This can be something as simple as “I’m hungry” or “I don’t know what to do this weekend.” Ask them to give you some advice. To open up the topic, tell your students that you have a problem you want them to help you with. In order to practice using modal verbs for advice, your students can try their hands at being agony aunts. In the end, you can go over their answers together, and correct their grammar as you go along. Students will have to get creative with their modal verbs to decide what they mean and can work in pairs to write their own ideas. Give out a selection of weird and wacky signs, such as this one from the Travel Channel. To finish up the class, move on to something more fun and more challenging. They can use the given modal verbs to write sentences for each one. Remember, these should be signs that they’re familiar with already, they just need to put their meanings into English.

These could be road signs, safety signs or signs you might find in the classroom. This should prompt them to give you “you must not smoke.”įrom here, you can teach a selection of modal verbs, such as “have to,” “must” and “mustn’t.”Ĭreate a worksheet or PowerPoint presentation which provides a selection of signs. Then, ask your students how they could make the sentence stronger. This should elicit “you can’t smoke,” or something to that effect. If they say “no smoking,” ask them to elaborate with a full sentence. Start by showing or drawing a picture of a no-smoking sign to your class and asking them what it means. It uses real-life examples that students see around them every day, so they should have no problem picking up the grammar and putting it into context.

This exercise is great for teaching how to use modal verbs for prohibition and obligation.

Modal verb exercise