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In this unit, I learned about modals, phrasal verbs, and passive voice. I struggled with this unit quite a bit because of the subtle difference in meaning of modals, the different types of phrasal verbs, and the conversions between active and passive voice depending on tense. Each of these language points will be very difficult for students to learn and I believe that students will need much practice with each to understand them.
Modals are challenging to understand because of the many meanings that each modal can possess and overlapping meanings. For example, the modals could and may both convey a polite request. ‘Could I use your phone?’ compared to ‘May I use your phone?’ are both politely requesting to use the phone, but which is more polite? I felt that both were very similar and had to say both sentences out loud and imagine using them in a different context before I concluded that ‘May I use your phone?’ was more polite than ‘Could I use your phone?’. Although some modals are very clear in meaning when used in a particular context, when one can use different modals to convey the same underlying meaning with additional minor meanings, things can become very tricky.
This unit also covers relative clauses. I learned that there are defining relative clauses and non-defining relative clauses. Defining relative clauses do not use commas since the relative clause is essential information needed within the sentence to communicate the intended message. On the other hand, non-defining relative clauses are enclosed within commas because the information is not crucial and can be omitted without changing the meaning of the sentence. It came as a surprise to me that I learned something new, which is that defining relative clauses do not use commas. It is a significant and visible difference that I think will help students distinguish between defining and non-defining relative clauses.
Phrasal verbs or multi-word verbs can be somewhat tricky for students since there are so many combinations compared to regular verbs. As the reading stated, it will just take a great deal of time and practice for the students to understand and naturally use phrasal verbs. Additionally, passive voice is another tricky language point for students to learn because of the form conversions between active voice and passive voice. While the tense stays the same between active and passive voice, the problem is that the form of the tense does not remain the same. The auxiliary verb ‘be’, which is the tense holder in the passive voice, form changes depending on the tense of the sentence. I had a hard time converting active voice sentences to passive voice, so I can imagine it will be even harder for the students.
