MAKING CONVERSATION

THE TIME IN ENGLISH

This may seem very basic, bus students in high levels still make mistakes regarding the time. Obviously, we all can resort to the "American" way o telling the time, which is far easier: 3.40pm is read as "three forty pm" but many Englih people say "twenty to four".

PREPOSITIONS

We start today a topic which seems to be neverending... In other words, no matter what lever of English you have or the time you've been studying it, there's something about prepositions that makes us make mistakes.

Asyou know, there are several kinds of prepositions: prepositions of time, prepositions of place, prepositions that follow certain verbs, prepositions that follow certain adjectives, etc.

Let's take this picture as an inntroduction to the topic and from here we'll study the different prepositions separatly according to the group they belong to.

Now, "in, on, at" are the three most important prepositions in English. They can refer to either time or place. Their use is quite tricky, especially for Spanish students of English.You may want to have a look at the picture below. It provides you with a general idea of what these prepositions are used for.

On a different note, verbs can also be followed by prepositions. Have a look at the following picture.

WRITING ESSAYS

Writing a good essay might seem easier than it actually is. Many students think that just translation from Spanish is enough, and thus, they repeat structures or use Spanish structures that are not correct in English.

You might want to have a look at the picture below to learn some useful expressions that can help you with your writing assigments.Remember, the key idea is not to repeat.

ENGLISH WORD ORDER

Quite unlike Spanish, English has a fixed word order that many students often forget when speaking or writing.Find below a picture that summarizes where the different words in English should be placed.

COLLECTIVE NOUNS

Collective nouns are names for a collection or a number of people or things. Words like group, herd, and array are collective noun examples. Here, we’ll take a closer look at collective nouns, and provide even more examples, placing them in context so you can gain a greater understanding of how they work.

Have a look at the following:

PUNCTUATION

Have you ever wondered how all the symbols used in writing are called? Find below a picture with some of them...

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

For my advanced students, "crime and punishment" is a topic they usually feel very strongly about. Here is a picture with some of the most common words and expressions to talk about crime and criminals. 

PRONUNCIATION

One of the most difficult parts students face when speaking is their wrong pronunciation of the -ed ending of the regular verbs. Spanish students, for example, tend to pronounce the "e" before the "d" and this is a mistake students should try to avoid.

Find below a picture with the three different forms of pronouncing the "-ed" ending. I hope this help to pronouce the regular verbs correctly. 😊😊

MODAL VERBS

Here we are again after the Christmas break. I hope you've ended and started the year wonderfully. We're going to start the year talking about modal verbs.

THE MEANING OF MODALITY

In the sentence It is raining the speaker expresses a proposition and at the same time commits himself to the truth of that proposition. However, if he says It may be raining, It can’t be raining, It must be raining, he is not committing himself whole-heartedly to the truth of the proposition, but he is rather modifying his commitment to some degree by expressing a judgement or assessment to the truth of the situation. This is an important choice which speakers face every time they formulate a declarative clause.

For these considerations, modality is to be understood as a semantic category which covers such notions as possibility, probability, necessity, volition, obligation, ability or permission. These are the basic modalities; however, the concept of modality has been extended to cover other notions such as doubt, wish, regret or desire. Any of these notions indicates that the speaker is presenting the content of a proposition not as a simple assertion of a fact but rather coloured by personal attitude:

That man over there is the President (assertion)
That man over there may be / can’t possibly be / could perhaps be the President (modalised assertion).

There are two main types of modality:
* Intrinsic / non-epistemic: modals which express possibility, obligation, ability and volition, which involve some kind of intrinsic human control over events.
* Extrinsic / epistemic: modals which express possibility, necessity and probability, which do not primarily involve human control of events but do typically involve human judgement of what is or is not likely to happen.

The Realisations of Modal Meanings

Modal meanings can be realised by both verbal and non-verbal items. By the latter we mean modal disjuncts (make comments on the rest of the sentence) (probably, possibly, surely, hopefully), modal adjectives (possible, probably, likely), modal nouns (possibility, probability, likelihood), non-assertive items (any), fall-rise intonation or hesitation.

In this thread, we will only focus on the former, where we find the modal auxiliaries.

General Characteristics of Modal Auxiliaries

It is time now to move into the explanation of the other three categories of auxiliary verbs. However, it is quite relevant to introduce beforehand the main features regarding modals, semi-modals and lexical auxiliaries:

1) In first place, they express a variety of moods or attitudes towards an action, which is known as modality.
2) They have no inflexion for the third person singular, except for have to and those lexical auxiliaries that begin with the verb be.
3) They cannot co-occur in a verb phrase, that is, you cannot say *You should can. Nevertheless, some regional or dialectical variation allows combinations such as might could or might should.
4) Since they express moods or attitudes they may vary from one region to another, as we have seen before, thus increasing somehow its difficulty. Nevertheless, they tend to follow a series of standard behaviours that we will see later on.
5) They have not got any non-finite form; for example, you cannot say *to can, or *musting or even *canned.
6) These types of auxiliaries are followed in the verb phrase by a bare infinitive, for example: She should visit the door. However, we find some exceptions as it is the case of have to, ought to, used to and the lexical auxiliaries that follow this structure be bound to / apt to / likely to, etc.

Once stated the fundamental features characterising modals, semi-modals and lexical auxiliaries, we are going to centre our attention on modal auxiliaries.

Find below a picture that summarizes the main uses of each modal verb.