Teach English in Ligang Zhen - Maoming Shi

This unit dealt with modal and phrasal verbs, as well as the passive voice. Modal verbs are used with a main verb, for whom they add more meaning. They also express intent, degrees of formality, and a sense of urgency. Examples of modal verbs include: should, could, would, must, have to, and ought to. Phrasal verbs, by contrast, are comprised of a verb and one or two particles. there are three types of phrasal verbs: Intransitive (does not require a direct object to be grammatically correct); transitive separable (the verb and particle can be separated by a pronoun, however a common noun can go either between the verb and particle or after the particle); and transitive inseparable (the noun or pronoun can only come after the verb and particle in order to be correct). When passive voice is used, the noun or phrase that would appear as an object in an active sentence would appear as the subject in a passive sentence. Passive voice is used when it is to important to know who performed an action. This is commonly seen in signs, for example: Late entries will be disqualified. Relative clauses were also discussed. There are two types: defining and non-defining. Defining relative clauses are essential to giving the sentence meaning, whereas non-defining clauses are non-essential to the meaning. When defining clauses are used, there is typically no punctuation; conversely, commas are used in a non-defining clause to separate the non-essential information in the sentence. I learned a great deal from this unit. At first it was rather confusing for me, as I have not had to think about these grammatical constructs by name for a very long time, and their usage is very similar in some cases. Learning how to articulate the differences, reinforced by the tasks at the end of the unit, helped me to memorize and be able to better articulate these grammar points.