Daily – 7

An errand is a small practical task, usually involving going somewhere: going to the bank, picking up a prescription, buying groceries, dropping off a package, etc.

Very useful patterns are:

• I have a few errands to run.
• I need to run some errands after work.
• I spent the morning running errands.
• I have a million errands to run. — very natural exaggeration: I have lots of little things to do.

For your active vocabulary, I would memorize the whole chunk:

run errands / have errands to run

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This has been a really hard week.

= From the beginning of this week up to now, the week has been difficult.

Compare:

• It has been a really hard week. → the week is still continuing, or you’re looking back on it from the present.
• It was a really hard week. → you treat the week as finished and belonging to the past.
• Last week was really hard. → definitely finished → Past Simple.

One useful nuance: even late on Friday, someone might say “It’s been a really hard week”, although the working week is practically over. The Present Perfect works because the speaker is summing up their experience as it affects them now.

“This has been a really hard week.” points more directly to the current week. The word this identifies it: this week, the week we are in now.

“It has been a really hard week.” uses it to refer to the week from context. It often sounds a little more conversational and reflective, as if you are summing up your experience.

For example:

Monday was stressful, Tuesday was even worse, and today has been exhausting. This has been a really hard week.

Here, this emphasizes the particular week.

“How are you doing?”
“Not great. It’s been a really hard week.”

Here, it sounds very natural because the speaker is simply describing their recent experience.

So, roughly:

This has been a really hard week → focus on this particular week.
It has been a really hard week → focus more on your experience of the week.

But the difference is subtle, and in ordinary conversation they are often interchangeable.

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