Chapter 17

Exploring More Important

Verb Structures

In This Chapter

▶ Helping out the main verb with a modal

▶ Adding prepositions for phrasal verbs

▶ Using ‘if’ and ‘when’ with conditionals

I

n Chapter 16 I talk about the various tenses in English, which is really the

bulk of the grammar you teach students. However, a few other grammar

areas tend to give learners the shivers but with a little insight you can make

them manageable and maybe even fun. So in this chapter I tell you about

modal and phrasal verbs as well as the conditionals.

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: