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Talk to your students about things they can do and practice using can in the target structure because this will be the easiest word to start off with (see our CAN worksheets).
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Some of the words you want to focus on in this section are can, could, may, and might. Modals are often used to talk about abilities and possibilities or lack of them. This may seem like a long and confusing introduction but it is best after the pronunciation practice to simply write the modals and their rules off to the side of the board for reference.Ībility/Inability and Possibility/Impossibility Additionally they always require another verb because they cannot act as the main verb in a sentence and they only have present tense forms so unlike the word swim, there is no past tense form for modals. For example “ He should ~.” is correct, while “ He work.” is incorrect. Unlike most verbs, no -s is needed to form the third person singular. In your introduction you can cover some rules that apply to all modal verbs. Obviously there are no images that can help students understand the meanings of these words so you can do pronunciation practice simply by pointing to the words on the board. This may include can, could, may, might, must, will, would, shall, should, and ought to but, depending on the level of your class, you can narrow it down to those you feel are most important. But in ordinary speaking, most of us are not so precise, and so you could often say one or the other and mean the exact same thing.Start by introducing all the modal verbs you wish to talk about. that you already have a ticket for the event - than the second one, which could indicate an intention to go more than having taken action to go (i.e. The first one could suggest you've already made arrangements to go - i.e. The meaning here is much more dependent on the context than the first one.Īs for the last two sentences, in many cases they would mean the same thing. For example, maybe I believe you're not hungry because I just saw you eat, or maybe I'm encouraging you not to eat when you appear tempted to have a piece of cake. 'You're not hungry' is less specific and so it could be used in many situations. Perhaps I've just seen you eat a lot of food, for example, and so now it's hard for me to believe that you are still hungry. If I say 'You can't be hungry' to you, it means that I think it's not possible that you are hungry. Modals – deduction (past): Grammar test 2 I thought I saw Adnan this morning but it couldn't have been him – he's in Greece this week.ĭo this exercise to test your grammar again. We use can't have and couldn't have + past participle when we think it's not possible that something happened. Could have is also possible in this context but less common. Police think the suspect may have left the country using a fake passport. I think I might have left the air conditioning on. We can use might have or may have + past participle when we think it's possible that something happened. The door was locked and nothing was broken. Who told the newspapers about the prime minister's plans? It must have been someone close to him. We use must have + past participle when we feel sure about what happened. This page focuses on making deductions about the past. The modal verb we choose shows how certain we are about the possibility. We can use modal verbs for deduction – guessing if something is true using the available information. Modals – deduction (past): Grammar test 1 How did she fail that exam? She can't have studied very much. We don't know for sure that Alex broke the coffee table.
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Look at these examples to see how must, might, may, could, can't and couldn't are used in the past.Īn earthquake? That must have been terrifying!