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today i attended an interview. The employer told me that I should know some skills about the job. Today I am going to start to work on those skills. Now, I am writing a "thank you for the interview" letter to him. I want him to know that I just started to work on those skills. It's like, "You mentioned that you need an assistant who has strong drafting discovery/letter skills. I have already started working on it/I have already started to work on it." Which one is correct? Thank you.

merve
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    Both forms are acceptable. But ...started working... is more in use as per the Ngram Viewer. See [https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=started+to+work%2Cstarted+working&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cstarted%20to%20work%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cstarted%20working%3B%2Cc0] By the way, why are you careless about your opening sentence? – mahmud k pukayoor Apr 26 '17 at 00:46
  • This is an ELL question. Some verbs can take to or not take to. The distinction is academic. There are lists of these verbs on the internet. You can look them up. As for the academic distinction, it's too complicated to go into here but make no real difference to your context. Begin, start go both ways. Both are equally acceptable with to and without to. – Lambie Apr 26 '17 at 00:46
  • The 'ing form indicates ongoing activity, which creates a nuance here. "I started to work" just addresses starting. You could have spent two minutes on it and then got busy with other priorities, but this phrase would still apply. "I started working" describes a continuing process, implying you are still actively engaged in it. So "working" would have a better ring to it for this purpose. – fixer1234 Apr 26 '17 at 01:27
  • Thanks. What about using "have already" before "started woking on it"? Does it simply express my explanation? – merve Apr 26 '17 at 12:11
  • Although I was downvoted, allow me: "have already" matches what happened at the interview. He said you should start working on those skills. You respond by using the past perfect that implies that at some point in the past you began to work or began working on them and that continues to be true at the time of writing the letter. This is one of uses of the past perfect. [[note to downvoter: sour grapes? There is no decent explanation in English of the difference]] – Lambie Apr 26 '17 at 12:37

2 Answers2

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Ok, I cannot translate all the work of the French author who made a distinction between: I started TO work on it and I started workING on it.

Let's just say it this way:

1) I started with TO sets up a relationship between I started and work. He says that the TO is a meta-operator, and therefore, there is a relationship between what I started and work. It also sets up a predicate.

2) I started working does not do that. Working on something is noun phrase: I started: any activity with a verb.

In this case, working is an action and I started that action. There is no meta operator so working is more full force. He calls it using the verb in notional form.

here is the important distinction he makes: La notion verbale V∅V [The verbal notion: Verb Null Set Verb: V∅V] 1 Un certain nombre de construction anglaise font usage de la notion pure et simple, d'où l'absence de to. L'absence de cet opérateur signale que l'on a affaire à une notion verbale et non à un prédicat. L'apport de V est purement sémantique puisqu'il renvoie au concept. La présence de to signale que la simple notion verbale est dépassée et que l'on s'en sert dans le cadre d'une opération qui n'a plus pour seul objet de nommer une notion mais de l'utiliser comme point de départ d'une autre opération. Il y a grammaticalisation de la notion verbale.

A certain number of English constructions make use of the notion, pure and simple, which is why the TO is not used. The absence of this operator [to] signals that we are dealing with a verbal notion and not with a predicate. The use of V is purely semantic since it refers to a concept. The presence of /to/ signals that the verbal notion is surpassed and that the /to/ is being used as part of an operation whose only point is not to name a notion but to use it as the point of departure of another operation. The verbal notion is grammaticalized. The explanatory paragraph is taken from this article about Adamczeski

The author's name and title are: Grammaire linguistique de l'anglais, Henri Adamczewski, Armand Colin

Lambie
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I think the first one - already started working on it - sounds more natural, but neither is wrong. You could also simplify it:

I'm already working on it.

tobybot
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  • Thank you. What about using "have already" before "started woking on it"? Does it simply express my explanation? – merve Apr 26 '17 at 12:11
  • I think it changes the tone of the statement but not the meaning. I think I personally would go with I have already started working on it. Also: I have already started working or I am already working are past perfect tense and grammatically correct. I already started is simple past tense and is not correct, although it is colloquially common and a native English speaker probably wouldn't think twice about it. – tobybot Apr 26 '17 at 16:40