Eight sentences, two systems
Eight sentences with the same shape. Four of them are about how sure somebody is. Four are about how somebody behaved. Read each one and ask which.
Eight sentences. Match each to what it is doing.
The sentence that grades you
Four words, and a verdict inside them
Take two sentences that differ by one word. I should have said something. You should have said something. Same structure, same tense, four words on each side of the pronoun — and they are not the same kind of sentence at all. The first is a regret. The second is a judgement about a person, delivered to their face.
That is the thing about the modal perfect nobody warns you about: it does not describe the past, it grades it. She left at six is a fact. She must have left at six grades how certain you are. She should have left at six grades either how likely it was or how she behaved — and nothing inside the sentence tells you which.
For the conduct meaning, English has no neutral version. You should have told me reports that you did not and rules that you ought to have, in one breath, and it lands as a verdict whether or not one was intended. Portuguese você devia ter me contado is a good deal softer; the nearest thing in English to that force is something like it would have helped if I had known, which is a different sentence entirely.
Which produces a specific and slightly painful problem at this level. Learners deliver criticisms they meant as observations — in meetings, in feedback, in email — and nobody ever mentions it, because the English is impeccable and correcting somebody’s manners is much harder than correcting their grammar.
The repair is not a rule; it is a set of alternatives that report the fact and leave the verdict out, and this unit collects them. First, though, the sentences have to be yours. The task today is to find out how many verdicts you hand out in fifteen minutes without meaning to.
Four questions.
1. What does a modal perfect do that a plain past tense does not?
2. What tells you which of the two systems is in play?
3. Why is the conduct meaning a problem for Brazilian speakers in particular?
4. Why does nobody correct this?
Two systems, and six sentences that go wrong in both
The form, once. modal + have + past participle. It never changes: must have gone · can’t have known · should have told · needn’t have brought. No had, no of, and the participle is a participle.
System 1 — deduction, about events. must have (the only explanation left) · can’t have / couldn’t have (ruled out) · may / might / could have (open) · should have (expected, not yet confirmed).
System 2 — conduct, about people. should have / ought to have (obliged, and did not) · could have (had the chance, and did not) · might have (sharper still, often indignant: you might have told me) · needn’t have (did it, and it turned out to be unnecessary).
Should have and could have live in both systems. Lesson 4 is about the moment somebody hears the wrong one.
Six sentences. Five have a form problem. The last one is perfect English and still the wrong sentence — the note tells you why.
1. I should have went to the interview.
2. She must had left before we arrived.
3. You should of told me.
4. He can’t have forget — I reminded him twice.
5. She didn’t need to bring her passport. — she brought it, and it turned out to be unnecessary
6. You should have told me about the deadline. — you meant it as an observation, not as a verdict
An email that went out at four
Eight gaps. Choose the form that fits what the writer means.
The email went out at four and by half past the phone had started. Nobody in the building had approved it, so somebody it without checking. It the intern, because she finished in July. I keep thinking that I the draft when it was circulated — I had it open for two days — and my manager, to her credit, has never once told me that I it. What she said instead was that it if two people had signed off rather than one, which is exactly the same information with the verdict taken out. The client the mistake, because they replied within the hour asking about it, and their reply was, in the circumstances, extremely polite. We the whole thing if anybody at all had read it aloud. And I apologised twice, which I now think made it worse rather than better.
One word per gap. Eight sentences, both systems.
She must left before six — her coat has gone.
He have forgotten; I reminded him twice on Monday.
I should said something at the time, and I said nothing.
You have brought your passport — nobody checked a single one.
The parcel have arrived by now; it was posted on Monday.
She have known about it, because the email went to her as well.
I have applied for it, and for no good reason I did not.
They have been delayed, or they may simply have forgotten.
A decision, and the verdicts you did not mean to give
Task card · Speaking · Pairs · 15 minutes
One decision about work or study: a job taken, a job refused, a course, a move, a resignation, a promotion you turned down, a client you should have — or should not have — kept.
Three minutes each of talking. Your partner writes down every modal perfect you say, exactly as you say it.
- 4 minutes alone: the decision, when it was, what you knew at the time, and who else was involved. Names or roles, either is fine.
- 3 minutes each, speaking: tell it properly. Do not edit yourself; the point of today is what comes out.
- Partner: write down every should have, could have, must have, might have, can’t have — verbatim, with the subject.
- Then sort them together: deduction, regret about yourself, or verdict on somebody else. Count the third pile and write the number at the top of the page.
Expect the third pile to be bigger than you would like, and expect not to remember saying most of it. That is the whole finding: these sentences are unremarkable from the inside and they are not unremarkable from the outside. Nobody in a meeting has ever said “that landed as an accusation”, and so nobody has ever told you.
What the third pile contained
Three questions.
1. How big was your third pile — verdicts on other people?
2. Who were most of them about?
3. Did you mean them as verdicts?
It grades, it does not describe
Two questions. Twenty seconds.
1. What does a modal perfect do?
2. What is the form, exactly?
Next. Four people looking back at their working lives — a podcast, a memoir, a feedback email and a forum thread — and a count of how the same four words behave in each.