CAN, COULD, BE ABLE TO | Canguro English

[Music] [Music] so I am always saying that I am inspired every day by my students now maybe that seems like something that I say just to be nice or maybe just to curry favor with with you my beautiful students but this is an example of of what I'm talking about so last week I uploaded a video where I did a spelling test and I received this comment watched as Christian had a spelling test and it was funny but I have a little remark when you do some tests for yourself it's better to be honest and if you have doubts about which of the options to choose it means you do not know the answer for sure so if you're guessing you just deceiving yourself by getting a better score and then it says at the end so when I have doubts about which of the options to choose I choose the option which I know is wrong for sure and therefore I'm getting an estimate above my level of knowledge not of my level of guessing I mean this is a person who really understands what exams are for now I've talked about this before in previous classes and it's really important to understand that exams are not about getting that certificate okay they're not about getting that percentage okay exams really are about knowing where your problems are so that you can go back and fix them and so by following this this person's advice which is incredible advice it's great advice it's intelligent advice it's advice that I've never seen from a teacher or anybody but by following that yes you you you you you become part of that process you admit that you understand that exams are about knowing where your problems are so you can fix them and this is an example of what I'm talking about inspired by my students every day recently a lot of people were asking me to make more grammar videos so today I'm going to teach some grammar today I'm going to teach something which people ask me about a lot which is can could and be able to but before I can teach you about that I want to show you something now I want you to think about the verb to be one of the most important and fundamental verbs in English and now think about the conjugations of the verb to be let's look at them M is an R so not only are these three conjugations very different from each other but they are all really different from the infinitive be I mean these three words don't even contain the letter B think about that because that is going to be really important in a moment so the first thing you need to know is that can and could and be able to they are modal verbs modal verbs are special types of verbs that give us more information about other verbs these verbs cannot exist on their own they tell us about the probability or possibility of the verb after now that's really important to understand that concept there's another concept to understand that there isn't just modal verbs there's modal verbs and semi modal verbs and the difference is just that modal verbs can be conjugated and semi modal verbs can't now maybe you think that can and could are actually the same verb two different conjugations of the same verb but they're not cannon could are actually two separate completely different verbs can is a semi modal verb and could is a true modal can talks about ability things that you can do I can play the piano well not okay I can play no I can't play any instrument I can play football no I can cook no I can teach English could talks about probability things that are possible or not possible like maybe in the future I could play football I could learn to cook it's about probability they have two completely different meanings and that means that also they have different conjugations because we know that modal verbs like could don't have conjugations but semi modal verbs like can do so now let's have a look at these verbs in the present the past and the future [Music] okay so first let's look at could in the present and that's easy because we don't conjugate verbs in the present tense I could go now let's look at could in the past now if you want to use a modal verb in the past you can't conjugate it you can't say couldn't but what you can do is you can use the present perfect with the modal verb to indicate the past so to use could in the past you would say I could have gone now what about the future we know that there are no conjugations for modal verbs so how do we use could in the future well we have to use context we have to indicate the future in some way I could go tomorrow or if we're talking about the future what will you do tomorrow well I could go it's only indicated by context now let's have a look at the semi modal verb can and that's where you'll really start to see the difference so in the present it's easy I can go but now look at the difference between could and can in the past the past of can is put I could go but see the difference I could have gone talks about probability I could have done this I could have done that whereas I could go means that you had the ability to go completely different and finally let's look at the future now can we say I will can or I will could no so what is this strange conjugation for the verb can how can we use can in the future well do you remember this do you remember how much the verb to be changed and became completely different from the original well it's the same with can the conjugation of can is be able to be able to is can so in the future we would say I will be able to go it's getting quite late now but before I go for my run I'm going to spend some time at doing one of my favorite things which is answering people's questions in the Facebook group so if you have any questions that is the place to ask me otherwise I'm Christian this is kangaroo English I'll see you in class [Music] I've got 70,000 friends so I got I know someday we could find an illegal be friends

Channel: Canguro English

Views: 48,459

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Id: 1zSiV8x8w7Y

Length: 9min 48sec (588 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 26 2018