Lesson 83: Unit 136 - Certainty and Possibility About The Past

About this lesson

In this lesson you will learn how to express certainty and possibility about past events in English. You will study the modal verbs must, may, might, could and can't in combination with the perfect infinitive (have + past participle). Through a story about Ingrid, a student who has gone missing, you will see how these structures are used in real context. The exercises include sentence transformations, questions about the text and practice with different degrees of certainty and uncertainty.

40 minutes

What you'll learn

• Use must have + past participle to express certainty about the past
• Use may have / might have / could have + past participle to express possibility about the past
• Use can't have + past participle to express impossibility about the past
• Recognise the difference between certainty, possibility and impossibility in the past
• Understand and answer questions about a text at A2 level
• Use phrasal verbs and expressions from the lesson in sentences

Lesson vocabulary

• miss classes She's a good student and doesn't usually miss classes.
• be worried about Mr Logan was worried about Ingrid.
• happen to Something must have happened to her.
• get through to First Hilda tried to get through to Ingrid on her mobile.
• connection There was no connection to her number.
• call up I'll call her up again at lunchtime.
• go round to If nobody answers, I'll go round to her flat.
• get on with Now let's get on with our work.
• be anxious about The students could see he was anxious about Ingrid.
• reply Once again there was no reply.
• be knocked down by a car She could have been knocked down by a car.
• lose one's memory She might have lost her memory.
• move to She must have moved to another place.
• exhausted Henry looks exhausted today.
• by mistake Somebody must have taken them by mistake.

All lessons in this level

In other languages: Български