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One of the things I learned about in this unit is modal auxiliary verbs. Modals are used before other verbs to add meaning to the main verb. They can express a number of ideas such as obligation, possibility, permission, ability, and advice. Modals are also used to express differing degrees of formality. I also learned that there are two voices used in English -- active and passive. The active voice emphasizes the person or thing that performs an action; whereas the passive voice emphasizes the recipient of the action or even the action itself. For example, "The cat chased the mouse." is an active voice; whereas, "The mouse was chased by the cat." would be passive. I also learned about the three categories of clauses: independent, dependent, and relative. An independent clause can stand alone as a sentence because it has a main subject and a verb. A dependent clause, however, is not a complete sentence and must be accompanied by an independent clause. A relative clause is a kind of dependent clause. It has a subject and a verb, but can't stand alone as a sentence. It is sometimes called an adjective clause because it functions like an adjective -- it gives more information about the noun. And lastly, I learned about phrasal verbs, of which there are three basic types. Phrasal verbs consist of a verb plus one or two particles (adverb, preposition). The particle when coupled with a verb gives new meaning to the verb. For example, "look up", which means to consult a reference book (look a word up in a dictionary). Here the verb "look" is coupled with the particle "up" to create a new meaning for the verb "look". "Look up" is now like a new vocabulary word for students to learn.