Join me and Xosé as we study modal verbs. See you in class!
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In this class you are going to learn all about the English modal verbs. They are:
can
could
may
might
must
have to
ought
shall
should
will
would
Now, immediately we are going to eliminate five of them. We are going to eliminate will and would because we use them to make the future tense and the conditional tense, which we study in other classes, and we are going to eliminate may, ought and shall because they are very unpopular in modern English. An analysis by the University College London shows that they were not very common to begin with and their usage has declined dramatically since the 1960s.
So that leaves us with six modals, that are the "core" modals in English. There are other modals and semi-modals such as "dare", "need" and "had better" but we are not going to be talking about them in this class.
Hopefully that explains everything you need to know about the core modals in English. See you in class!