Teaching English as a Foreign Language for Dummies (39 page)

Knowing Your Modals

A
modal verb
is a kind of auxiliary verb because its purpose is to help the main verb. You can’t just use a modal verb by itself because it doesn’t have a great deal of meaning on its own.

Modal verbs don’t change like other verbs do either. So you don’t add ‘s’ at the end when you say he/she/it in the present simple tense, you can’t add

‘ed’ in the past simple tense and there’s no gerund form of the verb with ‘ing’

at the end either.

Identifying modal verbs

Perhaps the easiest way I can help you identify the English modal verbs is to write them all down. So here’s the complete list:

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✓

can

✓

could

✓

may

✓

might

✓

must

✓

shall

✓

should

✓

ought to

✓

will

✓

would

Even though you can create a short sentence with just a modal verb and no main verb, the main verb is understood because of the rest of the interchange: A: Yes, I can.

B: You can what?

A: Go to the office, of course.

When you put all these modal verbs into a sentence you find that they go between the subject, words such as ‘you’ and ‘we’, and the main verb, as shown in Table 17-1.

Table 17-1

Sentence Structure with Modal Verbs

Subject

Modal Verb

Main Verb

Object

The tourists

should

go

home

They

might

follow

us

She

will not

like

that

In questions, the word order is different though, so the subject word goes between the modal verb and the main verb. Table 17-2 offers some examples.

Table 17-2

Sentence Structure with Modal Verbs and Objects

Question word

Modal Verb

Subject

Main Verb

Object

When

should

the tourists

go

home?

How

might

they

follow

us?

Why

won’t

she

like

that?

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249

When you add
have
to a modal verb and then use a past participle (the last column in verb tables) it shows that the action refers to the past: They must
have
loved it.

She couldn’t
have
watched the movie.

So the order is: subject plus modal verb plus
have
plus past participle.

Comparing the modal verbs

and what they do

So how do you explain the way to use modal verbs? Well you can divide them up into specific functions.

Showing degrees of probability

At times you aren’t certain about something happening, but you want to make a stab at saying what is the probability or likelihood of it coming to pass. Some of the modal verbs come in really handy in this case.

You can represent each of these modals of probability in the form of a percentage:

✓

Must:
He must be happy. It’s about 95 per cent certain he is.

✓

Might:
He might be happy. It’s about 60 per cent certain he is.

✓

May:
He may be happy. It’s about 60 per cent certain he is.

✓

Could:
He could be happy. It’s about 40 per cent certain he is.

✓

Can’t:
He can’t be happy. It’s about 95 per cent certain he isn’t.

Notice that
must
and
can’t
function as opposites here. You use
can
to show ability or permission but not probability.

Expressing the future with ‘will’

When you refer to future time you can use
will
, although
to be going to
and tenses such as the present simple and continuous are also possible. (I cover these tenses in Chapter 16.)

In a language course, you usually start with
will,
often called the future simple, to teach students how to express the future because it’s pretty easy to use. You just put
will
before the
infinitive
(original or unchanged form of the verb) and that’s it. For example: I
will
start tomorrow.

Although some people still use ‘shall’ in the future simple, it sounds a little old fashioned so you really don’t need to teach it for this purpose.

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Of course there are other ways to use
will,
which aren’t really focused on the future. You can use
will
for decisions you make at the moment of speaking.

Take this sentence for example: You relax and I’ll answer the door this time.

The action of answering the door is really present, not future, but it’s a spontaneous decision, not something planned in advance. By comparison, saying

‘I’m going to’ sounds a bit more planned.

On the other hand, the same sentence without the contraction (‘I will answer’

instead of ‘I’ll answer’) can indicate that the speaker is really determined or is making a promise.

Giving and gaining permission

Sometimes you need to say whether it’s okay to do something or not. In this case you quite likely use
can
or
may
and
could
if you’re asking a question.

‘
May’
sounds a little more formal than the other two.

Could/may I use your bathroom?

Of course you can.

Offering

In English there are various ways of offering something; using
would
is one of them, as in:
Would
you like a cup of tea?

Or if you’re using ‘I’ or ‘we’ you can use
shall
instead:
Shall
I/we make you a cup of tea?

Talking about ability

When you want to say whether or not you’re able to do something, you use
can
or
could
. The difference between the two is that
could
also refers to things you were able to do in the past. In this sentence for example
could
and
cannot
reflect ability at different stages of life, childhood and the present day respectively: I
could
speak my father’s language at the age of four but I
cannot
really remember it now.

Expressing degrees of obligation

Various modal verbs indicate whether you really must do something or whether you have a choice of doing it or not. For a very strong obligation you use
must
: You
mustn’t
smoke here. It’s forbidden.

Have to
is synonymous with
must
in positive sentences except that you tend to use
have to
when someone else’s authority is involved: ‘The boss says you
have to
stop that now.’

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251

The problem is that in the negative they no longer mean the same things: The boss says you
mustn’t
stop (meaning don’t stop).

The boss says you don’t
have to
stop (meaning stop if you want to).

From time to time though, there’s a choice or a weak obligation. In that case you can use
should
or
ought to
: You
should
go on a diet. In fact you
ought to
cut out sugar completely.

You use the same words for giving advice.

Using ‘would’

Would
is generally used to show that a situation is imaginary or hypothetical rather than a present fact: ‘I
would
sit down but there are no more seats’.

And
would
is used as the past of
will
too. So when you report what someone else said about the future, you can use
would
:

Bob: I’ll go to the post office for you.

John: What did Bob say?

Gary: Bob said that he
would
go to the post office for you. He’s gone now.

You can even use
would
for reminiscing about past habits: ‘As teenagers we
would
regularly skip school’.

Sorting Out Phrasal Verbs

Phrasal verbs
are quite informal expressions that include a verb and at least one preposition.

The meaning isn’t always obvious, which is one reason students struggle with them. For example ‘pick up’ is not too obscure if you understand the individual verb ‘pick’ and the preposition ‘up’ but ‘keep up’ is much harder to guess.

Here are a few more examples of phrasal verbs:

✓

ask someone out*

✓

back someone up*

✓

call something off*

✓

drop out

✓

end up

✓

fall out

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✓

grow out of *

✓

hold on

✓

keep something up*

✓

pass away

✓

run out of*

✓

show off

✓

turn up

✓

wear off

The phrasal verbs in the list marked with * are also transitive, which means that they need a direct object. So basically, you can’t just say ‘I’ve grown out of’. You have to add
what
you’ve grown out of. Likewise, you can’t say ‘I asked out’ because you need to say
who
you asked out.

For most phrasal verbs synonyms exist that are little more formal. For example, ‘to back someone up’ means to support them and ‘to keep something up’

means to maintain it. Students tend to latch onto the formal words because they translate better into their own languages (especially Latin languages) but then they don’t sound conversational enough when they speak. So remember that, given a choice, most native speakers opt for a phrasal verb in everyday life.

Note that some phrasal verbs are separated by ‘someone’ or ‘something’. This conveniently brings us to another difficulty; phrasal verbs can be separable or inseparable. I deal with this in the following section. The other phrasal verbs in the list are all intransitive so you can’t put an object in the middle.

Following the rules about separable and

inseparable phrasals

Basically, if you can put ‘someone’ or ‘something’ between the verb and the preposition in a phrasal verb, it’s separable and
transitive,
which means it requires a direct object. (I talk about objects in Chapter 15.) This doesn’t necessarily mean you have to separate it, it just means that you can. For example:

I have to
call
the party
off
.

I have to
call
off
the party.

If you can’t put ’something’ or ‘someone’ in the middle of a phrasal verb, it’s both intransitive and inseparable, which means that you can’t separate the verb and the preposition: intransitive verbs have no direct object. You don’t need ‘someone’
or ‘something’ for it to make sense. For example:
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253

The van
broke down
.

She
got up
.

So every time you teach a phrasal verb you need to tell the students whether or not it’s separable. The most common way to do this is by writing
s/o
(someone) or
s/t
(something) into the phrasal verb on the board: To call
s/t
off (pv) (I also include
pv
here to show that it is a phrasal verb.)

In the examples of separable phrasal verbs, I put the object in the middle between the verb and preposition. However, at times you can use an object pronoun instead of a noun.

If the sentence contains an object pronoun instead of a noun, put the pronoun between the phrasal verb and preposition, nowhere else: I have to
call
it
off
, not I have to call off it.

I need to
back
him
up
, not I have to back up him.

In some cases, a separable phrasal verb must have the object in the middle whether it’s a pronoun or not. The phrasal verb ‘to tell apart’ works in this way: Can you
tell
the twins
apart
? Not, Can you tell apart the twins?

Some transitive phrasal verbs (the ones that need an object) aren’t separable. So for example ‘to put up with’ needs an object but you can put the object only after ‘with’:

Why do
you put up with
John’s behaviour?

Finally, some phrasal verbs need not one object but two. ‘To do out of’ needs

‘someone’ and ‘something’ to make sense. For example:

That crooked boss
did me out of
my wages!

So here, one object goes after the verb and the other after the preposition.

If you have to use a phrasal verb in a passive sentence, just keep the verb and preposition together, regardless:

He complained that he had
been done out of
his wages by the boss.

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Teaching phrasal verbs

With all these rules about phrasal verbs, it may sound a bit daunting teaching them. So here are a couple of tips.