Gibson, Georgia TESOL Online & Teaching English Jobs

The grammar concepts modal auxiliary verbs, passive / active voice, phrasal verbs, and relative clauses were covered in Unit 18. First, modal auxiliary verbs are used to add meaning to the main verb in a sentence. Examples of true modals are: may, might, must, can, could, should, would, will, and shall. There are also "semi-modals" such as need to, have to, have got to, be able to, and ought to. Modals are used to convey meanings such as requests, permission, necessity, obligation, advice, degree of certainty, suggestions, and preference. True modals do not change form to agree with the subject, and they are followed by the base form of the main verb. They do not require the use of the auxiliary verb "do/does" to ask a question ("Should I get a haircut?") Most semi-modals do change form (I need to / He needs to) when they are added to the base form of the main verb, and they often require the auxiliary "do" to form questions ("Do you need to take a break?"). Passive voice (as opposed to active voice) makes the subject of a sentence the receiver of the action of the verb rather than the doer of the action. For example, "Steve was stung by a bee" is written in the passive voice, but "A bee stung Steve" is written in the active voice. A passive voice sentence can be formed from an active voice sentence by making the object into the subject of the sentence, writing the appropriate tense of the verb "be" (to match the tense of the action verb in the original sentence) and writing the main verb in its past participle form. The basic action of the sentence is the same, but the focus is either on the bee (in the active example above) or on Steve (in the passive example). Phrasal verbs are made up of more than one word, usually the main verb and a particle such as a preposition or an adverb or both. There are three types: intransitive (no direct object), transitive separable (a direct object that can come between the verb and the particle, unless the object is a pronoun), and transitive inseparable (the object must come after the particle / particles). Some examples of phrasal verbs are as follows: "Jenny threw up last night because she felt ill" (threw up = intransitive). "I have to turn my essay in before 5:00 today" (turn ___ in = transitive separable). "Stanley does not get along with his classmates" (get along with = transitive inseparable). Finally, relative clauses, sometimes called adjective clauses because they modify nouns, can be categorized as definitive and non-definitive. Definitive relative clauses are necessary for the meaning of the sentence because they include important information about the noun they modify. They are not set apart with commas. Non-definitive clauses give more information about the noun they modify but can be removed without changing the overall meaning of the sentence. They are set apart with commas. An example of a definitive relative clause is: "The girl who is wearing a blue dress is my sister." If "who is wearing a blue dress" were removed, we would not know which of the girls the speaker was pointing out as his sister. An example of a non-definitive relative clause is: "My sister, whose favorite color is blue, is twelve years old." The fact that her favorite color is blue does add information to the sentence, but since the main point of the sentence is that she is twelve years old, that clause can be removed without changing the overall meaning of the sentence. English students can learn the above concepts with careful and deliberate teaching and a lot of exposure and conversational practice to become comfortable using them appropriately.