Modal Verbs

Book excerpt: Modal auxiliary verbs have long been a nightmare for anyone learning English as a second language.This particular aspect of the English language is probably the one in which learners find the most complicated. Without context the lexical meaning of modal auxiliary verbs becomes extremely vague. With their parallelisms and overlapping meanings they become a messy business. At times the negative has a totally different meaning from the affirmative and more often than not, there is a shift in meaning according to context. Modal auxiliary verbs are used to express degrees of certainty/uncertainty, probability/improbability, possibility/impossibility, expectation/lack of expectation, and so forth. These tricky aspects of the English language are used with great frequency by native speakers. Very often non native learners of English are unable to grasp their subtleties due to their range of meanings. In this book you will find out how to use each modal. You will discover all the meanings each one has - all in one little book.