What’s in The News? Keeping Waters Clean in America!

Speaking Practice. Talking about The Weather!

English Grammar. Compare “Modal Verbs of Probability” to Adverbs.

The Harpster brothers—Abe, Aaron, and Andy—own Evergreen Farms, one  of the largest dairy operations in Pennsylvania: 2,700 milking cows on  6,500 acres along with fields of grass, corn, and alfalfa to feed them.  Their other claim to fame is the farm’s pristine Spruce Creek, where  presidents from Eisenhower to Carter and other notables including the  owner of the Chicago Cubs and Grammy Award-winning singers have come to  fish for rainbow trout.

“We live here, drink the water here, and breathe the air here, and  try to do the best for our people, our cows, and our land. We expect to  pass this farm down through the generations of our families,” explains  Andrew Harpster. “I may not be a scientist, but I’ve learned enough to  know that everything is connected,” he adds. “If we don’t do it right,  for example, the manure we spread on our corn fields can run off into  Spruce Creek, damaging our trout habitat, and from there into the  Juniata River, which flows into the Susquehanna and then 200 miles  downstream into the Chesapeake Bay.”

Karen: Brrrr! I’m cold. I thought it was supposed to get warmer today.

Ed: Yeah, I thought so, too. That’s what the weatherman said.

Karen: It must be the wind that makes it so cold. I’m freezing!

Ed: Me, too. Let’s go inside.

Karen: O.K. It’s no fun standing out here, even if the sun is shining.

Generally, when we use “Present Perfect” exact time references are  not used or are not important. Understanding the “Present Perfect” is a  must to fully understand “Modals of Probability” in the past. However,  with a combination of “Modals” and “Present Perfect”, we can refer to  specific time in the past as speculation. In other words, we sometimes  use “Modals of Probability” with “Present Perfect” to refer to a  possible fact in the past without being absolutely positive the event  took place. In other words, we “Speculate, Assume or Guess” at what  occurred in the past.  Examples might be: May have “May’ve”, Might have  “Might’ve”, Could have “Could’ve”. These are all examples of an event in  the past that we are not absolutely sure about. “May”, “might” and  “could” in the following examples are fully interchangeable.

“She might have worked yesterday, I am not sure”.

“She may have worked yesterday, I am not sure”.

“She could have worked yesterday, I am not sure”.

In all three examples, these three Modal verbs have the same meaning.  Compare to the adverbs “Maybe and Possibly” with past simple.  One  simple method that can be used to learn this is “Grammar Bridging”. To  “Grammar Bridge” is when we study a higher level grammar element using a  comparison in grammar at a lower level.

Learn more here https://larisaenglishclub.com/pdf-resources/larisa-english-club-23-pdf-version/