CHAPTER ONE
MODAL VERBS REFERENCES
1.1. What is grammar?
What is grammar? Is it necessary to teach grammar? Will grammar help students to better understand and use the language? These are only some of the questions that need to be answered.
Grammar is defined in the “THE LONGMAN DICTIONARY OF CONTEMPORARY ENGLISH” as ”(the study and practice of) the rules of a language by which words change their forms and are combined into sentences”.
Unfortunately, in many of the English classes, grammar is taught for its own sake, not with the purpose of being used in communication. The knowledge of the rules of grammar gives the students only some measure of algebraic “accuracy”, which by itself can, and perhaps generally does, help them to pass the examinations in English, but does not give them the ability to communicate meaningfully in real-life situations.
What is needed to remedy the situation is a methodology that can effectively blend “accuracy” and “fluency”, a methodology that aims at developing “communicative competence”. Widdowson (1984:59) points out that: ”Fluency and accuracy are complementary and interdependent phenomena: the problem is to know how the dependency works in natural language use and how it can best be developed in the process of language learning.”
Grammar can be taught in different ways. One of them is when the teacher actually provides the students with grammatical rules and explanations-the information is openly presented, in other words.
Another way is when grammatical facts are hidden from the students-even though they are learning the language. In other words, the students may be asked to do an information gap activity or read a text where new grammar is practiced or introduced, but their attention will be drawn to the activity or to the text and not to the grammar.
Jeremy Harmer, calls the first type of teaching grammar-overt grammar teaching, and the second type-covert grammar teaching.
With overt teaching we are explicit and open about the grammar of the language, but with covert teaching we simply get students to work with new language and hope that they will more or less subconsciously absorb grammatical information which will help them to acquire the language as a whole.
The middle way is always the best, so teachers should use both covert and overt grammar teaching during their lessons. Students need to learn how to perform the functions of language, but they need a grammatical base as well. Modern courses often teach a grammatical structure and then get students to use it as part of a functional conversation.
Although at an early stage we may ask our students to learn a certain structure through exercises that concentrate on virtually meaningless manipulations of language, we should quickly progress to activities that use it meaningfully. And even these activities will be superseded eventually by general fluency practice, where the emphasis is on successful communication, and any learning of grammar takes place only as incidental to this main objective.
1.2. What does learning grammar involve?
In order to be good teachers of English, before even planning the organization of our teaching, we need to have clear in our minds exactly what our subject matter is. Some grammatical structures in English have exact parallels in the native language and are easily mastered; others have no such parallels but are fairly simple in themselves; there are others, which are totally alien and very difficult to grasp.
Some have fairly simple forms, but it may be difficult to learn where to use them and where not; others have relatively easy meanings, but very varied or difficult forms. Some involve single-word choices, others entire sentences.
When we teach any one of these types we should be getting our students to learn quite a large number of different, though related, bits of knowledge and skills: how to recognize the examples of the structure when spoken, how to identify its written form, how to produce both its spoken and written form, how to understand its meaning in context and produce meaningful sentences using it themselves.
Some teachers have a tendency to concentrate on some of these and neglect the others. It is important to keep a balance, taking into account the need of the particular class being taught.
1.3. Particularities of Modal Verbs in English
Why teach verbs? Maybe because they are the most important parts of speech. Why modal verbs? Because they are a little bit difficult and a little bit different from their equivalents in Romanian.
The modal verbs are a group of verbal forms which were originally past but which have come to express the meaning of the present tense:
- can, may, shall, dare-Past Indicatives
- will, must, ought-Past Subjunctives
1.3.1. Formal characteristics of Modal Verbs
At present they are a limited number of items called “closed-system items” which have the same formal characteristics:
1. they are uninflected-they don’t add “-s” for the third person singular;
2. they are anomalous-they form the interrogative and negative without the auxiliary “do”. When the verb phrase consists of two or more auxiliaries, the modal verb always takes the first position in the verb phase;
3. there are gaps in the TENSE/ASPECT/MOOD paradigms-that is why they are sometimes called “defective verbs”;
4. they can not be conjugated in all tenses, moods;
5. they are verbs of incomplete predication-that is they must be followed by another verb in the Infinitive (Present or Perfect Infinitive)-by Short Infinitive, with the exception of “ought”.
1.3.2. Semantic characteristics of Modal Verbs
The Modal Verbs make up a system specialized for expressing the speaker’s attitude towards the action of the sentence. The action is seen to be necessary, probable, befitting. The Modal Verbs are polysemantic words. Each modal verb has at least two meanings: a semantic property also reflected by the syntax of these verbs.
Modal verbs can be divided in two main types having:
a) DEONTIC (primary) values:
- obligation;
- ability;
- permission;
b) EPISTEMIC (cognitive) values:
- likelihood;
- probability.
Deontic modal verbs do not occur in the continuous aspect, while epistemic modal verbs do.
E.g. MAY
The child may play in the garden. - Deontic Modal Verb-permission
The child may be playing in the garden. – Epistemic Modal Verb-probability
E.g. MUST
He must eat now. - Deontic Modal Verb-obligation
He must be sleeping now. – Epistemic Modal Verb-probability
