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Why are modal verbs important for adult learners? Modal verbs have a different gramar structure and it has to be well understood for students, as verb to be, they share the same structure, student have to use the modal verb for making affirmative, negative and interrogativee questions base don many situations.(asking for food, asking for exxplaination in a first day of work, asking polite questions, etc.) Teaching adults depending on their previous knowledge can be an easy task, however, teaching without the previous expertise can be challenging, this gramar topics is different to the other topics. Since modals are also used as some kind of auxiliar we use them in different ways. To start with,(Engage), I can use some cue cards to make students start thinking in english, these cue cards are going to be based on activities the students can or can´t do. When they can do something, they will say the words, “I can” when they are not able to do the activity they´ll say “I can´t”. (1st Study activity). Afterwards I will start by giving them basic questions such as “Can you do “this”, “that”. Students will have to give full affirmative or negative answers. (2nd Engage activity). What do students must and must not do at school. Students will have to list different activities they have to do or not at school, work, home on the whiteboard. (2nd study activity). A worksheet will be given to students, this worksheet will include many gap filling exercises, because they need to study the structure every modal has. (Including also the affirmative, negative and interrogative sentences). At this point something I always do, is giving them 5 minutes to share their past experience at home workplace. For example something a boss made them do or when they were children what was something that their parents made them do. In every class I always have a role play in which they play real situations based on their jobs or daily life. I make them set rules for their chidren or invent new rules for the company they work for, in other cases a student is a new worker in a company so he/she needs to ask what are some thing he/she can do on the first day at work. When I am teaching I would start with basic polite question, I explain the main use of would, and give some examples. From this point on I give another fill gap exercise in which they can denote the difference between these three modals I explained before. Here I will identify if they were able to understand everything I explained. If they still have some difficulties I can make them role play the restaurant menú and how to ask for food, in a further lessons I can check again and I´m sure they´ll do better, despite this is not a difficult topic. Everytime I finish a class I try to make a fun game. To practise must I make one of the student to play as a mother and the rest of students will be the children. The mother gives and order and the children have to say that they can´t do it or that they would kindly do it later, they have to use at least once a modal verb. Sometimes I also ask them to sum up some of the topics we saw and to give Some examples, everything depends on how they do in the class.
