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how
When used as a question word, "how" often comes at the beginning of the sentence to ask about the method or the amount of something. In some cases, it can be used to introduce an indirect question or a statement about a process (e.g., "She explained how it works"), where it acts as a connector rather than a direct question.
💬Casual Conversation
🎬Tuesday afternoon, Fatima is in the library while Maya is at home.
Maya
Chloe's totally spacing out. How is she even passing this class?
Fatima
She isn't. She's barely scraping by.
💡
Maya uses 'how' to question the manner or means by which Chloe is succeeding despite her lack of focus. The phrase 'spacing out' is a common idiom meaning to lose concentration, and 'scraping by' is a phrasal verb meaning to barely manage to survive or succeed.