Near vs Far — This, That, These, Those Singular vs Plural — Number Agreement with Demonstratives Time Reference — This Week, Those Days, These Days Phone Language — This Is... / Is That...? Back-Reference — Reacting and Referring Back with 'That' Fixed Expressions — That's Right, Like This, That's It

Time Reference — This Week, Those Days, These Days

Learn how demonstratives mark time: this for the present period, that for a past moment, these days for nowadays, those days for the past. Covers this evening, this weekend, in those days.

Time Reference: How Demonstratives Mark Present and Past

Beyond physical space, English demonstratives encode temporal distance with the same near/far logic. This and these refer to the current or upcoming time period; that and those refer to past periods or moments. This system produces the highly frequent fixed phrases these days (= nowadays), those days (= in the past), this week/morning/evening (current), and that summer/year (a past time both speaker and listener remember). Learner corpus data consistently shows confusion between 'this days' and 'those days' as a fossilized error at B1 level, with 'this days' appearing in contexts that clearly describe the past.

This and These → Present or Near Future

I'm very busy this week. Can we meet next week?
What are you doing this evening?
What are you doing this weekend?
Things are different these days. Everything has changed.

That and Those → Past Periods

Do you remember that summer when we went to Italy?
In those days, people didn't have smartphones.
She told me about her trip. That was in 2019, I think.
Life was simpler in those days.

Common Mistakes

✗ I didn't have a phone in this days. → ✓ I didn't have a phone in those days.
✗ Those days everyone uses the internet. → ✓ These days everyone uses the internet.
✗ Do you remember this summer in Italy? → ✓ Do you remember that summer in Italy?