about an unreal past ... would "might have been" be more correct here? What the meaning here "would" adding to the context?

Thanks a lot, Best wishes

Thanks for giving the full context -- that's much clearer now.

This is the use described on our 'will have' and 'would have' page in sentences such as:

It was half past five. Dad would have finished work.

In a case like this, the speaker has good reasons for their belief (for example, she knows her father always finishes at 5:00), but not direct evidence (she hasn't seen him leave work). The speaker is imagining a situation that they haven't witnessed but which seems likely due to some evidence. It could be their knowledge of that person's typical behaviour, or it could be some other evidence.

In the passage you ask about, the writer supposes that the landscape was open in the past -- they probably have some archaeological or historical evidence to support this idea and are fairly certain about it -- but obviously they didn't witness it themselves.

Does that make sense?

Yes got it ... thank you so much Kirk ... best wishes

Hey, I hope it's still okay to comment, I have two examples about which I'd like to know more please! first example: *boy comes to a girl's house to ask her dad* "Hey, is she here? I promised her I'd see her before I left" second example: *they don't want him to go outside while there's danger* "Nobody would want him to leave the safety of the house until the criminal was caught"

Please explain these two to me! Maybe with a sort of model/format/structure and also the name of this? And I couldn't find anything on the web with this example, especially with before/until, and would + verb so if you could talk about this too if there's anything to it.

Thank you in advance!

Hi aa223,

Sure, no problem. You can think of example 1 as reported speech (i.e. indirect speech). The boy may have said to the girl, "I promise I'll see you before I leave". Some time later, the boy tells the girl's dad what he promised her earlier, so it all shifts back into the past (promise --> promised; I'll see --> I would see; leave --> left). You can read more about this on our Reported Speech 1 page (linked) .

In example 2, "would" and the use of the simple past "was caught" frame the situation as an imagined or hypothetical one, rather than one that is realistic or bound to happen. It suggests that the speaker is not confident or certain that the criminal will actually be caught. Saying "Nobody would want him ..." (rather than "Nobody wants him ...") suggests that the speaker has not actually gone around and asked everybody what they want, but is supposing or assuming what they want.

I hope that helps to make sense of it.

Hi dear team. I was wondering if you could help me identify what kind of sentence the following one I saw in a movie. I mean, I know that the zero conditional is used with present simple in both clauses but I don't know if we can use zero conditional with both clauses in simple past. And also I know that the second conditional is used for hypothetical situations and has a Modal verb like would and will. My question is what kind of sentence is this one? : "If somebody said it was a happy little tale, if somebody told you I was just an average ordinary guy, not a care in the world, somebody lied". Thank you so much.

Hello David,

When we're not speaking about an imaginary or unreal situation (as in a second or third conditional), the verb tenses we use in sentences with 'if' have their 'normal' meanings -- in other words, the present refers to the present and the past to the past.

That's the case for the sentence 'If somebody said it was a happy little tale, if somebody told you I was just an average ordinary guy, not a care in the world, somebody lied'. Without knowing more about the situation, it's hard to work exactly what is meant by this, but basically the speaker is saying that whatever another person said about them isn't or wasn't true.

Thank you so much dear Kirk for your help. So is it possible to classify the if clause in simple past and the main clause in simple past in a specific category? I mean do you think that sentences like: 'if someone called me, I didn't notice it' or 'if I came late, it wasn't my fault' are a kind of zero conditional with both clauses in simple past or do they belong to a different category? Thank you so much. And regarding the sentence from the previous comment do you think it is a kind of indirect question? I mean: (' did somebody say it was a happy little tale? Well, somebody lied = 'If somebody said it was a happy little tale, somebody lied'). Thank you so much for your help.

Hello David Araque,

The so-called 'zero', 'first', 'second' and 'third' conditional labels were created by teachers as a way to help students make sense of some common patterns. But the truth is, 'if' sentences can be used with any verb tense that makes sense. Of course, what makes sense isn't always easy for students to discern, and so that's why we have these labels. But, as you've discovered, other combinations are possible.

If you think about it, the tenses in zero and first conditionals are 'normal' uses of the verb tenses. The same is true of second and third conditionals, too, because the use of the past to talk about unreal situations is a use of the past tense that also occurs in other structures (e.g. 'I wish it were raining now'); we just don't typically think of these uses. So really all the tenses we use in 'if' sentences are normal uses of the verb tenses that exist in other situations too.

I wouldn't call the sentence in a question a zero conditional, personally. It's two past simple verbs used to talk about a condition in the past. But if coming up with some name for this structure helps you remember it, then by all means, go ahead -- just know it will be your own creation.

Yes, 'Did somebody say (that) it was a happy little tale?' has the structure of an indirect question. But if you combine it with 'somebody' lied, the indirect question is embedded within the larger 'if' sentence.

Hope that helps.

Thank you so much dear Kirk for your explanation. It really helped me a lot.

Can you please shed light on the proper structure of this sentence.

"He promised to come when he was/is done at work"

Please which is correct to use between "was" or "is"?

Hello Aryin,

It depends. If the speaker thinks the man is still working when the speaker says this, then 'is' is the correct form. But if the speaker thinks the man already finished his work at the time of speaking, then 'was' is the correct form.

Sir, In your above-mentioned example

‘We would go by train if it wasn't so expensive. (= We will not go by train because it is too expensive.) I would look after the children for you at the weekend if I was at home. (= I cannot look after the children because I will not be at home.)

- I used to write e.g. ‘We would go by train if it weren’t (!) so expensive.’ ‘I would look after the children for you at the weekend if I were (!) at home.’

Could you, please, explain it to me why you used another grammatical form?

Thank you in advance.

Hello Helena-Victoria,

In 'if' clauses talking about an unreal situation, both 'was' and 'were' are correct forms of the verb 'be' for both first-person singular subjects ('I') and third-person singular subjects ('he', 'she' or 'it').

Many years ago, the only correct form for such situations was 'were', but now in all but very formal situations, 'was' is also accepted. If it's easier for you to remember 'were', then by all means use it -- it is perfectly correct!

It could refer to the present or the future :)

• Present: If you want (right now) to lose weight, ...
• Future: If you want (at some point in the future) to lose weight, ...

We would need to know the context in which this is said to know which timeframe is intended.

Hello Nevi,

Yes, it looks as if you understand this correctly. Good work!

All the best,

Hello Nevı,

In your example when is a conjunction.

You can see similar examples in dictionary entries such as this:

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/when

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The Basics About Homework Help Websites–Free and Paid

Homework help websites are designed to help you complete your homework assignments, plain and simple. 

What Makes a Homework Help Site Worth Using

Most of the best sites allow users to ask questions and then provide an answer (or multiple possible answers) and explanation in seconds. In some instances, you can even send a photo of a particular assignment or problem instead of typing the whole thing out! 

Homework help sites also offer more than just help answering homework questions. Common services provided are Q&A with experts, educational videos, lectures, practice tests and quizzes, learning modules, math solving tools, and proofreading help. Homework help sites can also provide textbook solutions (i.e. answers to problems in tons of different textbooks your school might be using), one-on-one tutoring, and peer-to-peer platforms that allow you to discuss subjects you’re learning about with your fellow students. 

And best of all, nearly all of them offer their services 24/7, including tutoring! 

What You Should Should Look Out For

When it comes to homework help, there are lots–and we mean lots –of scam sites out there willing to prey on desperate students. Before you sign up for any service, make sure you read reviews to ensure you’re working with a legitimate company. 

A word to the wise: the more a company advertises help that veers into the territory of cheating, the more likely it is to be a scam. The best homework help websites are going to help you learn the concepts you’ll need to successfully complete your homework on your own. (We’ll go over the difference between “homework help” and “cheating” a little later!) 

You don't need a golden piggy bank to use homework help websites. Some provide low or no cost help for students like you!

How Expensive Are the Best Homework Help Websites?

First of all, just because a homework help site costs money doesn’t mean it’s a good service. Likewise, just because a homework help website is free doesn’t mean the help isn’t high quality. To find the best websites, you have to take a close look at the quality and types of information they provide! 

When it comes to paid homework help services, the prices vary pretty widely depending on the amount of services you want to subscribe to. Subscriptions can cost anywhere from $2 to $150 dollars per month, with the most expensive services offering several hours of one-on-one tutoring with a subject expert per month.

The 5 Best Homework Help Websites 

So, what is the best homework help website you can use? The answer is that it depends on what you need help with. 

The best homework help websites are the ones that are reliable and help you learn the material. They don’t just provide answers to homework questions–they actually help you learn the material. 

That’s why we’ve broken down our favorite websites into categories based on who they’re best for . For instance, the best website for people struggling with math might not work for someone who needs a little extra help with science, and vice versa. 

Keep reading to find the best homework help website for you! 

Best Free Homework Help Site: Khan Academy

• Price: Free!
• Best for: Practicing tough material 

Not only is Khan Academy free, but it’s full of information and can be personalized to suit your needs. When you set up your account , you choose which courses you need to study, and Khan Academy sets up a personal dashboard of instructional videos, practice exercises, and quizzes –with both correct and incorrect answer explanations–so you can learn at your own pace. 

As an added bonus, it covers more course topics than many other homework help sites, including several AP classes.

Runner Up: Brainly.com offers a free service that allows you to type in questions and get answers and explanations from experts. The downside is that you’re limited to two answers per question and have to watch ads. 

Best Paid Homework Help Site: Chegg

• Price: $14.95 to $19.95 per month
• Best for: 24/7 homework assistance  

This service has three main parts . The first is Chegg Study, which includes textbook solutions, Q&A with subject experts, flashcards, video explanations, a math solver, and writing help. The resources are thorough, and reviewers state that Chegg answers homework questions quickly and accurately no matter when you submit them.  

Chegg also offers textbook rentals for students who need access to textbooks outside of their classroom. Finally, Chegg offers Internship and Career Advice for students who are preparing to graduate and may need a little extra help with the transition out of high school. 

Another great feature Chegg provides is a selection of free articles geared towards helping with general life skills, like coping with stress and saving money. Chegg’s learning modules are comprehensive, and they feature solutions to the problems in tons of different textbooks in a wide variety of subjects. 

Runner Up: Bartleby offers basically the same services as Chegg for $14.99 per month. The reason it didn’t rank as the best is based on customer reviews that say user questions aren’t answered quite as quickly on this site as on Chegg. Otherwise, this is also a solid choice!

Best Site for Math Homework Help: Photomath

• Price: Free (or $59.99 per year for premium services) 
• Best for: Explaining solutions to math problems

This site allows you to t ake a picture of a math problem, and instantly pulls up a step-by-step solution, as well as a detailed explanation of the concept. Photomath also includes animated videos that break down mathematical concepts to help you better understand and remember them. 

The basic service is free, but for an additional fee you can get extra study tools and learn additional strategies for solving common math problems.

Runner Up: KhanAcademy offers in-depth tutorials that cover complex math topics for free, but you won’t get the same tailored help (and answers!) that Photomath offers. 

Best Site for English Homework Help: Princeton Review Academic Tutoring

• Price: $40 to $153 per month, depending on how many hours of tutoring you want 
• Best for: Comprehensive and personalized reading and writing help 

While sites like Grammarly and Sparknotes help you by either proofreading what you write via an algorithm or providing book summaries, Princeton Review’s tutors provide in-depth help with vocabulary, literature, essay writing and development, proofreading, and reading comprehension. And unlike other services, you’ll have the chance to work with a real person to get help. 

The best part is that you can get on-demand English (and ESL) tutoring from experts 24/7. That means you can get help whenever you need it, even if you’re pulling an all-nighter! 

This is by far the most expensive homework site on this list, so you’ll need to really think about what you need out of a homework help website before you commit. One added benefit is that the subscription covers over 80 other subjects, including AP classes, which can make it a good value if you need lots of help!  

Best Site for STEM Homework Help: Studypool

• Best for: Science homework help
• Price: Varies; you’ll pay for each question you submit

When it comes to science homework help, there aren’t a ton of great resources out there. The best of the bunch is Studypool, and while it has great reviews, there are some downsides as well. 

Let’s start with the good stuff. Studypool offers an interesting twist on the homework help formula. After you create a free account, you can submit your homework help questions, and tutors will submit bids to answer your questions. You’ll be able to select the tutor–and price point–that works for you, then you’ll pay to have your homework question answered. You can also pay a small fee to access notes, lectures, and other documents that top tutors have uploaded. 

The downside to Studypool is that the pricing is not transparent . There’s no way to plan for how much your homework help will cost, especially if you have lots of questions! Additionally, it’s not clear how tutors are selected, so you’ll need to be cautious when you choose who you’d like to answer your homework questions.  

What Are the Pros and Cons of Using Homework Help Sites?

Homework help websites can be a great resource if you’re struggling in a subject, or even if you just want to make sure that you’re really learning and understanding topics and ideas that you’re interested in. But, there are some possible drawbacks if you don’t use these sites responsibly. 

We’ll go over the good–and the not-so-good–aspects of getting online homework help below. 

3 Pros of Using Homework Help Websites 

First, let’s take a look at the benefits. 

#1: Better Grades Beyond Homework

This is a big one! Getting outside help with your studies can improve your understanding of concepts that you’re learning, which translates into better grades when you take tests or write essays. 

Remember: homework is designed to help reinforce the concepts you learned in class. If you just get easy answers without learning the material behind the problems, you may not have the tools you need to be successful on your class exams…or even standardized tests you’ll need to take for college. 

#2: Convenience

One of the main reasons that online homework help is appealing is because it’s flexible and convenient. You don’t have to go to a specific tutoring center while they’re open or stay after school to speak with your teacher. Instead, you can access helpful resources wherever you can access the internet, whenever you need them.

This is especially true if you tend to study at off hours because of your extracurriculars, work schedule, or family obligations. Sites that offer 24/7 tutoring can give you the extra help you need if you can’t access the free resources that are available at your school. 

#3: Variety

Not everyone learns the same way. Maybe you’re more of a visual learner, but your teacher mostly does lectures. Or maybe you learn best by listening and taking notes, but you’re expected to learn something just from reading the textbook . 

One of the best things about online homework help is that it comes in a variety of forms. The best homework help sites offer resources for all types of learners, including videos, practice activities, and even one-on-one discussions with real-life experts. 

This variety can also be a good thing if you just don’t really resonate with the way a concept is being explained (looking at you, math textbooks!).

Not so fast. There are cons to homework help websites, too. Get to know them below!

3 Cons of Using Homework Help Websites 

Now, let’s take a look at the drawbacks of online homework help. 

#1: Unreliable Info

This can be a real problem. In addition to all the really good homework help sites, there are a whole lot of disreputable or unreliable sites out there. The fact of the matter is that some homework help sites don’t necessarily hire people who are experts in the subjects they’re talking about. In those cases, you may not be getting the accurate, up-to-date, and thorough information you need.

Additionally, even the great sites may not be able to answer all of your homework questions. This is especially true if the site uses an algorithm or chatbot to help students…or if you’re enrolled in an advanced or college-level course. In these cases, working with your teacher or school-provided tutors are probably your best option. 

#2: No Clarification

This depends on the service you use, of course. But the majority of them provide free or low-cost help through pre-recorded videos. Watching videos or reading info online can definitely help you with your homework… but you can’t ask questions or get immediate feedback if you need it .

#3: Potential For Scamming 

Like we mentioned earlier, there are a lot of homework help websites out there, and lots of them are scams. The review comments we read covered everything from outdated or wrong information, to misleading claims about the help provided, to not allowing people to cancel their service after signing up. 

No matter which site you choose to use, make sure you research and read reviews before you sign up–especially if it’s a paid service! 

When Does “Help” Become “Cheating”?

Admittedly, whether using homework help websites constitutes cheating is a bit of a grey area. For instance, is it “help” when a friend reads your essay for history class and corrects your grammar, or is it “cheating”? The truth is, not everyone agrees on when “help” crosses the line into “cheating .” When in doubt, it can be a good idea to check with your teacher to see what they think about a particular type of help you want to get. 

That said, a general rule of thumb to keep in mind is to make sure that the assignment you turn in for credit is authentically yours . It needs to demonstrate your own thoughts and your own current abilities. Remember: the point of every homework assignment is to 1) help you learn something, and 2) show what you’ve learned. 

So if a service answers questions or writes essays for you, there’s a good chance using it constitutes cheating. 

Here’s an example that might help clarify the difference for you. Brainstorming essay ideas with others or looking online for inspiration is “help” as long as you write the essay yourself. Having someone read it and give you feedback about what you need to change is also help, provided you’re the one that makes the changes later. 

But copying all or part of an essay you find online or having someone write (or rewrite) the whole thing for you would be “cheating.” The same is true for other subjects. Ultimately, if you’re not generating your own work or your own answers, it’s probably cheating.

5 Tips for Finding the Best Homework Help Websites for You

Now that you know some of our favorite homework help websites, free and paid, you can start doing some additional research on your own to decide which services might work best for you! Here are some top tips for choosing a homework help website. 

Tip 1: Decide How You Learn Best 

Before you decide which site or sites you’re going to use for homework help, y ou should figure out what kind of learning style works for you the most. Are you a visual learner? Then choose a site that uses lots of videos to help explain concepts. If you know you learn best by actually doing tasks, choose a site that provides lots of practice exercises.

Tip 2: Determine Which Subjects You Need Help With

Just because a homework help site is good overall doesn’t mean that it’s equally good for every subject. If you only need help in math, choose a site that specializes in that area. But if history is where you’re struggling, a site that specializes in math won’t be much help. So make sure to choose a site that you know provides high-quality help in the areas you need it most. 

Tip 3: Decide How Much One-On-One Help You Need 

This is really about cost-effectiveness. If you learn well on your own by reading and watching videos, a free site like Khan Academy is a good choice. But if you need actual tutoring, or to be able to ask questions and get personalized answers from experts, a paid site that provides that kind of service may be a better option.

Tip 4: Set a Budget

If you decide you want to go with a paid homework help website, set a budget first . The prices for sites vary wildly, and the cost to use them can add up quick. 

Tip 5: Read the Reviews

Finally, it’s always a good idea to read actual reviews written by the people using these homework sites. You’ll learn the good, the bad, and the ugly of what the users’ experiences have been. This is especially true if you intend to subscribe to a paid service. You’ll want to make sure that users think it’s worth the price overall!

What’s Next?

If you want to get good grades on your homework, it’s a good idea to learn how to tackle it strategically. Our expert tips will help you get the most out of each assignment…and boost your grades in the process.

Doing well on homework assignments is just one part of getting good grades. We’ll teach you everything you need to know about getting great grades in high school in this article.

Of course, test grades can make or break your GPA, too. Here are 17 expert tips that’ll help you get the most out of your study prep before you take an exam.

Ashley Sufflé Robinson has a Ph.D. in 19th Century English Literature. As a content writer for PrepScholar, Ashley is passionate about giving college-bound students the in-depth information they need to get into the school of their dreams.

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How to Do Homework

Last Updated: April 6, 2024 Fact Checked

This article was co-authored by Ronitte Libedinsky, MS . Ronitte Libedinsky is an Academic Tutor and the Founder of Brighter Minds SF, a San Francisco, California based company that provides one-on-one and small group tutoring. Specializing in tutoring mathematics (pre-algebra, algebra I/II, geometry, pre-calculus, calculus) and science (chemistry, biology), Ronitte has over 10 years of experience tutoring to middle school, high school, and college students. She also tutors in SSAT, Terra Nova, HSPT, SAT, and ACT test prep. Ronitte holds a BS in Chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley, and an MS in Chemistry from Tel Aviv University. There are 11 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 955,873 times.

Even though your parents probably complain about how hard it was in their day, students nowadays have more homework than ever before, even when just starting their first year at middle school. That homework doesn't need to be a struggle now. Learning to plan out an efficient schedule for completing your homework, working on it effectively, and knowing when to get help with difficult assignments can help take the stress out of studying. Don't put it off any longer. See Step 1 for more information.

Working on Homework

Once you go into your space and start working, try not to leave until you've got a break scheduled. If you want a quick snack or drink, get it now before you start. Hit the bathroom and make sure you'll be able to work for the amount of time before your next break, uninterrupted.

• It's common that students will try to multi-task, watching TV or listening to the radio or continuing to chat on Facebook or Instagram while also trying to do homework. It'll be so much more fun to do those things after you're already done with your homework, though, and your homework will take half as much time if you're focused on doing nothing but your homework.
• Check your phone or your social networking sites during your study break, but not before. Use these distractions as a carrot, not as a pacifier.

If one assignment proves challenging and time-consuming, it's okay to switch for a while to something else. Just make sure to save enough time to circle back and give it another shot.

• Try to figure out what works best for you. Some students might like to start their homework immediately after school to get it done as quickly as possible, while it may be better to give yourself an hour to relax before starting in on it and decompress from the long school day. Don't wait for the last minute.
• While it may seem like a better idea to work straight through and finish, it's possible that the quality of the work you're doing will start to suffer if you don't give your mind a rest. It's difficult to think hard for more than 45 minutes at a time on a particular subject. Give yourself a rest and come back refreshed.

• The first fifteen minutes after a break are your most effective minutes, because your mind will be cleared, and ready to work hard. Give yourself a pep talk and dive back in, refreshed and ready.

• If you have trouble staying focused, get a parent, sibling, or friend to help keep you honest. Give them your phone while you're working to avoid the temptation to check it, or give them the video game controller so you won't be able to plug in for a few minutes of alien-hunting when you're supposed to be doing your homework. Then, when you're finished, show them the finished product and earn back your fun. Make it impossible to cheat.

• You can make yourself take enough time by having your gate-keeper (the person with your phone or video game controller) check over your homework for quality when you're done. If you know you're not going to get it anyway unless it's done right, you won't have any reason to rush. Slow down and do it right.

Planning Your Homework

• It's common to quickly write out the math problems you're supposed to do at the top of your notes, or scribble down the page number of the English reading on a textbook page, but try to recopy this information into a specific homework list so you will be sure to remember to do it.
• Write down as many details as you can about each assignment. It's good to include the due date, corresponding textbook pages, and additional instructions from your teacher. This will help you plan your night of homework more effectively. Also, it's a good idea to write about your homework in a planner.

• Homework doesn't have to wait until you get home. Look through an assignment as soon as it's been given, so you'll have the time to ask your teacher any questions you might have before you leave school for the day.

• At home , a desk in your bedroom might be the best place. You can shut the door and tune out any distractions. For some students, though, this is a good way to get distracted. You might have video games, computers, guitars, and all sorts of other distractions in your bedroom. It might be a better idea to sit at the kitchen table, or in the living room, where your parents can call you out for procrastinating. You'll get it done more quickly without the temptation of distraction.
• In public , the library is a great place to study and do homework. At all libraries, it's a rule that you have to be quiet, and you won't have any of the distractions of home. The school library will often stay open after school ends, making it a good option for finishing up homework before heading home, or your school may even have an after-school study spot specifically for the purpose. [11] X Research source
• Try to switch it up . Studying in the same place too often can make work more difficult. Some studies have shown that a change in environment can make your mind more active, since it's processing new information. You'll be able to vary your routine and remember what you learned more effectively.

• Try starting with the most difficult homework . Do you really hate the idea of getting into the algebra homework? Does reading for English take the longest? Start with the most challenging homework to give yourself the most time to complete it, then move on to the easier tasks you can complete more quickly.
• Try starting with the most pressing homework . If you've got 20 math problems to do for tomorrow, and 20 pages to read in a novel for Friday, it's probably better to start with the math homework to make sure you'll have enough time to complete it. Make homework due the next day the priority.
• Try starting with the most important homework . Your math homework might be difficult, but if it's only worth a few completion points, it might be less important to spend a lot of time on it than the big project for Social Studies that's due in two days. Devote the most time to the most valuable assignments.

• Set an alarm or a timer to keep yourself honest. The less time you spend procrastinating and checking your text messages, the more quickly you'll be done. If you think you can finish everything in a half hour, set a timer and work efficiently to finish in that amount of time. If you don't quite finish, give yourself a few extra minutes. Treat it like a drill.
• Keep track of how long you usually spend on particular assignments on average. If your math homework typically takes you 45 minutes to finish, save that much time each night. If you start plugging away for an hour, give yourself a break and work on something else to avoid tiring out.
• Schedule 10 minutes of break time for every 50 minutes of work time. It's important to take study breaks and give your mind a rest, or you'll work less effectively. You're not a robot!

Finding Extra Time

• Do you really need an hour of TV or computer after school to decompress? It might be easier to just dive into your homework and get it done while the skills are still fresh in your mind. Waiting a couple hours means you'll have to review your notes and try to get back to the same place you already were. Do it while it's fresh.
• If you've got three days to read an assignment, don't wait until the last evening to do it all. Space it out and give yourself more time to finish. Just because you've got a due date that's a long time away doesn't mean it wouldn't be easier to finish now. Stay ahead of the game. Try either waking up earlier or going to bed later. But don't get too tired!

• If you've got to read a bunch of stuff for homework, read on the bus. Pop in some headphones to white noise that'll drown out the shouting of other students and tune into your book.
• The bus can be distracting, or it can be a great resource. Since it's full of your classmates, try to get other students to work with you and get things done more quickly. Work together on the math problems and try to figure out things together. It's not cheating if everyone's doing the work and no one's just copying. Also, you might make some new friends while you're at it!

• Don't rely on this time to finish homework just before it's due. Rushing to finish your last few problems in the five minutes before you need to turn it in looks bad in front of the teacher, plus it doesn't give you any time to review your homework after you finish it. Rushing is a good way to make mistakes. And always check difficult problems you had trouble with.

• Work on your homework while you're waiting for a ride, while you're killing time at your brother's soccer game, or while you're waiting for your friend to come over. Take advantage of any extra time you have in the day.

Getting Homework Help

• Asking for help with your homework isn't a sign that you're bad at the subject or that you're "stupid." Every teacher on the planet will respect a student that takes their homework seriously enough to ask for help. Especially ask if you weren't there that day!
• Asking for help isn't the same thing as complaining about the difficulty of homework or making excuses. Spending ten minutes doing half your math problems and leaving most of them blank because they were hard and then telling your teacher you need help isn't going to win you any favors on the due date. If it's hard, see your teacher ahead of time and find the time to get help.

• If there's not an organized homework help group at your school, there are many private tutoring organizations that work both for-pay and non-profits. Sylvan Learning Center and other businesses have after-school hours that you can schedule appointments at to get help studying and completing your homework, while community centers like the YMCA, or even public libraries will often have homework help hours in your area.
• Getting help doesn't mean that you're bad at your homework. All variety of students visit tutoring centers for extra help, just to make sure they have enough time and motivation to get everything done. It's hard being a student! There's no shame in extra help. Imagine being afraid to ask for anything! You wouldn't be able to ask in restaurants, shops, anywhere!

• Make sure that your group study sessions don't cross the line into cheating. Dividing up an assigned so your friend does half and you copy each other's answers is considered cheating, but discussing a problem and coming up with a solution together isn't. As long as you each do the work separately, you shouldn't have any problems.

• Some parents don't necessarily know how to help with your homework and might end up doing too much. Try to keep yourself honest. Asking for help doesn't mean asking your parent to do your work for you.
• Likewise, some older relatives have outdated ways of completing specific tasks and might suggest forcefully that something you learned in class is wrong. Always use your teacher's approach as the correct approach, and discuss these alternative ways of completing an assignment with your teacher if necessary.

Supercharge Your Studying with this Expert Series

Expert Q&A

Reader Videos

Share a quick video tip and help bring articles to life with your friendly advice. Your insights could make a real difference and help millions of people!

• Make sure your little study space is well lit, quiet, and comfortable. This will make it much easier to do your homework properly. Thanks Helpful 1 Not Helpful 0
• If you missed school that day, then you should call a friend to get the notes and/or homework from that day. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
• Take a piece of paper or wipe board and create a schedule for your homework. Be generous with the amount of time that you give for each task. If you end up finishing a task earlier than the schedule says, you will feel accomplished and will have extra time to complete the next task. It makes homework get done quicker than usual. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0

Tips from our Readers

• Make sure you have what you need handy when you get stuck on homework. Don't be afraid to ask questions if you're confused — asking helps you understand things better. And get enough sleep since it's easier to get your work done when you're well-rested.
• Don't put off starting homework just to have more playtime. Jumping in early leaves more free time for later but ensures you don't miss out on sleep. Plus, the class material is still fresh right after school, so you'll understand your homework better.
• Do your homework as soon as you get home every day except Fridays. On Fridays, give yourself permission to relax for the evening. Also, take short breaks as you work to help you focus. Play a quick game, eat a healthy snack, or use the bathroom.
• Ask for help when you need it, but don't rely on others to give you all the answers. The point of homework is for you to practice what you've learned, so try to work through problems yourself before asking for hints or explanations.
• Write down homework assignments in your planner right when your teacher gives them so you don't forget details later. Knowing exactly what work you need to do keeps you from being surprised.
• Break big assignments down into smaller pieces that feel more manageable. Taking things step-by-step makes big tasks feel less overwhelming, and helps you stay motivated.

• Never leave unfinished homework for the next day because you might have other homework to do and you will have to do both. Thanks Helpful 24 Not Helpful 0
• If you forget your homework, your teacher might not accept late work or may even give you more homework. Thanks Helpful 7 Not Helpful 1

Things You'll Need

• Writing equipment, such as pencils, rulers, and erasers.
• Resources that may help you work faster.
• A comfy place to sit while doing homework.

You Might Also Like

• ↑ https://www.warnerpacific.edu/5-tips-for-dealing-with-too-much-homework/
• ↑ https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/mental-wealth/201206/10-tips-make-homework-time-less-painful
• ↑ Ronitte Libedinsky, MS. Academic Tutor. Expert Interview. 26 May 2020.
• ↑ https://bigfuture.collegeboard.org/plan-for-college/college-prep/stay-motivated/take-control-of-homework
• ↑ https://kidshealth.org/en/parents/homework.html
• ↑ https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/understanding-assignments/
• ↑ https://kidshealth.org/en/teens/homework.html
• ↑ http://kidshealth.org/teen/school_jobs/school/homework.html#a_Create_a_Homework_Plan
• ↑ https://tutorial.math.lamar.edu/Extras/StudyMath/Homework.aspx
• ↑ https://learningcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/studying-101-study-smarter-not-harder/
• ↑ https://kidshealth.org/en/kids/homework-help.html

About This Article

If you need to do homework, find a quiet, comfortable spot where you won’t be distracted. Turn off any electronics, like your TV, phone, or radio, and gather all of the supplies you’ll need before you get started. Work on the most important or hardest assignments first to get them out of the way, and if you have a homework assignment that actually seems fun, save it for last to motivate you to finish your other work faster. Keep reading to learn how to find extra time to get your homework done, like working on it on the way home from school! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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Does Homework Really Help Students Learn?

A conversation with a Wheelock researcher, a BU student, and a fourth-grade teacher

“Quality homework is engaging and relevant to kids’ lives,” says Wheelock’s Janine Bempechat. “It gives them autonomy and engages them in the community and with their families. In some subjects, like math, worksheets can be very helpful. It has to do with the value of practicing over and over.” Photo by iStock/Glenn Cook Photography

Do your homework.

If only it were that simple.

Educators have debated the merits of homework since the late 19th century. In recent years, amid concerns of some parents and teachers that children are being stressed out by too much homework, things have only gotten more fraught.

“Homework is complicated,” says developmental psychologist Janine Bempechat, a Wheelock College of Education & Human Development clinical professor. The author of the essay “ The Case for (Quality) Homework—Why It Improves Learning and How Parents Can Help ” in the winter 2019 issue of Education Next , Bempechat has studied how the debate about homework is influencing teacher preparation, parent and student beliefs about learning, and school policies.

She worries especially about socioeconomically disadvantaged students from low-performing schools who, according to research by Bempechat and others, get little or no homework.

BU Today  sat down with Bempechat and Erin Bruce (Wheelock’17,’18), a new fourth-grade teacher at a suburban Boston school, and future teacher freshman Emma Ardizzone (Wheelock) to talk about what quality homework looks like, how it can help children learn, and how schools can equip teachers to design it, evaluate it, and facilitate parents’ role in it.

BU Today: Parents and educators who are against homework in elementary school say there is no research definitively linking it to academic performance for kids in the early grades. You’ve said that they’re missing the point.

Bempechat : I think teachers assign homework in elementary school as a way to help kids develop skills they’ll need when they’re older—to begin to instill a sense of responsibility and to learn planning and organizational skills. That’s what I think is the greatest value of homework—in cultivating beliefs about learning and skills associated with academic success. If we greatly reduce or eliminate homework in elementary school, we deprive kids and parents of opportunities to instill these important learning habits and skills.

We do know that beginning in late middle school, and continuing through high school, there is a strong and positive correlation between homework completion and academic success.

That’s what I think is the greatest value of homework—in cultivating beliefs about learning and skills associated with academic success.

You talk about the importance of quality homework. What is that?

Quality homework is engaging and relevant to kids’ lives. It gives them autonomy and engages them in the community and with their families. In some subjects, like math, worksheets can be very helpful. It has to do with the value of practicing over and over.

What are your concerns about homework and low-income children?

The argument that some people make—that homework “punishes the poor” because lower-income parents may not be as well-equipped as affluent parents to help their children with homework—is very troubling to me. There are no parents who don’t care about their children’s learning. Parents don’t actually have to help with homework completion in order for kids to do well. They can help in other ways—by helping children organize a study space, providing snacks, being there as a support, helping children work in groups with siblings or friends.

Isn’t the discussion about getting rid of homework happening mostly in affluent communities?

Yes, and the stories we hear of kids being stressed out from too much homework—four or five hours of homework a night—are real. That’s problematic for physical and mental health and overall well-being. But the research shows that higher-income students get a lot more homework than lower-income kids.

Teachers may not have as high expectations for lower-income children. Schools should bear responsibility for providing supports for kids to be able to get their homework done—after-school clubs, community support, peer group support. It does kids a disservice when our expectations are lower for them.

The conversation around homework is to some extent a social class and social justice issue. If we eliminate homework for all children because affluent children have too much, we’re really doing a disservice to low-income children. They need the challenge, and every student can rise to the challenge with enough supports in place.

What did you learn by studying how education schools are preparing future teachers to handle homework?

My colleague, Margarita Jimenez-Silva, at the University of California, Davis, School of Education, and I interviewed faculty members at education schools, as well as supervising teachers, to find out how students are being prepared. And it seemed that they weren’t. There didn’t seem to be any readings on the research, or conversations on what high-quality homework is and how to design it.

Erin, what kind of training did you get in handling homework?

Bruce : I had phenomenal professors at Wheelock, but homework just didn’t come up. I did lots of student teaching. I’ve been in classrooms where the teachers didn’t assign any homework, and I’ve been in rooms where they assigned hours of homework a night. But I never even considered homework as something that was my decision. I just thought it was something I’d pull out of a book and it’d be done.

I started giving homework on the first night of school this year. My first assignment was to go home and draw a picture of the room where you do your homework. I want to know if it’s at a table and if there are chairs around it and if mom’s cooking dinner while you’re doing homework.

The second night I asked them to talk to a grown-up about how are you going to be able to get your homework done during the week. The kids really enjoyed it. There’s a running joke that I’m teaching life skills.

Friday nights, I read all my kids’ responses to me on their homework from the week and it’s wonderful. They pour their hearts out. It’s like we’re having a conversation on my couch Friday night.

It matters to know that the teacher cares about you and that what you think matters to the teacher. Homework is a vehicle to connect home and school…for parents to know teachers are welcoming to them and their families.

Bempechat : I can’t imagine that most new teachers would have the intuition Erin had in designing homework the way she did.

Ardizzone : Conversations with kids about homework, feeling you’re being listened to—that’s such a big part of wanting to do homework….I grew up in Westchester County. It was a pretty demanding school district. My junior year English teacher—I loved her—she would give us feedback, have meetings with all of us. She’d say, “If you have any questions, if you have anything you want to talk about, you can talk to me, here are my office hours.” It felt like she actually cared.

Bempechat : It matters to know that the teacher cares about you and that what you think matters to the teacher. Homework is a vehicle to connect home and school…for parents to know teachers are welcoming to them and their families.

Ardizzone : But can’t it lead to parents being overbearing and too involved in their children’s lives as students?

Bempechat : There’s good help and there’s bad help. The bad help is what you’re describing—when parents hover inappropriately, when they micromanage, when they see their children confused and struggling and tell them what to do.

Good help is when parents recognize there’s a struggle going on and instead ask informative questions: “Where do you think you went wrong?” They give hints, or pointers, rather than saying, “You missed this,” or “You didn’t read that.”

Bruce : I hope something comes of this. I hope BU or Wheelock can think of some way to make this a more pressing issue. As a first-year teacher, it was not something I even thought about on the first day of school—until a kid raised his hand and said, “Do we have homework?” It would have been wonderful if I’d had a plan from day one.

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Sara Rimer A journalist for more than three decades, Sara Rimer worked at the Miami Herald , Washington Post and, for 26 years, the New York Times , where she was the New England bureau chief, and a national reporter covering education, aging, immigration, and other social justice issues. Her stories on the death penalty’s inequities were nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and cited in the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision outlawing the execution of people with intellectual disabilities. Her journalism honors include Columbia University’s Meyer Berger award for in-depth human interest reporting. She holds a BA degree in American Studies from the University of Michigan. Profile

She can be reached at [email protected] .

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Boston University moderates comments to facilitate an informed, substantive, civil conversation. Abusive, profane, self-promotional, misleading, incoherent or off-topic comments will be rejected. Moderators are staffed during regular business hours (EST) and can only accept comments written in English. Statistics or facts must include a citation or a link to the citation.

There are 81 comments on Does Homework Really Help Students Learn?

Insightful! The values about homework in elementary schools are well aligned with my intuition as a parent.

when i finish my work i do my homework and i sometimes forget what to do because i did not get enough sleep

same omg it does not help me it is stressful and if I have it in more than one class I hate it.

Same I think my parent wants to help me but, she doesn’t care if I get bad grades so I just try my best and my grades are great.

I think that last question about Good help from parents is not know to all parents, we do as our parents did or how we best think it can be done, so maybe coaching parents or giving them resources on how to help with homework would be very beneficial for the parent on how to help and for the teacher to have consistency and improve homework results, and of course for the child. I do see how homework helps reaffirm the knowledge obtained in the classroom, I also have the ability to see progress and it is a time I share with my kids

The answer to the headline question is a no-brainer – a more pressing problem is why there is a difference in how students from different cultures succeed. Perfect example is the student population at BU – why is there a majority population of Asian students and only about 3% black students at BU? In fact at some universities there are law suits by Asians to stop discrimination and quotas against admitting Asian students because the real truth is that as a group they are demonstrating better qualifications for admittance, while at the same time there are quotas and reduced requirements for black students to boost their portion of the student population because as a group they do more poorly in meeting admissions standards – and it is not about the Benjamins. The real problem is that in our PC society no one has the gazuntas to explore this issue as it may reveal that all people are not created equal after all. Or is it just environmental cultural differences??????

I get you have a concern about the issue but that is not even what the point of this article is about. If you have an issue please take this to the site we have and only post your opinion about the actual topic

This is not at all what the article is talking about.

This literally has nothing to do with the article brought up. You should really take your opinions somewhere else before you speak about something that doesn’t make sense.

we have the same name

so they have the same name what of it?

lol you tell her

totally agree

What does that have to do with homework, that is not what the article talks about AT ALL.

Yes, I think homework plays an important role in the development of student life. Through homework, students have to face challenges on a daily basis and they try to solve them quickly.I am an intense online tutor at 24x7homeworkhelp and I give homework to my students at that level in which they handle it easily.

More than two-thirds of students said they used alcohol and drugs, primarily marijuana, to cope with stress.

You know what’s funny? I got this assignment to write an argument for homework about homework and this article was really helpful and understandable, and I also agree with this article’s point of view.

I also got the same task as you! I was looking for some good resources and I found this! I really found this article useful and easy to understand, just like you! ^^

i think that homework is the best thing that a child can have on the school because it help them with their thinking and memory.

I am a child myself and i think homework is a terrific pass time because i can’t play video games during the week. It also helps me set goals.

Homework is not harmful ,but it will if there is too much

I feel like, from a minors point of view that we shouldn’t get homework. Not only is the homework stressful, but it takes us away from relaxing and being social. For example, me and my friends was supposed to hang at the mall last week but we had to postpone it since we all had some sort of work to do. Our minds shouldn’t be focused on finishing an assignment that in realty, doesn’t matter. I completely understand that we should have homework. I have to write a paper on the unimportance of homework so thanks.

homework isn’t that bad

Are you a student? if not then i don’t really think you know how much and how severe todays homework really is

i am a student and i do not enjoy homework because i practice my sport 4 out of the five days we have school for 4 hours and that’s not even counting the commute time or the fact i still have to shower and eat dinner when i get home. its draining!

i totally agree with you. these people are such boomers

why just why

they do make a really good point, i think that there should be a limit though. hours and hours of homework can be really stressful, and the extra work isn’t making a difference to our learning, but i do believe homework should be optional and extra credit. that would make it for students to not have the leaning stress of a assignment and if you have a low grade you you can catch up.

Studies show that homework improves student achievement in terms of improved grades, test results, and the likelihood to attend college. Research published in the High School Journal indicates that students who spent between 31 and 90 minutes each day on homework “scored about 40 points higher on the SAT-Mathematics subtest than their peers, who reported spending no time on homework each day, on average.” On both standardized tests and grades, students in classes that were assigned homework outperformed 69% of students who didn’t have homework. A majority of studies on homework’s impact – 64% in one meta-study and 72% in another – showed that take home assignments were effective at improving academic achievement. Research by the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) concluded that increased homework led to better GPAs and higher probability of college attendance for high school boys. In fact, boys who attended college did more than three hours of additional homework per week in high school.

So how are your measuring student achievement? That’s the real question. The argument that doing homework is simply a tool for teaching responsibility isn’t enough for me. We can teach responsibility in a number of ways. Also the poor argument that parents don’t need to help with homework, and that students can do it on their own, is wishful thinking at best. It completely ignores neurodiverse students. Students in poverty aren’t magically going to find a space to do homework, a friend’s or siblings to help them do it, and snacks to eat. I feel like the author of this piece has never set foot in a classroom of students.

THIS. This article is pathetic coming from a university. So intellectually dishonest, refusing to address the havoc of capitalism and poverty plays on academic success in life. How can they in one sentence use poor kids in an argument and never once address that poor children have access to damn near 0 of the resources affluent kids have? Draw me a picture and let’s talk about feelings lmao what a joke is that gonna put food in their belly so they can have the calories to burn in order to use their brain to study? What about quiet their 7 other siblings that they share a single bedroom with for hours? Is it gonna force the single mom to magically be at home and at work at the same time to cook food while you study and be there to throw an encouraging word?

Also the “parents don’t need to be a parent and be able to guide their kid at all academically they just need to exist in the next room” is wild. Its one thing if a parent straight up is not equipped but to say kids can just figured it out is…. wow coming from an educator What’s next the teacher doesn’t need to teach cause the kid can just follow the packet and figure it out?

Well then get a tutor right? Oh wait you are poor only affluent kids can afford a tutor for their hours of homework a day were they on average have none of the worries a poor child does. Does this address that poor children are more likely to also suffer abuse and mental illness? Like mentioned what about kids that can’t learn or comprehend the forced standardized way? Just let em fail? These children regularly are not in “special education”(some of those are a joke in their own and full of neglect and abuse) programs cause most aren’t even acknowledged as having disabilities or disorders.

But yes all and all those pesky poor kids just aren’t being worked hard enough lol pretty sure poor children’s existence just in childhood is more work, stress, and responsibility alone than an affluent child’s entire life cycle. Love they never once talked about the quality of education in the classroom being so bad between the poor and affluent it can qualify as segregation, just basically blamed poor people for being lazy, good job capitalism for failing us once again!

why the hell?

you should feel bad for saying this, this article can be helpful for people who has to write a essay about it

This is more of a political rant than it is about homework

I know a teacher who has told his students their homework is to find something they are interested in, pursue it and then come share what they learn. The student responses are quite compelling. One girl taught herself German so she could talk to her grandfather. One boy did a research project on Nelson Mandela because the teacher had mentioned him in class. Another boy, a both on the autism spectrum, fixed his family’s computer. The list goes on. This is fourth grade. I think students are highly motivated to learn, when we step aside and encourage them.

The whole point of homework is to give the students a chance to use the material that they have been presented with in class. If they never have the opportunity to use that information, and discover that it is actually useful, it will be in one ear and out the other. As a science teacher, it is critical that the students are challenged to use the material they have been presented with, which gives them the opportunity to actually think about it rather than regurgitate “facts”. Well designed homework forces the student to think conceptually, as opposed to regurgitation, which is never a pretty sight

Wonderful discussion. and yes, homework helps in learning and building skills in students.

not true it just causes kids to stress

Homework can be both beneficial and unuseful, if you will. There are students who are gifted in all subjects in school and ones with disabilities. Why should the students who are gifted get the lucky break, whereas the people who have disabilities suffer? The people who were born with this “gift” go through school with ease whereas people with disabilities struggle with the work given to them. I speak from experience because I am one of those students: the ones with disabilities. Homework doesn’t benefit “us”, it only tears us down and put us in an abyss of confusion and stress and hopelessness because we can’t learn as fast as others. Or we can’t handle the amount of work given whereas the gifted students go through it with ease. It just brings us down and makes us feel lost; because no mater what, it feels like we are destined to fail. It feels like we weren’t “cut out” for success.

homework does help

here is the thing though, if a child is shoved in the face with a whole ton of homework that isn’t really even considered homework it is assignments, it’s not helpful. the teacher should make homework more of a fun learning experience rather than something that is dreaded

This article was wonderful, I am going to ask my teachers about extra, or at all giving homework.

I agree. Especially when you have homework before an exam. Which is distasteful as you’ll need that time to study. It doesn’t make any sense, nor does us doing homework really matters as It’s just facts thrown at us.

Homework is too severe and is just too much for students, schools need to decrease the amount of homework. When teachers assign homework they forget that the students have other classes that give them the same amount of homework each day. Students need to work on social skills and life skills.

I disagree.

Beyond achievement, proponents of homework argue that it can have many other beneficial effects. They claim it can help students develop good study habits so they are ready to grow as their cognitive capacities mature. It can help students recognize that learning can occur at home as well as at school. Homework can foster independent learning and responsible character traits. And it can give parents an opportunity to see what’s going on at school and let them express positive attitudes toward achievement.

Homework is helpful because homework helps us by teaching us how to learn a specific topic.

As a student myself, I can say that I have almost never gotten the full 9 hours of recommended sleep time, because of homework. (Now I’m writing an essay on it in the middle of the night D=)

I am a 10 year old kid doing a report about “Is homework good or bad” for homework before i was going to do homework is bad but the sources from this site changed my mind!

Homeowkr is god for stusenrs

I agree with hunter because homework can be so stressful especially with this whole covid thing no one has time for homework and every one just wants to get back to there normal lives it is especially stressful when you go on a 2 week vaca 3 weeks into the new school year and and then less then a week after you come back from the vaca you are out for over a month because of covid and you have no way to get the assignment done and turned in

As great as homework is said to be in the is article, I feel like the viewpoint of the students was left out. Every where I go on the internet researching about this topic it almost always has interviews from teachers, professors, and the like. However isn’t that a little biased? Of course teachers are going to be for homework, they’re not the ones that have to stay up past midnight completing the homework from not just one class, but all of them. I just feel like this site is one-sided and you should include what the students of today think of spending four hours every night completing 6-8 classes worth of work.

Are we talking about homework or practice? Those are two very different things and can result in different outcomes.

Homework is a graded assignment. I do not know of research showing the benefits of graded assignments going home.

Practice; however, can be extremely beneficial, especially if there is some sort of feedback (not a grade but feedback). That feedback can come from the teacher, another student or even an automated grading program.

As a former band director, I assigned daily practice. I never once thought it would be appropriate for me to require the students to turn in a recording of their practice for me to grade. Instead, I had in-class assignments/assessments that were graded and directly related to the practice assigned.

I would really like to read articles on “homework” that truly distinguish between the two.

oof i feel bad good luck!

thank you guys for the artical because I have to finish an assingment. yes i did cite it but just thanks

thx for the article guys.

Homework is good

I think homework is helpful AND harmful. Sometimes u can’t get sleep bc of homework but it helps u practice for school too so idk.

I agree with this Article. And does anyone know when this was published. I would like to know.

It was published FEb 19, 2019.

Studies have shown that homework improved student achievement in terms of improved grades, test results, and the likelihood to attend college.

i think homework can help kids but at the same time not help kids

This article is so out of touch with majority of homes it would be laughable if it wasn’t so incredibly sad.

There is no value to homework all it does is add stress to already stressed homes. Parents or adults magically having the time or energy to shepherd kids through homework is dome sort of 1950’s fantasy.

What lala land do these teachers live in?

Homework gives noting to the kid

Homework is Bad

homework is bad.

why do kids even have homework?

Comments are closed.

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English Test Present Perfect Simple – Present Perfect Progressive

Test your knowledge on Present Perfect Simple – Present Perfect Progressive. After submitting your answers, you will see how well you have done in the test.

Fill in the correct form (pronoun + verb).

When to use which tense?

• If we want to emphasise the duration of an action, we use ... Present Perfect Simple Present Perfect Progressive
• If we want to tell, how often something has happened so far, we use ... Present Perfect Simple Present Perfect Progressive
• If we want to emphasise the result of an action, we use ... Present Perfect Simple Present Perfect Progressive
• If we want to emphasise that an action is completed now, we use ... Present Perfect Simple Present Perfect Progressive
• If we want to emphasise how we have spent our time, we use ... Present Perfect Simple Present Perfect Progressive

Positive Sentences

Fill in the correct form (Present Perfect Simple or Present Perfect Progressive).

• Sandy (cook) dinner four times this week.
• We (travel) around Scotland for 8 days.
• Why are your hands so dirty? - I (repair) my bike.
• I (read) the book, you can have it back.
• Paul (believe) in God since he was a child.

Negative Sentences

• Sorry for being late. I hope you (wait / not) long.
• My grandparents are coming to see us next weekend. They (visit / not) us for two years.
• She (be / not) on holiday for 3 years.
• I don't want you to drive my car. You (drive / not) a car for ages.
• He (watch / not) TV all afternoon, he only switched the telly on 10 minutes ago.
• How much money (Jack / spend) in the casino?
• How long (she / sit) there?
• How many short messages (send / you) this month?
• (you / empty) the bin yet?
• Lucy, (you / bathe) your dolls? The bathroom floor is absolutely wet.
• Daughter: Mum, Jane (phone / just) to ask if I will go to the cinema with her. May I?
• Mother: (you / do) your homework yet?
• Daughter: Well, I (do) it for about 2 hours now, but I (finish / not) it yet.
• Mother: If you (complete / not) your homework, you cannot go. School comes first. Remember, you (promise) me to study harder this year.
• Daughter: But mum, I (work) really hard this year and I (improve / already) in Maths and Chemistry.
• Mother: But that's only because I (push / always) you to do something.
• Daughter: But I also need a break some time. Look, I (be / not) to the cinema for two months. May I go? Just this once.

• Cambridge Dictionary +Plus

Meaning of do your homework in English

Do your homework.

• batten down the hatches idiom
• break someone in
• bug-out bag
• build (someone/something) up
• get/have your ducks in a row idiom
• gird your self idiom
• roll up your sleeves idiom
• set something up
• set the scene/stage idiom

Translations of do your homework

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a type of singing in which four, usually male, voices in close combination perform popular romantic songs, especially from the 1920s and 1930s

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• English Only

have you done/did you do your homework?

• Thread starter yuri05
• Start date Mar 28, 2014
• Mar 28, 2014

hi, i find it hard to decide which tense to use when there are no time references. for example, let's say a teacher walks in the classroom and asks his pupils:"have you done/did you do your homework?"which tense should be used in this situation? i'd use the present perfect but i'm not sure. thanks!  

Senior Member

The present perfect makes sense in that situation, but the simple past is also possible. Have you done your homework? Did you do your homework?  

owlman5 said: The present perfect makes sense in that situation, but the simple past is also possible. Have you done your homework? Did you do your homework? Click to expand...

"Have you done your homework?" This happened in the past, but somehow affects the present. "Yes." "You should give it to the teacher tomorrow." In this case, we might assume that the recently completed homework can be handed in now. The completion of the homework affects the present. "Did you do your homework?" This happened in the past. It doesn't affect the present or we don't care how it affects the present "Yes." "Why did you do so poorly on the test?" You are thinking about a past effect of doing the homework.  

Member Emeritus

• Mar 29, 2014

ChainReaction

• Sep 20, 2014

<< Moderator's note: This question has been added to a previous thread. Please scroll up and read from the top. >> Hi, I'm new here, and I have a question about something that was bothering me for quite a long time. What is the difference between the regular form of past tense, and the form 'have past_tense '? To give you the right context, what's the difference between: "Did you do your homework?" and "Have you done your homework?" << New example will need its own thread. >>  

You mean the simple past and the present perfect. Here's a good primer: http://web2.uvcs.uvic.ca/elc/studyzone/410/grammar/ppvpast.htm In short, the simple past is used when referring to a situation that is completely in the past (and thus concluded, with little to no relevance for the present situation). The present perfect (which is not a past tense) is used when referring to situations that are still happening and/or have a relevance for the present situation.  

That said, there is often little distinction between these tenses in the everyday use of the language. Using the simple past ("did you do your homework") in situations that actually call for the present perfect ("have you done your homework", because the enquirer wishes to know if the person's homework is now done) is especially common in American English. << Response to deleted question. >>  

"Did you do your homework?" and "Have you done your homework?" For example, if a child wanted to watch TV, mum or dad could say either of them but the second (the one using present perfect) is better because it emphasises that we are talking about now, today. If an investigator was asking about something before the present then the first one is correct. Teacher: On the night before you went on vacation last year, did you do your homework?  

post mod (English Only / Latin)

• Sep 21, 2014
• Mar 2, 2019

[This post and the following ones have been added to a previous thread in which the same question was asked. Please read down from the top. DonnyB - moderator]. Context: I want to ask if my son has done the homework or not Did you do your homework ? Have you done your homework ? Which tense is better and why? Do we need "the" before "homework" in the context?  

Since you live in the UK, use "have you done", since you are interested in the situation in the present. I think AmE usage is "did you do". Don't use "the" with "your". "Your homework" is the usual way of saying it.  

Thanks  

• Jun 25, 2019

A teacher gave a home assignment to his students one week ago. His students show up and say that the homework is still undone. What would they say? - We haven't done our homework. - We didn't do our home work.  

Steven David

Ivan_I said: A teacher gave a home assignment to his students one week ago. His students show up and say that the homework is still undone. What would they say? - We haven't done our homework. - We didn't do our home work. Click to expand...

Parla said: I think the teacher would use the simple past tense ("Did you do your homework?") since the reference is to work assigned the day before and it should have been done the evening before. Click to expand...

Helenejj said: What would the teacher say if the work was assigned three days ago? Click to expand...

Uncle Jack said: The present perfect indicates completion. "Have you done your homework?"asks the same question as "Is your homework complete?" Click to expand...

Helenejj said: Doesn't "Did you do your homework?" indicate that the homework is complete? Click to expand...

AI can do your homework. Now what? We interviewed students and teachers on how schools should handle the rise of the chatbots.

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20 comments

Pretty interesting. The first part is a collection of interviewed viewpoints from students as well as educators; pretty standard, you and I already know the pros and cons. The last part, the Science behind learning, is more insightful: what happens to how we understand the world after certain tools or methods are introduced. How does learning actually happen?

Chapters in the video:

Interesting bit I didn't know: the IB program allows AI use because

The IB believes that artificial intelligence (AI) technology will become part of our everyday lives—like spell checkers, translation software and calculators. (Full statement here)

Also: desirable difficulty vs fluency is news to me.

The IB link is interesting. My kids are in IB, and they have been adamant that AI is unacceptable and evil. I've been trying to get them interested in learning how to use it as a tool. I'll have to show them this.

Your kids might have heard it from adults who didn't actually read the statement. Do warn them that adults who are administering their exam or course may not share the official view points, and getting good grades quietly while knowing something different to be true is an exam skill set too.....

So I assume they're nearly college age? I recently discovered ModernStates.org CLEP challenge exams entirely for free, which basically means first year of college free, online, and at one's own pace. my AP / IB highschool career would have been very different if I had that option, back in the day.

Seems to me like school needs to evolve past boring, pointless assignments and more towards active learning and in-classroom projects. I know its not that simple because schools (at least in America) are basically underwater, but that's something we need to address first. School can't be the same forever, we need to innovate.

The biggest focus for me is not that they are getting the items correct, but that they understand the steps along the way to get there. AI will get the answer in the same way that a calculator solves equations, or a dictionary defines vocabulary. The instruction methods need to change to account for this. Perhaps this means the end of dumping endless homework on students?

They touch on your points in the video.

A) It's not like a calculator, since calculators don't do confabulations. B) It doesn't teach students how to get there on their own if needed, so it doesn't help them learn.

literally B) is what everyone said about calculators when I was in school in the 90s. Worse still, writing (your own) calculator programs to use on tests was banned.

Imagine if instead kids were encouraged to learn to use calculators quickly, sanity-check the result in case of a typo, and program.

The LLM argument is no different from calculators - educators don't have a deep intuition of how to use them or how transformational they'll be, and so they teach from a place of fear, not understanding.

If you, in high school, were chafing against the administration's restrictions on writing your own calculator program to use on tests, you're a terrible baseline to use when talking about the use of tools in education. You're clearly way above baseline, and make for a terrible anecdote.

Regarding calculators, it's all well and good to say "Just sanity check the results." But if someone never learned to do the math, depending on those simple heuristics only gets you far enough for day to day math making sure your bill at a restaurant is close enough. It doesn't get people far enough to ensure precision, and a lot of professions do.

It's even worse with LLMs. If you're ignorant of the subject matter (as the students inherently are,) they don't have the capability to sanity check the output of the LLM. How would they? And an answer about geopolitics doesn't fall into the binary of correct or incorrect you can depend on with math and a calculator.

You're missing my point.

Sanity-checking a calculator's output is an essential skill to have in today's world. "Wait I tried to multiply this large number by a small negative one, but I have a large positive number. Oh, I guess I didn't press the * key and instead subtracted them." "Wait, I multiplied by 2 and the result is odd. Hmm maybe I typed 3 instead? Let me try again." Someone who can't do this is going to suck a lot at being productive in today's world.

It doesn't matter what the school teaches, if they don't also teach you how to use ubiquitous technology well, your education was pretty useless.

How can you practice working with LLMs giving you qualitative results?

• You can search the individual claims it makes and see if they're corroborated in human-written, trusted text.
• You can even look for primary sources to verify.
• You can repeat some of its claims back to it in isolation and ask if they're true.
• You can rephrase your question and see how it answers.
• You can ask a similar question you know the answer to and see if it answers correctly (e.g. recently I asked it if a book is magical realism cos I wasn't sure; it said yes. So then I asked, is {a high fantasy novel} magical realism? It said no and explained why not with what I knew to be a correct answer. So I trusted its first answer.)
• You can repeat that last step multiple times with both positive and negative controls.

A lot of the above are the same as doing pre-LLM research. A lot of them aren't. But if you don't know how to do all of these things, then I think you are bad at using modern technology, and you're gonna be worse at doing things than someone who uses LLM and does these things.

So yes, schools need to teach how to use LLMs, and that's more important than teaching how not to use LLMs. But when learning to use an LLM you'll also learn how not to use one. (And it's the same deal with calculators btw, a lot of sanity checking is, for example, checking if the ones column is correct, which requires you've memorized the basic operations on all single-digit numbers.)

I think we're talking past one another, because you seem to have missed my point as well. Of course schools need to teach people how to use LLMs. Using them or their descendants is going to be an entirely necessary skill very quickly across the board.

But the LLM itself will not help the students develop the skills. With a calculator (especially a decent one with a history function,) you can see the steps you took to get to the result. You're giving an input, and you already have a sense of what the output should be. But the reason you have a sense of what that output should be is because someone else taught you maths . In the same way, teachers show their students how to engage in independent research. If students replace that active independent research with asking an LLM for an answer and trusting it, that's a failure, because (at least for now) they aren't worthy of that trust.

By comparison, the only way a calculator can get a wrong answer is if you give it the wrong inputs. Trying to conflate the use of calculators and LLMs obscures the deep and fundamental differences between the two.

I think we're talking past one another

I just wanted to respond to, "A) It's not like a calculator, since calculators don't do confabulations."

It's exactly like a calculator in one specific way (and the only way that matters imo): It's a brand-new technology that will be ubiquitous when today's kids are adults.

So any time you teach something, it has to be done with the understanding that outside of the simulated classroom mode, this technology will ALWAYS be available. Then ask, "does this lesson make sense to bother teaching?"

For example, learning how to summarize is not that important a skill anymore. In fact, in many cases neither is learning to write. What are important skills are critiquing an LLM's summary based on something else you read, or editing LLM prompts to get closer to what you want to say & then further editing their output to be precisely what you want. Attention to detail in editing LLM output is a LOT more important than original composition now and forever.

The skills needed to do (applied) math pre- and post-calculator are incredibly different from each other; now using numpy matters and who cares if you are dyslexic and can't do column addition.

The only thing that is guaranteed is that LLMs are applying this exact same revolution to...pretty much everything else you learn in school. So which was more important when we were in school, learning to do things by hand because our teachers didn't believe in calculators, or learning how to interact with calculators as skillfully as possible, which includes an underlying intuition of what's going on so you can check the output?

And today, which is more important, doing things by hand or incorporating LLMs and learning to work with them?

I suspect there’s a fundamental issue with education in that it’s “answer” oriented. School should be about questions. The real world isn’t a test. You need to be able to take an arbitrary situation and know what to do with it. And the problem is most of the time you’re familiar with the situations you’re running into, so you get comfortable. But if you can realize when something is subtly off, ask questions, and then work on getting answers to them, you’ve made it.

The work to do the answer-finding is slowly being given to the machines. But us humans still need to know what questions to ask and when.

Yeah, what we're seeing is the unraveling of Goodhart's Law vis a vis school testing. Many people are trying to defend essays as if they were the point, but they're not the point. Education is the point, and essays and other tests are how we've in the past proved that education has occurred. What educators are going to do next to prove education is an open question, but essays really can't be it.

Anecdotal experience incoming; I have learned how to use Linux almost exclusively (as a hobby) by using chatGPT.

Anytime I wanted to learn to do something that I couldn’t directly find in my Linux sysadmin reference book, or I needed a little more hand-holding with commands spelled out for me, I asked chatGPT and over time I think it actually taught me how to administrate my home servers pretty effectively. I rarely need it for anything sysadmin related anymore.

Now when it comes to learning something a bit less abstract and more objective like coding, I found it impossible to actually learn . It simply spits out code that more often than not does work, and as a result has enabled me to do some cool stuff and I have learned how code works enough to tinker with it, but it has not taught me how to actually write code from scratch in any effective way.

That’s not to say it doesn’t have the potential to. As a society it's going to be impossible to avoid LLMs in the education field, we need to teach students and teachers how to use it effectively now on the ground floor before it gets out of hand. Especially as a brainstorming tool. Homework has proven time and time again to be ineffective, so what's the point? Good teachers likely know when students are learning in the class.

Unfortunately I work in a school district and see how behind the times and bureaucratic public school districts can be and I'm not optimistic about anything AI/LLM related getting integrated into the curriculum within any reasonable time frame.

Parents could always do your homework. In some cases, they did.

I think these concerns miss the forest for the trees.

We're worried about students using it to cheat or as a shortcut to learning.

In the working world, more and more people are using AI to aid their profession, so discouraging them will only reduce people's productivity.

Students should learn how AI works, when it's appropriate to use it and why, and show how it can make mistakes.

Even this is missing the point, in my opinion.

Learning how to learn is arguably the most important skill. The working world is increasingly dependent on problem solving, so I think that skill - not proving you've learned something or how to pass a test - is the real challenge.

I don't know the how to teach this or encourage policies that do, but I've been fortunate to have good teachers in my life. The best teachers are ones who can explain why your thinking was wrong, because that knowledge isn't subject specific or limited to certain tools.

I think this is how we can tackle the topic of AI in schools, and whatever the next innovation might be. Learning how to find the limitations of our tools, and when/how to use them responsibly to solve new problems.

Good. Good riddance to homework entirely. I had teachers that tried to bury us in homework and made my stress level go through the roof. School should end at school, kids deserve the "right to disconnect" just like working adults do. How come no one ever talks about that?

kids deserve the "right to disconnect" just like working adults do.

Not necessarily if you’re salary.

Even on salary, there should be some work life barriers. I know there can be on-call expectations and the like, but salary shouldn't mean "available 24/7".

I mostly agree that homework is bullshit to make the system look like it's working. But teachers already have it hard enough as it is and don't need the extra work of rethinking the system.

Johan Wideroos

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Watch CBS News

Why is looking at a solar eclipse dangerous without special glasses? Eye doctors explain.

By Sara Moniuszko

Edited By Allison Elyse Gualtieri

Updated on: April 8, 2024 / 8:54 AM EDT / CBS News

The solar eclipse will be visible for millions of Americans on April 8, 2024, making many excited to see it — but how you watch it matters, since it can be dangerous for your eyes. 

A  solar eclipse occurs when the moon passes between the sun and Earth, blocking the sun's light . When the moon blocks some of the sun, it's a partial solar eclipse, but when moon lines up with the sun, blocking all of its light, a total solar eclipse occurs,  NASA explains . Either way, you need eye protection when viewing.

"The solar eclipse will be beautiful, so I hope that everyone experiences it — but they need to experience it in the right way," said Dr. Jason P. Brinton, an ophthalmologist and medical director at Brinton Vision in St. Louis.

Here's what to know to stay safe.

Why is looking at a solar eclipse dangerous?

Looking at the sun — even when it's partially covered like during an eclipse — can cause eye damage.

There is no safe dose of solar ultraviolet rays or infrared radiation, said  Dr. Yehia Hashad , an ophthalmologist, retinal specialist and the chief medical officer at eye health company Bausch + Lomb.

"A very small dose could cause harm to some people," he said. "That's why we say the partial eclipse could also be damaging. And that's why we protect our eyes with the partial as well as with the full sun."

Some say that during a total eclipse, it's safe to view the brief period time when the moon completely blocks the sun without eye protection. But experts warn against it. 

"Totality of the eclipse lasts only about 1 to 3 minutes based on geographic location, and bright sunlight suddenly can appear as the moon continues to move," notes an eclipse viewing guide published in JAMA , adding, "even a few seconds of viewing the sun during an eclipse" can temporarily or permanently damage your vision. 

Do I need special glasses for eclipse viewing?

Yes.  Eclipse glasses are needed to protect your eyes if you want to look at the eclipse.

Regular sunglasses aren't protective enough for eclipse viewing — even if you stack more than one. 

"There's no amount of sunglasses that people can put on that will make up for the filtering that the ISO standard filters and the eclipse glasses provide," Brinton said.

You also shouldn't look at the eclipse through a camera lens, phone, binoculars or telescope, according to NASA, even while wearing eclipse glasses. The solar rays can burn through the lens and cause serious eye injury.

Eclipse glasses must comply with the  ISO 12312-2 international safety standard , according to NASA, and should have an "ISO" label printed on them to show they comply. The American Astronomical Society  has a list  of approved solar viewers.

Can't find these, or they're sold out near you? You can also  make homemade viewers ,   which allow you to observe the eclipse indirectly — just don't accidentally look at the sun while using one.

How to keep kids safe during the solar eclipse

Since this eclipse is expected to occur around the time of dismissal for many schools across the country, it may be tempting for students to view it without the proper safety precautions while getting to and from their buses. That's why some school districts are  canceling classes early so kids can enjoy the event safely with their families.

Dr. Avnish Deobhakta, vitreoretinal surgeon at New York Eye and Ear Infirmary at Mount Sinai, said parents should also be careful because it can be difficult for children to listen or keep solar eclipse glasses on. 

"You want to actually, in my opinion, kind of avoid them even looking at the eclipse, if possible," he said. "Never look directly at the sun, always wear the right eclipse sunglasses if you are going to look at the sun and make sure that those are coming from a reliable source."

Brinton recommends everyone starts their eclipse "viewing" early, by looking at professional photos and videos of an eclipse online or visiting a local planetarium. 

That way, you "have an idea of what to expect," he said. 

He also recommends the foundation  Prevent Blindness , which has resources for families about eclipse safety.

What happens if you look at a solar eclipse without eclipse glasses?

While your eyes likely won't hurt in the moment if you look at the eclipse without protection, due to lowered brightness and where damage occurs in the eye, beware: The rays can still cause damage .

The harm may not be apparent immediately. Sometimes trouble starts to appear one to a few days following the event. It could affect just one or both eyes.

And while some will regain normal visual function, sometimes the damage is permanent. 

"Often there will be some recovery of the vision in the first few months after it, but sometimes there is no recovery and sometimes there's a degree to which it is permanent," Brinton said. 

How long do you have to look at the eclipse to damage your eyes?

Any amount of time looking at the eclipse without protection is too long, experts say. 

"If someone briefly looks at the eclipse, if it's extremely brief, in some cases there won't be damage. But damage can happen even within a fraction of a second in some cases," Brinton said. He said he's had patients who have suffered from solar retinopathy, the official name for the condition.

Deobhakta treated a patient who watched the 2017 solar eclipse for 20 seconds without proper eye protection. She now has permanent damage in the shape of a crescent that interferes with her vision. 

"The crescent that is burned into the retina, the patient sees as black in her visual field," he said. "The visual deficit that she has will never go away."

How to know if you've damaged your eyes from looking at the eclipse

Signs and symptoms of eye damage following an eclipse viewing include headaches, blurred vision, dark spots, changes to how you see color, lines and shapes. 

Unfortunately, there isn't a treatment for solar retinopathy.

"Seeing an eye care professional to solidify the diagnosis and for education I think is reasonable," Brinton said, but added, "right now there is nothing that we do for this. Just wait and give it time and the body does tend to heal up a measure of it."

Sara Moniuszko is a health and lifestyle reporter at CBSNews.com. Previously, she wrote for USA Today, where she was selected to help launch the newspaper's wellness vertical. She now covers breaking and trending news for CBS News' HealthWatch.

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Can’t Find Eclipse Glasses? Here’s What to Do.

You can watch a projection of the eclipse using some common household items.

• Share full article

By Katrina Miller

Follow our live updates on the total solar eclipse .

Reliable paper-framed glasses are by far the most popular option for safely watching the total solar eclipse on Monday. But they’ve gotten more difficult to find in some places ahead of the event.

If you’ve checked everywhere — your local planetarium, public library and even online — fear not: There is still a way to watch the eclipse safely, using items around the house. Here are a few options.

Use your hands

Palms up, position one hand over the other at a 90-degree angle. Open your fingers slightly in a waffle pattern, and allow sunlight to stream through the spaces onto the ground, or another surface. During the eclipse, you will see a projection of the moon obscuring the surface of the sun.

This method works with anything with holes, such as a straw hat, a strainer, a cheese grater or even a perforated spoon. You will also notice this effect when light from the partially eclipsed sun streams through leaves on a tree.

Set up a cardstock screen

For this option, you need a couple of white index cards or two sheets of cardstock paper. First, punch a small hole in the middle of one of the cards using a thumbtack or a pin.

Then, facing away from the sun, allow light to stream through this pinhole. Position the second card underneath to function as a screen. Adjust the spacing between the two cards to make the projection of the sun larger or smaller.

Make a box projector

If you’re up for a bit of crafting, you can make a more sophisticated pinhole projector . Start with a cardboard box — empty cereal boxes are often used, but you can use a larger box, too. You’ll also need scissors, white paper, tape, aluminum foil and a pin or thumbtack.

Cut the piece of paper to fit the inside bottom of the cardboard box to act as a screen. Use tape to hold it in place.

On the top of the box, cut two rectangular holes on either side. (The middle should be left intact — you can use tape to secure this if needed.)

Tape a piece of aluminum foil over one of the rectangular cutouts. Punch a tiny hole in the middle of the foil with the tack or pin. The other cutout will serve as a view hole.

With your back to the sun, position the foil side of the box over your shoulder, letting light stream through the pinhole. An image of the sun will project onto the screen at the bottom of the box, which you can see through the view hole. A bigger box will create a bigger image.

Enjoy the show through any of these makeshift pinholes. And remember, during totality, you can view the sun directly with your naked eye. But you should stop looking at the sun as soon as it reappears.

Katrina Miller is a science reporting fellow for The Times. She recently earned her Ph.D. in particle physics from the University of Chicago. More about Katrina Miller

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Is it safe to look at a total solar eclipse? What to know about glasses, proper viewing

If you have your eyewear to take in monday's eclipse, here are some last-minute things to consider to ensure you're good to go..

The much-anticipated solar eclipse will finally enshroud thousands of miles of North America today in its long, narrow shadow. By now, those who plan to witness it should have their plans in place .

Travel has been completed. Schedules have been coordinated around the anticipated moment of totality. And proper eyewear is, of course, in your possession. Right?

We at USA TODAY have published no shortage of articles guiding you away from scam eclipse glasses and to the safest, most reliable options – some of which were even free. But if you need a last-minute refresher – or a crash course to catch you up on a topic you entirely missed – we're happy to oblige.

If you don't have your eclipse glasses by now, it may be too late. But some vendors, including Warby Parker , and even public libraries, have offered eclipse glasses giveaways , so be sure to check your local area before the historic event rolls into town.

And if you do have your eyewear to take in Monday's eclipse – the last one of these incredible astronomical events in North America for 20 years – here are some last-minute things to consider to ensure you're in good shape.

Solar eclipse 2024 live updates: See latest weather forecast, what time it hits your area

Can you go blind by looking at the solar eclipse?

Staring at the sun is  unlikely to completely blind you , but its powerful rays can still burn and  damage your retinas if you don't take proper safety precautions to view  solar eclipses .

That's why eyewear is recommended if you plan to look up at the sun Monday to witness the solar eclipse, which most of the country will be able to experience in some way.

In the face of the sun's powerful rays, regular sunglasses made of cheap plastic and polycarbonate material just aren't going to cut it. Astronomers and other experts instead emphasize that skygazers intent on viewing the upcoming total solar eclipse do so with  specialized eyewear  crafted to  protect their sensitive retinas  from permanent damage.

Even viewing any part of the bright sun through camera lenses, binoculars and telescopes without a specialized solar filter  could instantly cause severe eye injury , according to the American Astronomical Society.

Often made with a polyester film coated in aluminum, the glasses are highly specialized . Compared to regular sunglasses, proper eclipse glasses are 100,000 times darker to block nearly all visible, infrared and ultraviolet light and protect our sensitive retinas when looking skyward.

As another point of safety, don't look up while driving , please.

How to know when it's safe to view the eclipse without glasses

A  total solar eclipse  offers the unique opportunity for skygazers to  witness the spectacular astral display  with the naked eye – but only when the time is right.

Hundreds of cities in  13 states are along the path of totality  for the eclipse, which will move across North America from southwest to northeast . When the moon moves completely in front of the sun and blocks its light for a brief period of time, you'll know it's safe to fully take in the dazzling display.

That moment is what is called "totality," whereby uncharacteristic darkness falls and all but the sun's outermost layer known as its corona makes a rare appearance to us here on Earth,  according to NASA .

How to make sure your eclipse glasses aren't fake

In the rush to acquire  some coveted eclipse glasses  before April 8 , you may have inadvertently fallen victim to the  fakes and imitators proliferating online retailers .

While plenty of legitimate certified eyewear was widely available – and may still be – less-scrupulous manufacturers try all sorts of methods and tricks to get your attention and make you believe the product you're about to buy is the real deal.

For instance, many vendors began making the grand (and entirely made-up) claim that their products are endorsed by NASA.

As the space agency  reiterated to USA TODAY , NASA highly recommended that skygazers get a pair of certified eclipse glasses before the total solar eclipse  charts a 115-mile-wide path of totality  blanketing much of North America in  uncharacteristic darkness . But it does not approve  any particular brand of solar viewers, despite what many vendors may claim.

The responsibility of guiding American consumers to the safest eclipse glasses is largely left to the American Astronomical Society.

The organization maintains  a curated list of approved vendors  of solar eclipse glasses that it updated to give priority to North American manufacturers ahead of the total solar eclipse. Products you purchase that are listed on that site are guaranteed to be  in compliance with  the highest international safety standards.

Those standards are set by the International Organization for Standardization, which only vouches for solar eclipse glasses that are dark and strong enough to filter out a certain amount of the sun's harmful light.

The astronomical society also provides some  helpful tips  for how to spot counterfeit glasses.

No eclipse glasses? Welding lenses, pinhole projectors among alternative viewers

While certified solar eclipse glasses are the preferred method for viewing the eclipse, alternative methods do exist that don't necessarily sacrifice one's safety.

Many people, particularly blue-collar workers, may be tempted to turn to those welding lenses they have sitting in their workshop.

But beware: The most common welding goggles and helmets aren't typically strong enough to adequately withstand the sun's powerful rays and protect your vulnerable eyes.

Any welding lenses weaker than a Shade 12 filter – a number that indicates the level of protection offered – just aren't going to cut it when it comes to gazing upward in anticipation of the moon blocking all but the sun's outermost layer.

It's also not too late to buy some welding lenses, which Tractor Supply is promoting for sale at its 282 stores along the path of totality as a viable option for viewing the eclipse.

Another simple method is to create your own pinhole projector to project the sun onto a nearby surface. The American Astronomical Society offers helpful  instructions  to set them up.

And one final note: As you make your eclipse-viewing plans,  these interactive maps  should help you chart the time and duration for when totality would occur in cities along the path.

Eric Lagatta covers breaking and trending news for USA TODAY. Reach him at [email protected]