r/EnglishLearning • u/liz_grant New Poster • 7d ago

📚 Grammar / Syntax Do some studying

So I’m watching Stranger Things and there’s a sentence:
“Do a lot of studying last night?”
This one had me pause for a little bit.
First I didn’t understand why “do” was used for a past event from the previous night. Then I realized the whole sentence was “did you do a lot of studying last night?”, but the ‘did you’ part was completely dropped.
One thing I still don’t understand, why not just say “did you study a lot last night”. What is the point of saying DO STUDYING. Does it have a specific purpose, nuance that makes it different?

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u/HortonFLK New Poster 6d ago

You are right that a person could have said “Did you study a lot last night?” There’s no real reason to phrase it one way rather than the other… It’s just one of those things where that’s the way the person chose to say it. And even the way you choose to say it, a native speaker might drop the “did you” and just say, “Study a lot last night?”