Expressing obligation

Recursos Tic for Education is a site of the Spanish Ministry of Education we should get well acquainted with. Here we will find lots of online resources for students of all levels and for all subjects, English included.

Take, for instance, the online activity Society, where you have the possibility of practising the modal verbs of obligation and prohibition, both in the present and in the past, around three different topics:

• The environment
• Social behaviour
• Street behaviour

In the online activities we will find video, listening and reading activities which give the framework for the practice and consolidation of modal verbs to express obligation.

On the minus side, most of these resources require Java and the Malted Web 2.0 plugin in your computer. 

Highway code

Highway code is an online grammar game from Let's have fun with English. The game is a great excuse to revise must for obligation, mustn't for prohibition, can/can't for permission and should for advice.

Ideally speaking it should be played by four-to-six players, but I can't see any reason why we can't 'play' on our own. Ok, if you play on your own you will be revising modal verbs, but you might be killing all the fun.

Before we play, we must get familiar with the game by reading the rules. The rules page will give us access to all the other components of the game:
You need a driving licence that you can download if you wish.

You need to get acquainted with the road and traffic vocabulary as well as with the modal verbs. You can do all this from here, with the added bonus that there is and audio file for each of the vocabulary items, which will enable you to get the pronunciation right.

Finally, you are given the solutions to all the questions in the game.

So it doesn't matter whether you are on your own, or with a group a friends, or you are a teacher with a whiteboard or a computer room at your disposal. Highway code will help you revise your modals in a funny way.

What should I do?

LeBron James keeps asking us for advice. 'What should I do?' in the Nike commercial. The ad is a good opportunity to learn and revise the pronunciation of the modal verb should /ʃʊd/, which we sometimes have difficulties with. Similarly, it shows the main use of the modal verb: Giving advice.

So, what should LeBron do? Should he admit that he has made mistakes? Should he give us a history lesson? Should he try acting? Watch the video and give LeBron some advice afterwards.



Self-study activity:
Count the times should is mentioned in the video. You can check it out and read a transcript of the clip here.