How to teach Modal auxiliary

A modal verb

A modal verb (also modal, modal auxiliary verb, or modal auxiliary) is a type of verb that is used to indicate modality – that is, likelihood, ability, permission, and obligation

Examples include the English verbs can/could, may/might, must, will/would, and shall/should. In English ,modal verbs are often distinguished as a class based on certain grammatical properties.

Function of modal auxiliary

A modal auxiliary verb gives information about the function of the main verb that it governs. Modals have a wide variety of communicative functions, but these functions can generally be related to a scale ranging from possibility ("may") to necessity ("must")

 

 

 

The verbs in this list all have the following characteristics:

They are auxiliary verbs, which means they allow subject-auxiliary inversion and can take the negation not,

They convey functional meaning,

They are defective insofar as they cannot be inflected, nor do they appear in non-finite form (i.e. not as infinitives, gerunds, or participles),

They are nevertheless always finite and thus appear as the root verb in their clause, and

They subcategorize for an infinitive, i.e. they take an infinitive as their complement

The verbs/expressions dare, ought to, had better, and need not behave like modal auxiliaries to a large extent, although they are not productive (in linguistics, the extent commonly or frequently used) in the role to the same extent as those listed here. Furthermore, there are numerous other verbs that can be viewed as modal verbs insofar as they clearly express modality in the same way that the verbs in this list do, e.g. appear, have to, seem, etc. In the strict sense, though, these other verbs do not qualify as modal verbs in English because they do not allow subject-auxiliary inversion, nor do they allow negation with not. If, however, one defines modal verb entirely in terms of meaning contribution, then these other verbs would also be modals and so the list here would have to be greatly expanded.

 

Modals in English

 

Modals in English form a very distinctive class of verbs. They are auxiliary verbs like be, do, and have, but they are defective insofar as they cannot be inflected like these other auxiliary verbs, e.g. have → has vs. should → *shoulds, do → did vs. may → *mayed, etc. In clauses that contain two or more verbs, any modal that is present appears as the left-most verb in the verb catena (= chain of verbs). What this means is that the modal verb is always finite (although it is, as stated, never inflected). In the syntactic structure of the clause, the modal verb is the clause root

on this occasion I would show you  how to teach modal auxiliaries

1.       tell students about what modal auxiliaries means

2.       ask students to follow the teacher says ( modal )

3.       ask students to find a partner and practicing with her ​​friend

that's it..