they do homework at night

• PRO Courses Guides New Tech Help Pro Expert Videos About wikiHow Pro Upgrade Sign In
• EDIT Edit this Article
• EXPLORE Tech Help Pro About Us Random Article Quizzes Request a New Article Community Dashboard This Or That Game Popular Categories Arts and Entertainment Artwork Books Movies Computers and Electronics Computers Phone Skills Technology Hacks Health Men's Health Mental Health Women's Health Relationships Dating Love Relationship Issues Hobbies and Crafts Crafts Drawing Games Education & Communication Communication Skills Personal Development Studying Personal Care and Style Fashion Hair Care Personal Hygiene Youth Personal Care School Stuff Dating All Categories Arts and Entertainment Finance and Business Home and Garden Relationship Quizzes Cars & Other Vehicles Food and Entertaining Personal Care and Style Sports and Fitness Computers and Electronics Health Pets and Animals Travel Education & Communication Hobbies and Crafts Philosophy and Religion Work World Family Life Holidays and Traditions Relationships Youth
• Browse Articles
• Learn Something New
• Quizzes Hot
• This Or That Game
• Train Your Brain
• Explore More
• Support wikiHow
• About wikiHow
• Log in / Sign up
• Education and Communications

How to Stay Up All Night Doing Homework

Last Updated: June 9, 2024 Fact Checked

This article was co-authored by Jeremy Bartz, PhD . Dr. Jeremy Bartz is a Clinical Psychologist in private practice based in Los Angeles, California. Dr. Bartz specializes in treating depression, anxiety, OCD, mind-body syndromes, chronic pain, insomnia, relationship difficulties, attachment trauma, and resolving the effects of narcissistic trauma. He received a Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology from Brigham Young University and completed a fellowship In Pain Psychology at Stanford's premier pain management clinic. There are 12 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 223,751 times.

Staying up all night to do homework is not advised, but sometimes it’s unavoidable. If your homework has piled up to the point that the only way to complete it is to pull an all-nighter, then make some preparations and get your head in the game. You’re in for a long night.

Getting Organized Before Your All-Nighter

• Make sure you have all the resources you’ll need –all your books, assignments and stationery.
• If it helps you to have music playing as you work, work near a speaker. But choose instrumental music to avoid being distracted by focusing on the song lyrics instead of your assignments.

• Feed your body protein rich foods, like peanut butter sandwiches, turkey sandwiches or hummus and carrots.
• Stay away from sweets; the sugar will cause you to crash.

• Put the biggest assignments that are due first near the top of the list.
• Put smaller assignments that you can complete quickly and easily near the bottom of the list. Try to do these towards the end of your night when you’re exhausted.
• Any assignment that isn’t due the next day should be completed on another night.

• Approximate how long each assignment will take you and then block off an appropriate amount of time in your night to do the work.
• Schedule high priority assignments early in the evening, when you’re still at your best.
• Schedule in a ten minute break every two hours. Use this time to get up and walk around and give your brain a break.

• Don’t nap for longer than 30 minutes. If you nap for longer than 30, you risk entering into REM sleep cycle.
• If you don’t have time for a nap, take a fifteen-minute walk outside. It will accomplish the same thing.

• Make a concrete plan of what time you’re going to begin working and stick to it. Set an alarm, if you have to.
• Turn off your phone and any other distractions that might impede you from beginning your work.

Executing Your All-Nighter

• For every caffeinated beverage you drink, drink a cup of water.
• As the night goes on, increase the time between caffeinated beverages.
• If you feel yourself falling into a slump, take a multivitamin.

• A quick workout can boost your brain's ability to learn and retain information, which will help you break through your slump.
• Don’t do a full workout – instead, do some quick exercise in the form of 10 pushups, 10 jumping jacks or 10 sit ups.

• If pinching isn’t cutting it, splash cold water on your face for an added boost.
• Lower the thermostat in your house or study area to keep your body alert.
• Take a cold shower to freeze yourself awake.

• The closer the light is to your eyes, the better, so try to work near a desk lamp or computer screen.
• Change rooms every couple of hours so your eyes don’t have time to fully adjust to the bright lights.

• Keep a stash close to your desk and dip into it whenever you feel yourself slowing down.
• Drinking mint tea is also a great way to get some added caffeine.

Staying Motivated During Your All-Nighter

• Don’t invite over a friend who only wants to talk and hang out. You need someone who will motivate you, not distract you.

• If you know you can’t go all night without checking Facebook, deactivate your account for the night. You can reactivate it as soon as all your work is done.
• Give your social media passwords to a friend or parent for the evening so you can’t break in to check your accounts.

• Use your priority list from earlier, cross each item off the list when it’s completed, then move on to the next one.

• Every time you finish an assignment, throw a five minute dance party. You’ll get some exercise in and you can listen to your favorite song.
• Give yourself five minutes to check your phone after completing an item on your to-do list.

• Take 10 - 15 minutes every two hours to grab a snack or take a walk.
• If you feel overwhelmed, take a 10 minute break to meditate.

Supercharge Your Studying with this Expert Series

Expert Q&A

Tips from our Readers

• Since you'll be using them for a prolonged period, make sure to charge up all of your electronics! If your laptop or phone dies halfway through your study sesh, it can take up some of your valuable time to re-charge them.
• If there are certain foods you know make you tired or sluggish, try to avoid them while you study. Choose food items you know for sure won't make you want to take a nap.
• If you can get any sleep at all, do so. Even if it's just a half hour to an hour, your brain can really use that time to regenerate!
• Staying up for too long can be dangerous. Do not stay awake for longer than 36 hours consecutively. Disregarding this advice can lead to sickness and possible death. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
• If you know you have this much homework, start it as early as possible or during lunch or other down times at school. Starting the homework at 4:00 PM is better than doing it at 4:00 AM! Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0

You Might Also Like

• ↑ https://www.uopeople.edu/blog/find-a-quiet-place-to-study/
• ↑ https://au.reachout.com/articles/foods-that-help-our-brain-study
• ↑ https://www.fnu.edu/7-techniques-improve-study-habits/
• ↑ https://learningcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/studying-101-study-smarter-not-harder/
• ↑ https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/food-features/coffee/
• ↑ https://www.apu.edu/articles/6-crucial-study-habits-for-college-students/
• ↑ https://www.helpguide.org/articles/healthy-living/how-to-start-exercising-and-stick-to-it.htm
• ↑ https://students.ubc.ca/ubclife/pull-all-nighter-if-you-have
• ↑ https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/finding-new-home/201905/chew-or-not-chew-gum-when-studying
• ↑ https://www.fnu.edu/10-reasons-form-study-group/
• ↑ https://psychcentral.com/blog/psychology-rewarding-yourself-with-treats
• ↑ https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/your-future-self/201804/giving-yourself-break

About This Article

If you need to stay up all night doing homework, there are a few ways to help you stay as productive as possible. First, break down your work into smaller tasks and write a schedule to cover everything. Make sure you take regular breaks to walk around and refresh yourself. You should also turn off your phone, log out of your social media accounts, and avoid any other distractions to help you focus. Keep the main lights on in your room and open a window, which will help you stay awake. You’ll probably need caffeine and some healthy snacks, like fruit and nuts, to keep you going. Just make sure you spread them out over the night so you don’t crash after a few hours. For more study tips, including how to do a coffee nap to wake yourself up, read on! Did this summary help you? Yes No

• Send fan mail to authors

Reader Success Stories

Catherine M.

Did this article help you?

Yazeed Alshehri

May 23, 2019

Stephanie Keith

Oct 3, 2016

Miranda Morris

Sep 26, 2016

Ayline Wright

Jan 8, 2017

Featured Articles

Trending Articles

Watch Articles

• Terms of Use
• Privacy Policy
• Do Not Sell or Share My Info
• Not Selling Info

Don’t miss out! Sign up for

wikiHow’s newsletter

Sentence examples similar to i do my homework at night from inspiring English sources

Login and get your AI feedback from Ludwig. Login and get your AI feedback from Ludwig.

Is your sentence correct in English?

Login and get your AI feedback from Ludwig.

" I did my homework at the Met.

I remember that I did my homework until midnight , went to sleep and got up at 6am for school.

"I always try to save energy during the day so I can do my homework and review school lessons at night ," she says.

But at least I got to do my homework .

I get up at 7, go to school, and work from 1 15 to 10 at night , and then do my homework .

"I would play Magic until midnight and never do my homework " .

The electricity connection means that she can do her homework at night .

"Our children can now do their homework at night and they are doing well in school," he said.

They then take about a month off from classes, return to their jobs and do homework at night and over the weekend.

Without electricity children cannot do homework at night , people cannot run competitive businesses, and countries cannot power their economies.

The influx of solar microgrids will power cell phones, allow kids to do homework at night , and minimize the pollution and illness caused by kerosene lamps and stoves.

Write in English at your best, with Ludwig

Used by millions of students, scientific researchers, professional translators and editors from all over the world.

Maria Pia Montoro

Be a smart writer

Most frequent sentences:, write in english at your best with ludwig.

• Mattress Education Mattress Sizes Mattress Types Choosing the Best Mattress Replacing a Mattress Caring for a Mattress Mattress Disposal Mattress Accessories Adjustable Beds Mattress Sizes Mattress Types Choosing the Best Mattress Replacing a Mattress Caring for a Mattress Mattress Disposal Mattress Accessories Adjustable Beds
• Better Sleep Sleep Positions Better Sleep Guide How to Sleep Better Tips for Surviving Daylight Saving Time The Ideal Bedroom Survey: Relationships & Sleep Children & Sleep Sleep Myths
• Resources Blog Research Press Releases
• Extras The Science of Sleep Stages of Sleep Sleep Disorders Sleep Safety Consequences of Poor Sleep Bedroom Evolution History of the Mattress

• December 12, 2018

Teens, Sleep and Homework Survey Results

Better sleep council research finds that too much homework can actually hurt teens' performance in school.

• Press Releases

ALEXANDRIA, Va. , Dec. 11, 2018 – According to new research from the Better Sleep Council (BSC) – the nonprofit consumer-education arm of the International Sleep Products Association – homework, rather than social pressure, is the number one cause of teenage stress, negatively affecting their sleep and ultimately impacting their academic performance.

American teenagers said they spend 15+ hours a week on homework, and about one-third (34%) of all teens spend 20 or more hours a week. This is more than time spent at work, school clubs, social activities and sports. When asked what causes stress in their lives, about three-quarters of teens said grades/test scores (75%) and/or homework (74%) cause stress, more than self-esteem (51%), parental expectations (45%) and even bullying (15%). In fact, according to the American Psychological Association’s Stress in America™ Survey, during the school year, teenagers say they experience stress levels higher than those reported by adults.

Further, more than half (57%) of all teenagers surveyed do not feel they get enough sleep. Seventy-nine percent reported getting 7 hours of sleep or less on a typical school night, more than two-thirds (67%) say they only get 5 to 7 hours of sleep on a school night, and only about one in five teens is getting 8 hours of sleep or more. Based on the BSC’s findings, the more stressed teenagers feel, the more likely they are to get less sleep, go to bed later and wake up earlier. They are also more likely to have trouble going to sleep and staying asleep – more often than their less-stressed peers.

“We’re finding that teenagers are experiencing this cycle where they sacrifice their sleep to spend extra time on homework, which gives them more stress – but they don’t get better grades,” said Mary Helen Rogers , vice president of marketing and communications for the Better Sleep Council. “The BSC understands the impact sleep has on teenagers’ overall development, so we can help them reduce this stress through improved sleep habits.”

The BSC recommends that teens between the ages of 13-18 get 8-10 hours of sleep per night. For teens to get the sleep their bodies need for optimal school performance, they should consider the following tips:

• Establish a consistent bedtime routine . Just like they set time aside for homework, they should schedule at least 8 hours of sleep into their daily calendars. It may be challenging in the beginning, but it will help in the long run.
• Keep it quiet in the bedroom.  It’s easier to sleep when there isn’t extra noise. Teens may even want to wear earplugs if their home is too noisy.
• Create a relaxing sleep environment. Make sure the bedroom is clutter-free, dark and conducive to great sleep. A cool bedroom, between 65 and 67 degrees , is ideal to help teens sleep.
• Cut back on screen time. Try cutting off screen time at least an hour before bed. The blue light emitted from electronics’ screens disturbs sleep.
• Examine their mattress. Since a mattress is an important component of a good night’s sleep, consider replacing it if it isn’t providing comfort and support, or hasn’t been changed in at least seven years.

Other takeaways on the relationship between homework, stress and sleep in teenagers include:

• Teens who feel more stress (89%) are more likely than less-stressed teens (65%) to say homework causes them stress in their lives.
• More than three-quarters (76%) of teens who feel more stress say they don’t feel they get enough sleep – which is significantly higher than teens who are not stressed, since only 42% of them feel they don’t get enough sleep.
• Teens who feel more stress (51%) are more likely than less-stressed teens (35%) to get to bed at 11 p.m. or later. Among these teens who are going to bed later, about 33% of them said they are waking up at 6:00 a.m. or earlier.
• Students who go to bed earlier and awaken earlier perform better academically than those who stay up late – even to do homework.

About the BSC The Better Sleep Council is the consumer-education arm of the International Sleep Products Association, the trade association for the mattress industry. With decades invested in improving sleep quality, the BSC educates consumers on the link between sleep and health, and the role of the sleep environment, primarily through www.bettersleep.org , partner support and consumer outreach.

Related Posts

The State of America’s Sleep: COVID-19 and Sleep

The state of america’s sleep: isolation and sleep, the state of america’s sleep.

ABOUT THE BETTER SLEEP COUNCIL

• Mattress Education
• Better Sleep
• Privacy Policy
• Confidentiality Statement

• EXPLORE Random Article

How to Do Homework in the Morning

Last Updated: June 28, 2021 References

This article was co-authored by Jennifer Kaifesh and by wikiHow staff writer, Amber Crain . Jennifer Kaifesh is the Founder of Great Expectations College Prep, a tutoring and counseling service based in Southern California. Jennifer has over 15 years of experience managing and facilitating academic tutoring and standardized test prep as it relates to the college application process. She takes a personal approach to her tutoring, and focuses on working with students to find their specific mix of pursuits that they both enjoy and excel at. She is a graduate of Northwestern University. There are 11 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been viewed 144,614 times.

If you want to get some homework done in the morning, that's awesome! Just make sure you get everything ready the night before so you can get right to work in the morning. We've created a list to help you do just that! We'll start by walking you through some ways to prepare the night before and then share a few pointers to help you have a stress-free morning.

Figure out how much time you'll need in the morning.

• Don't forget to leave plenty of time for eating breakfast and getting ready!

Leave your homework out so it's ready to go.

• If you think you might need stuff like a dictionary, graph paper, or a ruler, go ahead and grab it now. [3] X Trustworthy Source Child Mind Institute Nonprofit organization providing evidence-based care for children with mental health and learning disorders and their families Go to source

Pack your lunch and set out your clothes at night.

Set your alarm to wake you up in the morning.

• If you have a family member who wakes up early, ask them to make sure you’re awake in the morning and to wake you up immediately if you’re still snoozing.

Go to bed at a sensible hour so you won't be tired.

• Put your phone on a sleep timer if your friends have a habit of calling or texting you late into the night.

Sit at a desk or table to finish your homework in the morning.

• If your bed is starting to look a little too appealing as you’re working at your desk, get up and go work at the kitchen table, just in case!

Do logic-based homework first.

Get up and move around if you start to feel sleepy.

• Be careful not to get distracted! Limit your break to 1-2 minutes.

Leave enough time to get to school before the first bell.

Give yourself more than a day for tough assignments.

• If you're procrastinating because you don't understand the assignment, don't be afraid to ask your teacher to clarify! Ask for clear instructions and examples so you can get started. [13] X Trustworthy Source Edutopia Educational nonprofit organization focused on encouraging and celebrating classroom innovation Go to source

Community Q&A

You Might Also Like

• ↑ https://www.startupwisconsin.org/tricky-tips-on-how-to-do-homework-early-in-the-morning.htm
• ↑ https://ofy.org/blog/homework-hacks-8-tips-get-done-faster/
• ↑ https://childmind.org/article/strategies-to-make-homework-go-more-smoothly/
• ↑ https://childmind.org/article/school-mornings-without-the-stress/
• ↑ https://www.fastcompany.com/3041455/8-tricks-to-make-yourself-wake-up-earlier
• ↑ https://www.healthychildren.org/English/healthy-living/sleep/Pages/healthy-sleep-habits-how-many-hours-does-your-child-need.aspx
• ↑ https://childmind.org/article/teenagers-sleep-deprived/
• ↑ https://kidshealth.org/en/kids/organize-focus.html
• ↑ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/2017/04/12/maths-classes-should-taught-morning-improve-attainment-study/
• ↑ https://www.chkd.org/patients-and-families/health-library/quick-tips/homework-procrastination/
• ↑ https://www.edutopia.org/article/3-reasons-students-procrastinate-and-how-help-them-stop

About this article

If you want to do your homework in the morning, prepare the night before by setting out your homework on your desk so you don't waste time the next day. Then, set your alarm so you wake up with enough time to complete your assignments, have breakfast, and get to school. When you wake up in the morning, do stretches to make you feel more alert and drink a glass of cold water to release adrenaline. Finally, sit at a desk or table to do your assignments to help you stay focused. To learn why you should complete logic-based homework first, read on! Did this summary help you? Yes No

Reader Success Stories

Nov 30, 2023

Did this article help you?

Alexander Chytiris

Feb 10, 2018

• About wikiHow
• Terms of Use
• Privacy Policy
• Do Not Sell or Share My Info
• Not Selling Info

Get the Reddit app

Tips and tricks for being more productive!

I feel like I’m only able to do stuff at night.

I’m a highscool student and I’ve been trying to not to play video games during the weekdays and do my class work instead, so now everyday after school I spend 4 hours pacing around thinking of something to do and scrolling through Twitter. Then after dinner I begin my homework and projects. Even if I try to do homework when I get home it doesn’t feel right, I feel happier doing it after dinner but sometimes I finish my work at 2am. When I try to write essays during the day I just stare at my document and write a few sentences in a hour, when I write during nighttime without the distractions of the day I love writing and can push out a few pages in a hour. How can I fix this and become productive during the day. I’m only able to sleep 5 hours for the past few years.

Homework Past Bedtime

Give your daughter the responsibility for getting her homework done, but set a time when she must stop working on it to complete such pre-bedtime activities as bathing, visiting with the family, or hearing a story before lights are off. Do not back away from this time even if your daughter has not finished her work and begs for more time. Also, have her give you her school books at this time every evening so she will not continue doing homework and get to bed late. She can get up early to complete unfinished work or finish it at school.

Having a set time for completing her homework is going to teach your daughter how to take initiative and to organize her time. Praise her when she handles it well. There is no reason for a parent to constantly press a good student to do his or her homework. The battles will only become worse as your child gets older.

If your daughter's defiance extends to threatening not to do any homework, point out that if her grades are lower because of her failure to do homework, there will be consequences and leave it at that. You may find it very helpful to read Ending The Homework Hassle by John Rosemond. It offers solid advice on homework issues as well as preventing and solving other school performance problems.

Join the Family

Your partner in parenting from baby name inspiration to college planning.

• Close Menu Search
• PR4PR Podcast
• Owlwitness News
• Media Center
• School Store
• YouTube Channel
• The Owl’s Eye

PRHS Night Watch

Homework: The Cause of Sleep Deprivation? Or is it More Than That?

Michelle Galdi , Chief Editor | January 26, 2019

A typical day at Park Ridge High School consists of sitting in various classrooms from 7:45 to 2:44. However, school carries on much longer than those designated times.

Students are constantly preoccupied with homework after school, and, to delve into just how much work students have, I interviewed Sandra Ortega, Alex Uva, Isabella Wise, Susie Rubenstein, and Josh Zdanowicz about the after-school obligations that consume their time, like homework.

All students stated that they feel like they have too much homework, taking an average of 3-4 hours to complete

All students stated that they feel like they have too much homework, taking an average of 3-4 hours to complete. Sandra said that the bulk of her homework comes from her Calculus, Anatomy and French classes. Considering all of those classes are Honors courses, it is reasonable that the homework requirement would be considerable. Additionally, AP classes often prove to be even harder, considering they are similar to college level classes. Alex’s AP English and AP European History homework takes him the longest, along with Susie’s AP Psychology class. Even without the added expectations of Honors and AP courses, students are still preoccupied with other time-consuming activities.

Along with homework, students juggle additional obligations after school, including sports and clubs. Izzy told me that she is “a dancer and an assistant dance teacher” so she “is always at the studio for an hour, then [goes] home to eat dinner, then [goes] back to dance for another 3 hours.” Her long day of dance finally finishes around 10:30 when she gets home and starts her homework. Josh is one of the many students who participate in school sports. He stated that, “during cross country season, it was impossible to get homework done.” When he got home from practice, all he wanted to do was go to bed, unmotivated to do any work. However, sometimes obligations do not always revolve around sports. Everyday after school, Sandra has to pick up her younger sister and her friends from school and she has work occasionally, which tends to eat up her time. Sports, homework, family, and work responsibilities tend to pile up on students.

Similar to the data provided by the Nationwide Children’s hospital, the majority of Park Ridge High School receive between six and eight hours of sleep.

As a result of staying up late to complete their daily tasks, students lose precious hours of sleep. According to the Nationwide Children’s Hospital, teenagers need between nine and nine and a half hours of sleep. However, teenagers only get an average of 7 hours. Investigating further in this statistic, I reached out to a random sample of students and recorded their average hours of sleep over a few days. Similar to the data provided by the Nationwide Children’s hospital, the majority of Park Ridge High School receive between six and eight hours of sleep.

Being sleep deprived can lead to feeling incredibly irritable and tired the next day. Additionally, if a lack of sleep continues, it can affect one’s overall health, making them susceptible to serious medical conditions like obesity, heart disease, and high blood pressure. Sleep is one of the most important things for developing teens. So, how could this conflict be resolved?

I asked the students what they think should be done to change the issue of having too much responsibilities. A few weeks ago, myself and a few of my classmates had to take four tests in one day, resulting in us staying up late in order to study. Sandra, one of my classmates who had to take those four tests, wished that, “teachers [would] coordinate better with each other when they are giving large assignments or tests. The lack of this can cause scheduling issues.” One of those four tests was taken in Mr. Wilson’s Anatomy Honors class, so I spoke to him about the issue. He stated that “kids need to be their own advocates.” If they notice that a bunch of assignments or tests are racking up on their schedules, they need to reach out to their teachers and let them know of their other obligations. If they fail to do so, then it is no longer the teacher’s fault, but that of the student. Izzy came up with the suggestion that homework being optional if you understand what is going on in a class. However, she argued that “if you are struggling with the material, it should be mandatory.” These alternatives might possibly be able to solve some of the problems with homework.

Kids need to be their own advocates.

— Mr. Wilson, Science Teacher

On the other hand, the problem does not solely sit in the issue of homework. Mr. Wilson argued that “time management comes into play,” since students, “wait until the last second to complete things, instead of doing it in small increments over a longer time.” Additionally, “kids feel like they have to join all the clubs and sports.” He stated that there are just too many things going on and so many plates to juggle, eventually something is going to drop. To help solve the overall problem of not only having too much homework, but also the time that sports and clubs consume, Mr. Wilson thinks that having a block schedule can alleviate some of the conflict. Whether the issue is homework or sports, students and teachers both agree that there is a problem. Time management is a large factor that impacts students sleeping time and performance in school. Solutions like homework being more optional, teachers coordinating the scheduling of projects and tests, students advocating for themselves, and block scheduling can all be effective.

• Block Schedule
• Sleep Deprivation
• Time Management

Park Ridge Marching Band: A New Era

Owls defeat St. Mary’s 40-12 in Home Opener

2023 Park Ridge Football Preview

Smriti Gounder Reflects on Park Ridge Robotics Team’s Success

October Sports Summary: Soccer & Football

October Sports Summary (10/22/21) Owls Football The Park Ridge Owls football team is off to a red-hot start so far to begin their 2021 campaign. The...

5 Things to Make a Team Successful

Winter vocal photography highlights.

It’s All About Us

BESTOF2020: Interview with Joker Cinematographer, Lawrence Sher

BESTOF2020: Current Editor in Chief Interviews Last Year’s Editor in Chief

BESTOF2020: Current Events: One Story at a Time with Mr. Farrell

Olivia Interviews: Mrs. Haake

The Student News Site of Park Ridge High School

Comments (2)

Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Grace Booras • Jan 24, 2020 at 12:49 pm

Despite homework being useful for practice, middle school students should not have homework. Studies show that homework reduces the amount of physical activity for students, the scold of not doing homework is stressful and frustrating, and students do not get enough sleep at night. First of all, homework reduces the amount of physical activity for students. Too much homework given to students can result in lack of sleep at night, headaches daily, exhaustion, and weight loss. Excessive homework can also result in poor eating habits, which can result in weight loss. According to a school psychiatrist in Oregon, “a low amount of physical activity can result in a change in behavior in a teen, and even make them more disrespectful.” If students are stuck inside, sitting at a desk, staring down at the same paper for hours on end, they can’t have any time or motivation for outside physical activities. Physical activity can also help reduce health problems when the kids are older. The article “Kids need more exercise, less homework” says: “When people ask me, ‘What’s the biggest thing I can do to avoid dementia?’ my answer is ‘exercise,’” said Margaret Gatz, a professor of psychology at USC who has published studies on the connection between diabetes diagnoses in middle age and later Alzheimer’s diagnosis. This shows that not having homework would give students more time to be physical and stay active. Second, the scold of not doing homework is stressful and frustrating for students. Because kids have outside of school activities and are being scolded for not doing homework, when in fact they have other things they need to do, they are missing out on physical and emotional connections. According to the child psychologist Kenneth Barish, “battles over homework rarely result in an improvement in school.” She proved that students and parents argue over doing homework, which can stress both parties out and create tension in families. Parents scold their children for not doing homework, and then the teacher scolds them. Teachers and parents scolding students can make them feel bad about themselves and reduce the want to learn. “It’s disrespectful to tell me that you don’t have time for homework. You can find the time.” Says the teacher. This can make the students feel pressured to cancel after school activities and make them feel stressed out and busy all the time. According to a study done at Stanford University, “56 percent of students considered homework a primary source of stress.” The hours spent everyday in classes plus the hours spent doing homework leads to students feeling overwhelmed and unmotivated. Homework can help students with time management, but it also teaches them to worry and stress about things. When students are stressed out, it can lower their grade, and cause them to zone out during class. Last of all, students don’t get enough sleep at night due to staying up late doing homework. “All students stated that they feel like they have too much homework, taking an average of 3-4 hours to complete.” (Homework: The Cause Of Sleep Deprivation) In the 2006 pole, it has been shown that 80% of middle school students don’t get enough sleep at night because of staying up doing homework, and at least 28% fall asleep in school. Students all over America stay up for hours on end trying to finish their homework. Studies show that Middle school students should get no less than 9 ½ hours of sleep per night. “Similar to the data provided by the Nationwide Children’s hospital, the majority of Park Ridge High School receive between six and eight hours of sleep.” The amount of homework that kids have has increased by 11% since the 1990’s. With 6 different classes to try and juggle, taking home their work is stressful; students need breaks. A student once said “If I can’t sleep at school, then I shouldn’t have to do school work at home.” Even though homework can help students practice the skills they are learning in their classes, students should not lose sleep, lose physical activity, or be stressed out over so much homework at a young age.

This is my essay I am writing for my language arts class. I do agree that homework can be useful in many situations, but I do stand by my point in saying that if you can’t sleep at school and do the things you do at home at school, then you should have to do SCHOOLwork at home 🙂

Cench • Jan 28, 2019 at 1:36 pm

Hi! I’m interested to see how many students have their devices near them and check social media, answer texts, etc. while they are doing homework. I agree with Mr. Wilson that especially in PR, students over commit and overwhelm themselves being involved in too much. Lack of sleep is caused by more than homework and school activities. Many students have expressed they have a hard time actually falling asleep – most likely due to over stimulation of the brain with devices prior to going to bed, binge watching shows or gaming. How long would homework take without distractions? Just a thought 🙂

They Do Homework At Night In Spanish

Cómo decir “they do homework at night” en inglés, introducción.

Cuando estamos aprendiendo un nuevo idioma, es importante tener habilidades fundamentales en la construcción de oraciones simples. En este caso, aprender cómo decir “They do homework at night” en inglés es una habilidad fundamental que debemos adquirir. En este artículo te mostrare cómo decir esta oración en inglés y algunos ejemplos para reforzar tu comprensión.

Es importante recordar que en inglés, el verbo siempre está presente en la oración, al contrario que en español, donde puede omitirse. Esto es muy importante para poder construir oraciones adecuadas en inglés. Por ejemplo, “They homework at night” no es una oración correcta en inglés, ya que falta el verbo “do”.

Aprendiendo Inglés

Escuelas y cursos de inglés, gramática inglesa, inglés para intermedio, inglés para principiantes, países de habla inglesa, tiempos verbales en inglés.

Stack Exchange Network

Stack Exchange network consists of 183 Q&A communities including Stack Overflow , the largest, most trusted online community for developers to learn, share their knowledge, and build their careers.

Q&A for work

Connect and share knowledge within a single location that is structured and easy to search.

At Night or In the Night?

Why do we refer to morning, afternoon and evening as 'in the morning', 'in the afternoon', 'in the evening' but not 'in the night' instead we say 'at night.'

• prepositions

• 9 You can say "in the night" (meaning "during the night"), I think more usually referring to the past: Did you hear that dog barking in the night? At other times, you use "at" for a 'specific' time ( at midday; at 3 o'clock; at sunrise ), and "in" for a period of time. –  TrevorD Commented Aug 7, 2013 at 23:17
• 1 @TrevorD Counterexample to the idea of referring to the past: speaking of things that go "bump" in the night. –  MetaEd Commented Aug 8, 2013 at 4:46
• 1 In the night and at night do not mean quite the same thing. –  Kris Commented Aug 8, 2013 at 7:00
• "The curious case of the dog in the night[time]" –  DJClayworth Commented Mar 11, 2015 at 3:20
• 2 You may use your answer to correct the OP's statements, but please do not edit the question to change the OP's premise. –  Kit Z. Fox ♦ Commented Mar 13, 2015 at 13:34

8 Answers 8

The bottom line is "it's idiomatic" as mentioned but I can offer the below rationale:

1. The origin of "at night" to indicate a point of time and the usage of prepositions "in" and"at"

In olden times, when the time expression "at night" was originated, night might have been thought as a point of time in the day because there wasn't any activity going on and people were sleeping that time unlike daytime. It represents the dark hours and the late time of the day. But morning, afternoon and evening represent a period of time during the daytime where activities were going on.

In fact, night is a period like morning . This is the main reason of the question because the preposition in is used for time periods. Then, the question can be easily changed to "why not at morning but in the morning " because it seems like times within the day generally take at ( at noon, at 5:00, at dawn, at dinner, at night ), except the ones that take in with the definite article the ( in the morning, in the evening, in the afternoon ).

Speaking exceptions, one grammar book says the below for at under the title "exceptions: at, on and by ":

At can be used for periods identified vaguely, as in a t that time, at breakfast time, at night ; also for short holiday periods ( at Christmas, at Easter ). In BrE, at the weekend is used, but in AmE on the weekend . A Communicative Grammar of English By Geoffrey Leech, Jan Svartvik

In the end, at and in share a long history for the usages that we talk about and it is mentioned as below in OED (including the earliest example and some relevant examples):

at, prep. IV. Of time, order, occasion, cause, object. 29. Introducing the time at which an event happens: a. with the time named. c1230 (▸?a1200)   Ancrene Riwle (Corpus Cambr.) (1962) 28 Ed al le þe oþre tiden. 1586    T. Bright Treat. Melancholie xviii. 114 From 3. at after noone till nine at night. a1616    Shakespeare Cymbeline (1623) i. iii. 32 At the sixt houre of Morne, at Noone, at Midnight. in, prep. III. Of time. 18. a. Within the limits of a period or space of time. With in the day, in the night : cf. by day, by night at by prep. 19b. a900    Anglo-Saxon Chron. ann. 709 In foreweardum Danieles dagum. 13..    K. Alis. 85 By cler candel, in the nyght. a1616    Shakespeare Two Gentlemen of Verona (1623) iii. i. 178 Except I be by Siluia in the night ..Vnlesse I looke on Siluia in the day .

2. Chaucer's influence on English and vernacular literature

One of the earliest usages of "at night" is from Chaucer 's works. However, there is one earlier usage listed in OED . The following are the definition of at night and earliest examples from OED :

at night: at nightfall, in the evening or night; during the hours of darkness. Freq. designating a specified time. c1300    St. Theophilus (Laud) 161 in C. Horstmann Early S.-Eng. Legendary (1887) 293 (MED) , Þis cas bi-feol in leinte on a satures-day at niȝt . ▸c1387–95    Chaucer Canterbury Tales Prol. 23 At nyght was come..Wel nyne and twenty in a compaignye.

It seems like Chaucer might have a big role for the common usage of this idiomatic expression and the usage of this expression has been continued by other influential people like Shakespeare (example from OED ):

a1616    Shakespeare Macbeth (1623) iii. i. 43 Let euery man be master of his time Till seuen at Night .

Additionally, the expression in the night has a long history as well and OED lists as below: (including the earliest example and some relevant examples)

b. in (also †of, †on, †upon) the night : by night, during the night. OE    Old Eng. Hexateuch: Exod. (Claud.) xii. 12 Ic fare on ðære nihte ofer eall Egypta land. a1400 (▸a1325)    Cursor Mundi (Vesp.) 6196 Drightin self þam ledd þair wai... Wit firen piler on þe night [c1460 Laud vpon the nyȝt ]. c1480 (▸a1400)    St. Theodora 288 in W. M. Metcalfe Legends Saints Sc. Dial. (1896)   II. 107 To þat thing has he na sycht þat thocht or don is in þe nycht . 1600    Shakespeare Midsummer Night's Dream ii. i. 253 There sleepes Tytania, sometime of the night . 1990    N.Y. Mag. 30 Apr. 52/1 A dog howling in the night .

On the other hand, there are instances of at morning, at evening and at afternoon but they are uncommon and literary mainly. (See: Ngram result )

OED mentions the below adverbial phrases with modifying preposition (without article) for morning :

at (also †in, †on, before, till, etc.) morning , from morning till evening, from morning to night, etc. Also with adjective, as all (also each, every, next, etc.) morning. Cf. a-morning adv.

There are examples with at morning and at evening and the earliest usage mentioned is in morning . The below are first three earliest usages and some relevant examples from OED :

a1400 (▸a1325)    Cursor Mundi (Vesp.) 7181 On nighter-tale, or in morning. c1400 (▸?a1387)    Langland Piers Plowman (Huntington HM 137) (1873) C. xiv. 147 (MED), Maules drowen hem to maules on morwenynge by hem-self, And femeles to femeles. c1475 (▸a1449)    Lydgate Testament (Harl. 218) 286 in Minor Poems (1911) i. 340 Thamerous foules with motytes and carolles, Salue this sesoun euery morwenyng . 1679    Processes Kirkcudbright Sheriff Court No. 282 Otherwayes no master that hath ane servant at night is sure to have them at morning . 1849    M. Arnold New Sirens i, I, who in your train at morning Stroll'd and sang with joyful mind, Heard, at evening , sounds of warning. 1968    D. Moraes My Son's Father i. 3 At morning the sea was a very pale, indolent colour.

Finally, I'm including the below explanation from a linguistics standpoint (from the book Cognitive and Communicative Approaches to Linguistic Analysis edited by Ellen Contini-Morava, Robert S. Kirsner, Betsy Rodriguez-Bachiller). In summary, night is an exception and is shrunk to a point as a contrastive location in time in the phrase at night and the difference between at night and in the night is explained with examples.

At for temporal messages ... at , designating a point in space, is used for point in time as well:    (37) He arrived at three o'clock; at noon; at midnight; at sunset; at dawn .

Just as a spatial point has no length, depth, or height, a temporal point such as three o'clock and noon , has no duration. A problematic use of at is the phrase at night. Unlike noon, night lasts from eight to twelve hours. Section 3 showed that a three-dimensional location is sometimes shrunk to a point when the message is one of contrastive location. At night is the temporal analog of at Plattsburgh and at Stoneybrook , contrastive location in time:

   (38) What do the pretty SMU girls like on their plates?          "Pretty much hamburger, hotdogs, steak and, at night , maybe pizza"   Brown, 70361

The contrast in (38) is the different food preferences of the girls at the noon and evening meals. The implication of contrast in at night is better perceived when compared to in the night . Suppose the song 'Strangers in the Night' were titles 'Strangers at night'. The title would no longer suggest two lonely people searching each other out, but a dysfunctional couple: "Companions by Day, Strangers at Night".

In example (39), the two phrases appear in a single passage. The neighbor of a woman who may or may not have committed suicide describes the circumstances of her death:

   (39) I had made a habit of calling her at night , from my cottage, just to check. The last night I had called, but the line as always busy and it reassured me...    She was found the day after at the bottom of the cliff. I tried to believe that what must have happened was that, restless, disturbed by this telephone call or whatever, she walked out in the night , as she had a habit of doing...With all that warm rain an the fog it might have been as simple as a loosened rock, a misstep.   Brown,1171886

The phrase at night implies 'evenings rather than daytime' for the regular calls, a message of temporal contrast. In the night carries no hint of contrast; it describes the dark three-dimensional space into which the woman walked.

• But, um, there actually are instances of the morning versions . –  tchrist ♦ Commented Mar 13, 2015 at 3:22
• @ermanen You might do so, yes. It used to be much more common. –  tchrist ♦ Commented Mar 13, 2015 at 10:54

There is an element of idiomatic nuance at play here. "I always brush my teeth at night," describes a mundane event that takes place every evening. "Someone stole my new orchid in the night," has an appropriate and slightly sinister connotation and suggest the event took place during a specific night, the night. Contrast the previous theft with the following, "Police report that car thefts are on the rise, particularly at night." It describes an on-going nocturnal event.

• 6 Your theory is convincing, but "I always brush my teeth at morning/afternoon" does not sound right, even if the person brushes regularly. –  Asahiko Commented Aug 8, 2013 at 2:38
• @Asa: Normally, "I always brush my teeth in the morning/in the afternoon* is the idiomatic expression. At morning/afternoon is never heard in spoken (or even written) conversation. If one must use at , then at dawn/midday/noon would be more likely. However, those phrases refer to more specific times of day than morning/afternoon . –  Jimi Oke Commented Mar 11, 2015 at 17:12
• 2 Note that we can habituate other parts of the day by pluralizing: In the mornings/afternoons/evenings I used to sit on the balcony . But not so much night , because at night already habituates it, which is why in the night has a specific rather than generic sense, and why *In the nights I used to sit on the balcony sounds so strange. –  John Lawler Commented Mar 11, 2015 at 17:46
• 1 I feel (no offence) this answer does no more than restate the question. As Fumble precisely says in his Bounty Offering, "I know the bottom line is "it's idiomatic", but there must be some rationale." –  Fattie Commented Mar 12, 2015 at 2:12
• 1 Night is simply different from morning, afternoon, etc. Night is half our life; the time when we sleep, dream, and perform secret activities. It's special and it gets special treatment. It's also scary , and gets even more special treatment for that reason. –  John Lawler Commented Mar 12, 2015 at 16:48

Both at night and in the night are acceptable, though they have slightly different moods. There is no conclusive etymological evidence that I could find, though etymonline suggests :

In choosing between at church, in church, etc. at is properly distinguished from in or on by involving some practical connection; a worshipper is at church; a tourist is in the church.

Following this, it would be logical to claim that something at night is more connected to the time of day than something in the night . Curiously, our usage of in the night tends to be more connected to the noun; e.g. "thief in the night", "things that go bump in the night". These examples make little sense when apart from the night, however, they are quite poetic.

Google's account of their usage shows that the first written instances (that they have record of after 1500) of at night are some 50 years before the first in the night . The in the night was heavily favoured by poets, initially Shakespeare, and could have been constructed for its rhythm.

In conclusion, I could find no evidence explaining why "in the morning/afternoon/evening" evolved, but "at night" remained in its original form. This is obviously not a definitive answer, but I post it so that others may pick up where I left off.

• Wow the article quoted is utterly appalling. Look at the quoted sentence! "There's some, uh, 'practical difference' but we don't know what it is." Imagine having the audacity to write on English and not knowing the difference between points and extents. In a box, on a floor .. uh there's some 'practical difference' but we can't put our finger on it just now ;-) –  Fattie Commented Mar 12, 2015 at 2:40
• These are interesting . –  tchrist ♦ Commented Mar 13, 2015 at 3:21
• In English time related concepts can be either "events" or "extents". (It's not unlike the countable-discrete/uncountable-volumetric difference for nouns.) You use one or the other form depending on which it is. (Some - most? - words can be used both ways; "night" has two different meanings, (a) "the event" it happened last night and (b) "the extent" 2am is during the night. That's all there is to it: In English time related concepts can be either "events" or "extents". So that's cleared up. –  Fattie Commented Mar 13, 2015 at 8:37
• @JoeBlow: nope. "I sleep at night ." vs "I sleep at January 1 ." What is the non-night corollary for "I sleep at..."? –  Ian MacDonald Commented Mar 13, 2015 at 11:04
• I'm sorry, of course I meant "at night". So the question remains "in the night" vs "at night". I'll delete my previous comment. Joe there's really no need to reply, besides my comment was directed at tchrist. I've read your many many responses. However, I am, as always, still very interested in the answers being posted. –  Mari-Lou A Commented Mar 13, 2015 at 12:48

Effective communication sometimes relies heavily on idiom. On that note, I agree with Michael Owen Sartin's answer .

The day is often divided into morning, afternoon and evening, and it is idiomatic to corresponding adverbial phrases of time as in the morning/afternoon/evening , either when referring to habitual occurrences or those that are imminent. For example:

I usually have coffee in the morning. We meet in the evening. She's coming in the afternoon. "When are you going running tomorrow?" "In the morning."

In regular conversation, other modifiers or indicators (pronouns, etc) are used with morning/afternoon/evening . Sometimes, native speakers drop the articles and prepositions where nonessential to the understanding of the intended recipient. A few quick examples include: tomorrow afternoon, this evening, yesterday morning, morning , etc.

In the night is more formal and poetic, and thus rarely used in regular conversation, at least in my experience. However, it could be used in the same sense as the phrases in the morning , etc. On the other hand, every night is a phrase that is heard very often.

The phrase at night tends to be more common in reported speech and other expressions of habit ( ... sleep at night is a notable example). Equivalent expressions for other times of day are at dawn/daybreak, at midday/noon, at dusk/twilight . Of these, at noon probably occurs most frequently in spoken conversation.

• You know, idiom is utterly unrelated here. If you're using a point time, you say at .. at daybreak, at night, at easter, when lunch arrives. if you're using a time period you say in .. in November, in the night, in Summer. –  Fattie Commented Mar 12, 2015 at 2:44
• By idiom I'm referring to how language is used by its regular speakers, and that from a rather descriptive standpoint. Rules sometimes are inferred from patterns of speech. Both morning and night are periods of time, and the constructions at morning and at night are not ungrammatical, but the first you'd be hard-pressed to hear in common speech. Red Sky at Morning is the title of a couple books/films, so that construction is more literary than colloquial. I'm not sure I follow your argument. –  Jimi Oke Commented Mar 12, 2015 at 2:50
• Hi Jimi ! the answer to the question 'in' versus 'at' could not be simpler. It's just due to a point versus an extent. Exactly like countable versus noncountable. If someone asked "Why do we say some milk but we can't say many milk" the answer is just "look up countable in an ESL book". It couldn't be simpler. (Idiom, like "see ya mate" is utterly unrelated to the issue.) –  Fattie Commented Mar 12, 2015 at 2:55
• "Both morning and night are periods of time" Well no , "morning" is a duration of time (like "January") and is not a point-time (like "January 1"). "night" is a duration of time (like "January") and is a point time (like "January 1"). So you can say "in" (or "during" etc) morning, January, night. And you can say "at" (or "when arrives" etc) January 1, daybreak, night. –  Fattie Commented Mar 12, 2015 at 2:58
• But that's precisely and exactly like asking "why does dog mean dog, and not cat". Or, "why can dog mean 'dog breed' as well as 'dog', but 'cow' only means 'cow' and not 'cow breed'? Who cares? –  Fattie Commented Mar 12, 2015 at 8:34

As @tchrist comments, there are in fact plenty of written instances of at [the] morn/morning , but it's very much a declining/poetic usage.

Contrastingly, at [the] afternoon has never had any significant currency. Because afternoon already contains a preposition of time/location ( after ) , adding another one ( at ) doesn't work.

And as @Joe Blow comments, in the morning/afternoon/night are common usages (where in is a container metaphor which invariably equates to a duration reference in temporal contexts). As opposed to the locational metaphor preposition at , which in temporal contexts normally identifies a specific point in time .

Thus "We will attack at night" tends to imply at the point where day turns into night , whereas "We will attack in the night" implies any time during the night . But where the reference is to a "continuous, extended" activity (I work at/in the night) , both forms are used.

TL;DR: The issue isn't really "Why do we use at for night, but in the for morning, evening?" . It's "Why don't we use at for morning, evening?" . To which I suggest a major part of the answer is...

Morning and afternoon are much more associated with (and influential towards) each other than they are to night . And at [the] after noon is awkward (because of the double preposition), which has led to at [the] morning falling out of favour "by association".

It's because we are awake during the day, and asleep throughout most of the night.

Saying in the morning/afternoon means at any time within the period of morning or afternoon.

The same with in the night , if someone said that you would think of any time between the hours of 8pm and 6am, or thereabouts.

However, at night generally means the specific time between when night begins and when you go to sleep, let's say between 8pm and 10pm.

It's similar with other specific times of day, such as at midnight or at noon .

We also do it with the morning, but usually either say at dawn or at the time I woke up instead.

For example:

I'm going out at night for a walk.

Generally people would say tonight , but for the basis of this question, saying this sentence would make one think the person is going out late (between 8pm and 10pm).

I'm going out in the night for a walk.

This makes one think they are going out anytime between 8pm and 6am.

• 1 "I'm going out tonight" can mean any time after 20.00 (8 PM) until the small hours e.g. 2 AM, especially if it's a club or discotheque. But if "I'm eating out tonight" it could be any time between 18.00 and 22.00 (generally speaking.) "I'm going out in the night" conjures someone going for a walk, alone, in the dark. –  Mari-Lou A Commented Mar 11, 2015 at 16:29
• I like your answer, but I'm not sure those examples are idiomatic/colloquial. I'm not sure anyone (native/regular speaker) ever says I'm going out at night ! I'm going out in the night is also not a construction that comes up in normal speech. –  Jimi Oke Commented Mar 11, 2015 at 17:15
• Hi Mari-Lou. "tonight" is a completely different word and sense from "night". –  Fattie Commented Mar 12, 2015 at 2:14
• Mike, sleeping is utterly unrelated to the issue. But other than that you're the only person who noted the (incredibly obvious) answer. Good one. –  Fattie Commented Mar 12, 2015 at 2:45
• @JoeBlow (Ahh! I see Mike has edited his answer). I realized later that I'd written tonight instead of night , but then I understood why I had written it that way, spontaneously without reflecting, because that's how English speaking people would normally say it. (1) I'm going for a walk tonight is more idiomatic.Compare: (2) In the morning I'm going for a nice long walk and (3) At night I'm going for a nice long walk . (3) is grammatical, but who says it? Why shouldn't we say: (4) "In the night I'm going for a nice long walk" ? But we don't! Instead it's (1) i.e tonight. –  Mari-Lou A Commented Mar 12, 2015 at 10:00

"night" can be used with several prepositions:

• at night, in/during the night, by night.

It is up to you which variant you use, the meaning is the same.

http://www.ldoceonline.com/dictionary/night

With periods of time you normally use "in" or "during". Sometimes dimensions are reduced. When you use "at" you either reduce a time stretch to a point of time or you have the concept of "at some point of the night". "by" is used in connection with light: by candlelight, by moonlight, by the first light of the day" and in analogy "by" can be used with day/night: Paris by night.

in that night

in a specified night

e.g. I saw a ghost while I was on the way going home in that night.

in the night

in a specific time of the night only

e.g. I do my homework in the night before I go to sleep.

throughout the whole night

e.g. The night markets open at night only.

e.g. I sleep at night.

in the morning

in a specific time of the morning only

e.g. I brush my teeth in the morning before I go to school/work.

on the morning

in an unspecified specific morning

e.g. She called me on the morning of 1st June.

• @Mari-LouA, oh, but this question doesn't ask about "on that night", so I'm excused from it. :P –  XPMai Commented Mar 16, 2015 at 7:33
• 1 Done adding "in the night" to my answer. –  XPMai Commented Mar 16, 2015 at 7:47
• "I do my homework in the night" is perfectly fine without adding the: "before I go to sleep". Otherwise we'd say: I do my homework before going to sleep (It's shorter and means the same! :-) –  Mari-Lou A Commented Mar 16, 2015 at 7:55
• By the way, can I ask that do you think my (whole) answer is correct or wrong? –  XPMai Commented Mar 16, 2015 at 8:00
• If I want to say that I do my homework the whole night , I'd say " I do my homework at night " instead based on my answer. –  XPMai Commented Mar 16, 2015 at 8:02

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged meaning grammar prepositions or ask your own question .

• Featured on Meta
• Upcoming sign-up experiments related to tags

Hot Network Questions

• Should I accept an offer of being a teacher assistant without pay?
• What is the original source of this Sigurimi logo?
• Did the BBC censor a non-binary character in Transformers: EarthSpark?
• Cathay Pacific Online Booking: When to Enter Passport Details?
• Is it unfair to retroactively excuse a student for absences?
• How can a landlord receive rent in cash using western union
• Is there any other reason to stockpile minerals aside preparing for war?
• Do Christians believe that Jews and Muslims go to hell?
• Correlation for Small Dataset?
• Does Matthew 7:13-14 contradict Luke 13:22-29?
• How many steps are needed to turn one "a" into at least 100,000 "a"s using only the three functions of "select all", "copy" and "paste"?
• Why depreciation is considered a cost to own a car?
• What are these courtesy names and given names? - confusion in translation
• Why was the animal "Wolf" used in the title "The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)"?
• Is it better to show fake sympathy to maintain a good atmosphere?
• Sangaku problem involving eight circles
• Was BCD a limiting factor on 6502 speed?
• Are Dementors found all over the world, or do they only reside in or near Britain?
• What was the first game to intentionally use letterboxing to indicate a cutscene?
• Cloud masking ECOSTRESS LST data
• Will feeblemind affect the original creature's body when it was cast on it while it was polymorphed and reverted to its original form afterwards?
• Different outdir directories in one Quantum ESPRESSO run
• Why is it 'capacité d'observation' (without article) but 'sens de l'observation' (with article)?
• Why can't LaTeX (seem to?) Support Arbitrary Text Sizes?

Haciendo que las experiencias educativas sean mejores para todos.

Aprendizaje de inmersión para 25 lenguas

Un mercado de millones de recursos creados por educadores

Certificación de lengua rápida, fácil y fiable

Juegos educativos divertidos para niños

Aprendizaje personalizado exhaustivo para la educación K-12

Tutores de confianza para más de 300 materias

Más de 35,000 hojas de ejercicios, juegos y planes de clase

Aprendizaje adaptativo para el vocabulario de inglés

Sam________(do) his homework at night.

A. is doing

B. has done

C. has been doing

Select your answer:          

Next Quiz >

Other quiz:

Something that is happening or being used right now.

B. conservation

Would you like … … cheese? No, thank you. I’m not hungry any more. a. some

How to use : Read the question carefully, then select one of the answers button.

GrammarQuiz.Net - Improve your knowledge of English grammar, the best way to kill your free time.

they do their homework late at night

Answers (1).

A Disaster for Joe Biden

Watching the president at the first debate was at times almost physically uncomfortable.

Sign up for The Decision , a newsletter featuring our 2024 election coverage.

What a disaster for Joe Biden.

In tonight’s first debate of the presidential campaign, the president appeared meandering, confused, and extremely frail. Biden’s performance was at times almost physically uncomfortable to watch and will greatly amplify the calls for him to step aside .

The question for many people before the debate was whether Biden would stumble. They didn’t have to wait long for an answer. He looked and sounded shaky from the moment he stepped somewhat creakily onstage in Atlanta. His voice came out in a faint whisper. And a few minutes in, Biden completely lost the thread while assailing Trump’s fiscal policy. He began by attacking Trump for giving tax cuts to billionaires and building up more debt than any president in any four-year period. Then he started to get bogged down:

We have a thousand trillionaires in America. I mean billionaires in America. And what’s happening? They’re in a situation where they in fact pay 8.2 percent in taxes. If they paid 24 percent, 25 percent, either one of those numbers, they’d raise $500 million—billion dollars, I should say—in a 10-year period. We’d be able to wipe out his debt, we’d be able to help make sure that all those things we need to do—child care, elder care, making sure we continue to strengthen our health-care system, making sure that we’re able to make every single solitary person eligible for what I’ve been able to do with the COVID—excuse me, dealing with—look, if we finally beat Medicare …

As Biden struggled to grasp his own point, his time ran out. “Thank you, Mr. President,” the moderator, Jake Tapper, said. It felt like a mercy.

Biden also struggled on abortion, one of Democrats’ strongest lines of attack on Trump . But Biden seemed unable to compose his answer, including a bizarre aside about Laken Riley , a woman allegedly murdered by an illegal immigrant in what has become a MAGA cause célèbre.

“There’s many young women who’ve been—including the young woman who was just murdered and he went to the funeral—the idea that she was murdered by an immigrant coming in, they talk about that but here’s the deal, there’s a lot of young women being raped by their in-laws, by their spouses, brothers and sisters, it’s just ridiculous and they can do nothing about, they try to arrest them when they cross state lines,” Biden said. With some difficulty, one could discern the outlines of an answer there—Biden was talking about women seeking abortions after rape and incest in states that ban the procedure—but it was extremely hard to follow.

Biden didn’t have another moment quite that bad, but he was never good. The president struggled to finish a thought or complete a sentence. As Trump spoke, a split screen showed the president’s face looking slack and agape. Biden’s attempts at emoting incredulity instead read as confusion. He struggled to finish his answers in the allotted time.

Read: What kind of ‘psycho’ calls dead Americans ‘losers’ and ‘suckers’?

His set pieces fell flat, including an emotive one about his late son, Beau. Citing Trump’s remarks about veterans, Biden said: “My son was not a sucker , he was not a loser. You’re the sucker. You’re the loser.” It would have been a great line if it had been delivered with any force. Instead, it sounded like reading off a card.

Mentioning Trump’s alleged sexual relationship with Stormy Daniels, Biden accused Trump of having “the morals of an alley cat,” which would surely have brought the house down at a debate between Dwight Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson but did nothing to erase impressions that he’s too old in 2024. (In the midst of the debate, Biden staffers began telling reporters that the president is suffering from a cold.)

Biden also seemed very much to be hemmed in by the format of the debate, while Trump used questions on any subject to turn to his favorite talking points. One result was that Biden’s favored campaign theme, Trump’s threat to democracy, didn’t come up until about 40 minutes into the debate, when Tapper asked Trump about the January 6 insurrection.

“Let me tell you about January 6,” Trump replied. “On January 6 we had a great border. Nobody came through, very few. On January 6 we were energy-independent. We had the lowest taxes ever. Lowest regulations ever. On January 6 we were respected all over the world.”

Tapper tried to redirect Trump to the insurrection, and Trump responded by lying about trying to call in the National Guard. This was classic Trump—bluster and misdirection. But anyone looking for reassurance that Trump would respect the rule of law didn’t receive it. The only implication was that a vote for him is a vote for the good life, not for democracy. Trump also continued to push his lie about fraud tainting the 2020 election.

Biden was also itching to call Trump a “convicted felon,” but didn’t get there until five minutes later. Trump steamrolled him and said, nonsensically, “This man is a criminal.”

Read: Ruth Bader Biden

That projection was also classic Trump. He made little sense either, though he made little sense with bravado and seemed positively youthful and energetic next to Biden. He mostly managed to avoid coming off as the overbearing bully he often is on a debate stage, though not entirely. At one point, he used Palestinian as an apparent slur, saying of Biden, “He’s become like a Palestinian, but they don’t like him, because he’s a very bad Palestinian, he’s a weak one.”

If the purpose of debates such as this one is to show voters something new about the candidates, then it didn’t work. And how could it? Both men are very well known, and very little liked, by the entire American public. Nor was there much to learn about policy: Trump doesn’t care about it, and Biden kept getting mixed up in details about it.

When the debates were announced in May, some pundits viewed it as a win for Biden, who was trailing Trump narrowly but consistently. His campaign wanted to put Trump in front of Americans early in the campaign, and remind them of the chaos and division that he produced. It was a bold gamble by the president, and he lost.

• Skip to main content
• Keyboard shortcuts for audio player

4 takeaways from the first presidential debate

Domenico Montanaro

President Biden and former President Donald Trump participate in the first presidential debate of the 2024 elections at CNN's studios in Atlanta on June 27. Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

If some people who listened to the radio in 1960 thought Richard Nixon won the presidential debate with John F. Kennedy, then maybe people reading the transcript of Thursday night’s match-up would think President Biden won.

But elections aren’t won in transcripts. The reality is, fairly or not, debates are often about optics — how the candidates present themselves, defend their records and parry attacks.

Fact check: What did Biden and Trump claim about immigration in the debate?

And that’s why so many Democrats are ringing the fire alarms after the first general-election presidential debate of 2024. The Biden campaign said the president had a cold to explain why he sounded so hoarse and weak. But Biden’s stumbles right from the beginning played into his biggest vulnerability — his age and whether the 81-year-old is up to the challenge of handling four more years in office.

There were issues for Trump, too, as he continued to spread falsehoods and bathe in the kinds of conspiratorial grievances that have turned off many voters.

Not much has changed the dynamics of this race; will anything that happened Thursday night make a difference either?

Here are four takeaways from the first Biden-Trump debate of this campaign:

1. First and foremost, let’s talk about the elephant in the room – Democrats have to be wondering if they’d be better off with someone else as their nominee.

Neither candidate is the official nominee yet. The national political conventions haven’t happened — but it’s next to impossible that Democrats would replace Biden.

Still, given he delivered the kind of performance Democrats feared, party leaders, strategists and many voters, frankly, had to be wondering during this debate what it would be like if any of a handful of other Democrats were standing on that stage.

Biden got a bit stronger as the debate went on, especially on foreign policy. He had some one-liners, like calling Trump a “whiner” when Trump wouldn’t definitively say that he would accept the results of the 2024 election. But Biden often wasn’t able to show vigor or consistently convey what he wanted to say. He simply couldn’t deliver the kinds of happy-warrior blows with that toothy smile audiences have seen from Biden in years past.

“Sometimes the spin don’t spin,” one Democratic strategist texted midway through the debate when asked for reaction.

2. If how Biden sounded wasn’t bad enough, the visuals might have been equally as bad.

An important rule of thumb for candidates — and moderators — in debates is to be conscious of how things look, of how you look, of what people are seeing at home. And what people saw — and this was predictable — was a split screen.

What to know about the key policies that got airtime in the presidential debate

Biden wasn’t able to use that to his advantage at all, even as Trump doled out falsehood after falsehood. Instead, he looked genuinely shocked and confused, which is never a good look.

Trump and his base might not care about late-night comedy, but this week’s monologues are going to sting Democratic voters.

3. The format — and hands-off moderators — benefited Trump.

The muting of the candidates was likely intended to make the debate calmer and not allow Trump to run roughshod over the moderators or his opponent. But it had the effect of making Trump seem more sedate than usual.

Trump employed rounds of verbal jujitsu, in which he threw back his own vulnerabilities and directed them toward Biden. He was even able at one point, during a strange exchange about golf handicaps, to say, “Let’s not act like children.”

The moderation, or lack thereof, also allowed Trump to spread falsehoods and hyperbole without being interrupted or corrected. CNN indicated before the debate that the moderators were not going to play a strong role in fact checking the candidates, and they lived up to that.

They left it to the candidates, essentially, and with Biden unable to deliver in real time and the moderators declining to, the audience was left with a salad bowl full of rotten eggs and moldy lettuce that passed for facts.

4. This debate might not move the needle much, if at all.

Despite Biden’s struggles, which will understandably get the headlines, Trump had some difficult moments, too, especially in the second half of the debate.

In addition to spreading myriad falsehoods, he did little to credibly defend his conduct on and before the Jan. 6 siege on the Capitol; he used the kind of hyperbolic and vituperative language that has long turned off swing voters; and showed why many are concerned about some of his positions on the issues, especially on abortion and how the U.S. should be represented on the world stage.

So despite Biden’s shortcomings, millions will still likely vote for Biden, anyway, because he’s not Trump.

The bottom line is: Americans have said they are unhappy with their choices, and, in this – the biggest moment of the 2024 presidential campaign yet — it was clear why.

Correction June 28, 2024

A previous version of this story referenced this week's live SNL episode but in fact the show is on its summer hiatus.

• Election 2024
• Entertainment
• Newsletters
• Photography
• Personal Finance
• AP Investigations
• AP Buyline Personal Finance
• AP Buyline Shopping
• Press Releases
• Israel-Hamas War
• Russia-Ukraine War
• Global elections
• Asia Pacific
• Latin America
• Middle East
• Election Results
• Delegate Tracker
• AP & Elections
• Auto Racing
• 2024 Paris Olympic Games
• Movie reviews
• Book reviews
• Financial Markets
• Business Highlights
• Financial wellness
• Artificial Intelligence
• Social Media

Fact checks were prevalent during and after the Biden-Trump debate — but not for real-time viewers

President Joe Biden and Republican Donald Trump went right to mixing it up on policy — and each other — in their first presidential debate of the 2024 campaign.

FILE _ CNN’s Dana Bash, left, and Jake Tapper listen as they moderate a presidential debate between President Joe Biden and Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump, Thursday, June 27, 2024, in Atlanta. There were exhaustive, independent fact-checks of claims made during the CNN debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump on Thursday, June 27, but none available to the millions of people watching the two presidents in real time. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File)

• Copy Link copied

FILE - President Joe Biden, right, and Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump, left, stand during break in a presidential debate hosted by CNN, Thursday, June 27, 2024, in Atlanta. There were exhaustive, independent fact-checks of claims made during the debate but none available to the millions of people watching the two presidents in real time. (AP Photo/John Bazemore, File)

This combination of photos shows Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump, left, and President Joe Biden during a presidential debate hosted by CNN, Thursday, June 27, 2024, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

NEW YORK (AP) — There were some exhaustive, independent fact checks of claims made during the CNN debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump . Trouble was, none of them were available to the millions of people watching the two presidents in real time.

That was the result of CNN’s decision ahead of Thursday’s debate that moderators Dana Bash and Jake Tapper would be questioners, not arbiters. Supporters of President Biden were frustrated, since Trump was later flagged for more misleading statements than his rival, and it served to put greater emphasis on the Democrat’s tepid performance.

At the same time, it emphasized a puzzle the media has yet to solve after nine years of Trump operating in the public arena as it relates to the presidency.

“I think that there is a very real question about whether it is possible to fact-check Donald Trump live on television,” said Jane Hall, author of “Politics and the Media: Intersections and New Directions” and an American University journalism professor. “He has confounded many different formats.”

False claims abounded

An estimated 51.3 million people watched the unusual June debate, according to a preliminary estimate by the Nielsen company. The first time these candidates met onstage in 2020, there were 73 million viewers.

Bash and Tapper held firm to their intentions , which CNN stressed was its own call and not part of the debate rules negotiated with the campaign. The journalists avoided follow-ups, though they had to restate questions a number of times when candidates ignored them.

What to know about the 2024 Election

• Democracy: American democracy has overcome big stress tests since 2020. More challenges lie ahead in 2024.
• AP’s Role: The Associated Press is the most trusted source of information on election night, with a history of accuracy dating to 1848. Learn more.
• Read the latest: Follow AP’s complete coverage of this year’s election.

CNN’s Daniel Dale offered a report in which he said Trump had made at least 30 false claims, and Biden at least nine. But it wasn’t shown on the air until more than an hour after the debate ended — just shy of midnight on the East Coast.

“I wish the CNN moderators did more fact-checking, letting the audience know when things are said that are flatly false,” columnist Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times wrote on X. “Not sure how it helps for a platform to transmit falsehoods disguised as facts.”

Bill Adair, a professor of journalism and public policy at Duke University who founded Politifact , said it’s extraordinarily difficult to balance on-air corrections with the need to keep a conversation moving.

That said, “for them to be completely silent, I think, was going too far,” said Adair, who is no longer affiliated with Politifact. When Trump falsely claimed during an abortion discussion that Democrats supported killing live babies, one of the moderators should have stepped in, he said.

CNN expressed no regrets and was pleased with Bash and Tapper’s performances. “Like a big game, when no one is talking about the referees the day after, we did our jobs,” one executive said privately.

What of the production itself?

The debate ran smoothly as a television production, particularly in comparison to the first 2020 debate that moderator Chris Wallace recalled Thursday as a “disaster,” and a poorly conceived Trump town hall in 2023 that was a factor in then-CNN chief Chris Licht’s ouster.

It’s not that Biden did not dispute Trump’s statements; he did at least 10 times, according to the debate transcript.

“You’re lying,” Biden told Trump during an abortion discussion. “Every single thing he said is a lie, every single one,” he said about veterans. “What he’s telling you is simply not true,” he said about the Capitol insurrection. “He has no idea what the hell he’s talking about,” he said when the topic was NATO. “It is simply a lie,” he said about Trump on Ukraine.

And there was the familiar Biden phrase: “I’ve never heard so much malarkey in my life.”

Yet the claims often lacked specificity, and a feeling of missed opportunity lingered. Biden “let every fastball hanging over the plate get by,” MSNBC host Joe Scarborough said on Friday.

Politifact pointed out 15 false statements made by Trump and another one — that Biden had allowed millions of people illegally into the country from jails and mental institutions — that it classified as a “pants on fire” lie. It cited three false statements by Biden.

The New York Times chronicled 20 false statements by Trump, with another 21 it said were either misleading, lacked context or lacked evidence. Its fact check pointed out no false statements by Biden, with 11 meeting the other characterizations. The Associated Press corrected 11 statements by Trump, four by Biden.

The Washington Post wrote that Trump “confidently relied on false assertions that have been debunked repeatedly” while Biden “stretched the truth occasionally.”

Some journalists, like Dale, fact-checked online during the debate, yet that required viewers to specifically pay attention to a second screen. Adair noted that at Duke, educators have experimented with ways to fact-check on television screens in real-time, yet automated efforts have largely failed and those led by humans require great speed.

Duke conducted one experiment with on-screen fact checks at a North Carolina television station in 2020, he said.

As yet, he said, he has seen little interest among television networks in doing anything similar this election cycle.

David Bauder writes about media for The Associated Press. Follow him at http://twitter.com/dbauder .

Here's the biggest news you missed this weekend

Debate takeaways: Biden confirms some voter fears as Trump leans into grievances

ATLANTA — President Joe Biden failed to mitigate his biggest liability in his re-election bid at the CNN debate Thursday, while former President Donald Trump doubled down on his grievances and skipped past opportunities to cover his own vulnerabilities.

Biden's biggest weakness — voter concerns about his age and sharpness, according to polls — was on display throughout the more than 90-minute debate as he struggled through answers and failed to deliver the energetic performance allies believe he needed. And Trump had no new answers for voters about the issues on which he's weakest, including his felony conviction, his role in overturning Roe v. Wade and his actions on Jan. 6, 2021.

The first showdown between Biden, 81, and Trump, 78, in 2024 comes early in the election year, giving voters an opportunity to see the president and his challenger side-by-side. Here's what they saw — and what it means for the campaign.

Biden struggles out of the gate

The first presidential debate is often rough for incumbents . It was particularly rough for the 81-year-old Biden out of the gate.

When he began Thursday night, his voice was hoarse, his throat didn't sound clear, and he started out speaking softly and struggling through some of his responses. His voice cracked throughout the debate. Biden's campaign later s a id he ha d a cold .

In one particularly notable gaffe, Biden stumbled through a response to an early question about rising costs, ending with: “We finally beat Medicare.” The Trump campaign mockingly highlighted the clip on his social media platform, Truth Social.

During a clash over immigration, Biden stammered through some words while expressing his support for tougher border laws, to which Trump responded: “I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence. I don’t think he knows what he said, either.” Trump repeatedly accused Biden of implementing a weak border policy that he said has worsened crime in the U.S.

Even Biden’s closest allies said it was a bad night for him. “It was a really disappointing debate performance from Joe Biden,” former Biden communications director Kate Bedingfield said on CNN.

Biden did find his footing when he was speaking about foreign policy, protecting NATO and standing up to Russia. He also tore into Trump over Jan. 6 and blasted him for saying there were “very fine people” on both sides when neo-Nazis marched in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017. Later, when he was asked whether he has a vision to protect Social Security, Biden said: "Yes, make the very wealthy begin to pay their fair share."

Toward the end, Biden defended running for re-election at his age when the moderators asked him to address voter concerns. “This guy’s three years younger and a lot less competent,” Biden said.

Trump descends into grievances

Trump's long-standing tendency to retreat into airing personal grievances, often at the expense of defending himself or his record, reared up throughout the evening.

When CNN’s Jake Tapper and Dana Bash asked him to address voter concerns about his actions on Jan. 6, when pro-Trump rioters stormed the Capitol, Trump took the opportunity to blast the House Jan. 6 “un-select committee” and its “two horrible Republicans.” When Biden brought up Trump’s alleged affair with Stormy Daniels, Trump took the bait: “I didn’t have sex with a porn star, No. 1,” he said.

Trump was also evasive when he was asked repeatedly whether he will accept the 2024 election result.

“If it’s a fair and legal and good election, absolutely,” Trump said, repeating his false claim that the 2020 election result was illegitimate: “The fraud and everything else was ridiculous.” In response, Biden mocked him. “You’re a whiner,” he said. “You can’t stand a loss; something snapped in you when you lost last time.”

Ten minutes into the debate, Trump launched a groundless claim that Biden is weaponizing American justice against him. He called it "a system that was rigged and disgusting," as he faces criminal charges across multiple jurisdictions brought by independent prosecutors. Toward the end, Trump made the same allusion again: “He indicted me because I was his opponent.”

Trump also brought up the Russia investigation — “Russia, Russia, Russia,” as he called it — as well as Biden’s son Hunter Biden’s laptop computer.

And Trump leaned into his promise of retribution if he wins the presidency this fall. “He could be a convicted felon as soon as he gets out of office,” Trump said of Biden. Trump also said, "My retribution is my success."

Clashes over abortion, taxes and more define the policy stakes

Trump embraced his role in appointing the three "great" Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade while repeatedly — and falsely — claiming that there was complete consensus about ending the federal right and returning abortion policy to legislators in 2022.

“Everybody wanted to get it back to the states,” Trump said — polls show voters supported Roe v. Wade by large margins. “This is something everybody wanted.” He added that “every legal scholar wanted it that way” — many of them disagreed.

And Trump embraced an argument popular among social conservatives, arguing that Democrats were the real radicals on abortion by refusing to support federal restrictions. After Trump claimed that Biden supports abortions "after birth," Biden retorted by saying he favors only restoration of Roe v. Wade, which allowed for some limitations. “We are not for late-term abortion. Period. Period. Period,” Biden said.

Trump focused significant attention on the border and immigration, criticizing rising migration during Biden's term.

And he also called for extending his administration's 2017 tax cuts, which expire at the end of 2025. Biden promised, repeatedly, to raise taxes on the rich, saying Trump “rewarded the wealthy — he had the largest tax cut in American history.”

Biden’s prepared zingers

Biden’s sharpest moments came when he delivered what appeared to be prepared one-liners at Trump, often calling him a liar or a felon and frequently dismissing his claims with a dismissive grin.

“The only person on this stage who’s a convicted felon is the man I’m looking at right now,” Biden said, drawing a nod from Trump.

When Trump attacked his record on immigration, Biden said, “Once again, he’s exaggerating, he’s lying.” His other lines included: “Every single thing he said is a lie. Every single one.” And: “I’ve never heard so much malarkey in my whole life.”

At one moment, Biden attacked Trump for calling service members “losers” and “suckers,” according to reporting by The Atlantic . “My son was not a loser. He was not a sucker. You’re the sucker. You’re the loser,” Biden said. (Trump responded by questioning the magazine’s credibility.)

When Trump said Biden has “become like a Palestinian,” Biden replied: “I’ve never heard so much foolishness.”

And Trump brought some prepared lines of his own, including one at the end, when he argued the U.S. is “a failing nation, but it’s not going to be failing anymore — we’re going to make it great again.”

“We’re living in hell,” Trump said. “The whole country is exploding because of you.”

Sahil Kapur is a senior national political reporter for NBC News.

Making educational experiences better for everyone.

Immersive learning for 25 languages

Marketplace for millions of educator-created resources

Fast, easy, reliable language certification

Fun educational games for kids

Comprehensive K-12 personalized learning

Trusted tutors for 300+ subjects

35,000+ worksheets, games, and lesson plans

Adaptive learning for English vocabulary

Six Takeaways From the First Presidential Debate

In a testy, personal clash, President Biden failed to ease worries about his age, Donald Trump forcefully made his case (with wild claims and exaggerations) and the moderators held their fact-checking fire.

The debate stage in Atlanta on Thursday night. Credit... Kenny Holston/The New York Times

Supported by

• Share full article

By Shane Goldmacher and Jonathan Swan

Shane Goldmacher reported from the debate in Atlanta, and Jonathan Swan from Washington.

• June 28, 2024

President Biden struggled through his first debate of the 2024 campaign against Donald J. Trump, meandering and mumbling through answers as the former president pressed his case for a second term with limited resistance from his rival.

They disagreed on abortion, inflation, climate change, foreign affairs and immigration. But the sharpest contrast was in their presentation.

Mr. Trump was confident and forceful, even as he let loose a stream of misleading attacks and falsehoods. Mr. Biden spoke with a hoarse and halting voice, closing his eyes occasionally to gather thoughts that sometimes couldn’t be corralled. Democratic anxiety rose by the minute. About halfway through, people close to Mr. Biden put out word that he had a cold.

Mr. Trump relentlessly hammered Mr. Biden on areas of vulnerability, sending exaggerations and embellishments — he was the “greatest” and his opponent the “worst” — flying unchecked through the audience-free CNN studio in Atlanta.

Here are six takeaways:

Biden stumbled over his words as he answered a question on the national debt.

“We’d be able to wipe out his debt. We’d be able to help make sure that all those things we need to do child care, elder care, making sure that we continue to strengthen our health care system, making sure that we’re able to make every single solitary person eligible for what I’ve been able to do with the — with, with the Covid, excuse me. With dealing with everything we have to do with — look, if — we finally beat Medicare.” “Thank you, President Biden. President Trump.” “He was right. He did beat Medicaid, beat it to death, and he’s destroying Medicare.”

The debate exposed Biden’s biggest weakness.

Mr. Biden’s allies desperately hoped he could turn in a commanding performance to calm voters’ persistent concerns about his age.

We are having trouble retrieving the article content.

Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and  log into  your Times account, or  subscribe  for all of The Times.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

Already a subscriber?  Log in .

Want all of The Times?  Subscribe .

Advertisement