English Grammar - Modals of Advisability

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I would like to do, well, I think it's something we should do.

It's something that we better do in order to improve our English and it's highly advisable.

We're going to do modals today.

Modals of advisability.

That's my Batman.

Let's get Batman coming.

All right, so let's get started.

What is advisability?

Well, it's advice, right?

Well, what's advice?

Something given for free that's absolutely useless.

Yes, that's advice.

Well, what we say with advisability is something we think, we as in not me, but you know, people

Ah, let's put people so we don't get confused.

People think is good to do.

That's what basically advice is.

Something you think is good to do, right?

Two words actually that really work with advisability, okay?

My small problem is a lot of people think they're the same.

I'll give you one of them.

Should, you should do something, okay?

You should kiss your mother on Mother's Day.

You should go to church and be a good boy or girl.

You should brush your teeth before you go to bed, and you should always wear a condom,

And then there's another one.

You'd better go to sleep early, okay?

In order to have energy in the morning, or you had better study hard to be a good student.

You had better, see, I don't like how people use that because I'm using these things in

almost the same way, and sometimes they can be used that way, but I'm going to show you

today why there is actually a difference and why in English you must know when to use one

or apply the other, okay?

Now they're both about advisability, but they're slightly different, so let's go to the board

and take a look, alright?

So first thing, let's look at should.

Should has two things you want to remember, okay?

Number one, it's the right thing to do, okay?

Go to church, brush your teeth, these are the right things to do.

Hold people up the stairs, buy me a drink when you see me at a bar, right thing to do,

Or, I like to say, best.

It's the best or right thing to do, okay?

Now there's another one, I'm going to teach you a vocabulary word, deviation.

I like it because when I say this it's perfect, it's deviation from expectation, say that

five times fast, deviation from expectation, deviation from expectation, you like the deviation?

It's got a root, yeah, go, that's it, go, go, anyway, deviation from expectation.

I know what you're saying, "But James, what is deviation?"

Well, let's just say you're driving a car this way, then you see a pretty girl on the

side of the road, so you're going to drive your car this way, well you've deviated, you

should be going this way, but you've decided to go this way, so you've moved from your

position or where you were going, a deviation, right?

It doesn't follow the normal course.

So when we say deviation from expectation, let me give you an example.

You go to the store, you see this pen, on Monday, the pen is a dollar, Tuesday, the

pen is a dollar, Wednesday, the pen is a dollar, Thursday, the pen is a dollar fifty.

You say, "This pen should be a dollar."

I expect it to be a dollar, it is deviated and become a dollar fifty, there is a deviation

from my expectations.

Do you like that?

So do I.

Okay, so, deviation from expectation and the right or best thing to do.

You should study hard if you want to be a good student.

Now, when we do this, we're going to find out, now I've got a little rule here.

Now if it's the best thing or the right thing to do, we mean, what is best and what is right

is generally what is true to be best or right, I mean, every time, I mean, giving money,

to the poor is good, if the poor person is going to use it for something bad, you should

not do it, right?

But generally put, you should give money to the poor, right?

You should be a good person, generally, unless someone's attacking you, then you kill them.

But besides that, okay?

So look, so in this case, we're going to come up with something, we're going to call this

a general, general situations, right?

We're going to say, generally speaking.

We use this for generally speaking.

So we're going to talk about rules of behavior, it is advisable to follow this advice because

generally speaking, this is true, okay?

So we've got, should, it's the right thing to do, deviation from expectation, and generally

Alright, now you've done that, let's talk about had better, shall we?

When we better talk about it, alright, so when we talk about had better, we're still

talking about advisability, yes we are, now, please note, had better, had is in the past

So notice had here is in the past tense, but the modal is not past, okay?

The modal's not past, it's just, it's in the past tense, but it's not past, it's the present

tense modal or future tense, so, had better.

Well one, we, it's suggested, it's a suggestion, so one, it's just a basic suggestion, alright?

We better buy it now while it's cheap, alright?

Now number two, if you heard what I said, there's another thing, it's a basic suggestion,

but number two is much interesting, there will be a consequence, I really should have

written this in red, alright?

You better pay your bills now or we're coming to get you, signed, the mafia, okay, there's

If you don't do something, something bad may or, actually may, will happen, right?

You better hand in your essay or the teacher will fail you, you will fail, right?

Saying you should hand in your essay is the best or right thing to do, but it doesn't

actually mean there's a consequence, I mean, if we really have to get into it, we'll go

about the morals of life, you know, you shouldn't be a good person because it's nice, but everybody's

a nice person because everybody gets good things, right?

Generally speaking, but in this case, you'd better be nice because this person is bigger

and stronger than you, which leads me to my point, when we talk about consequence, we

talk about this is for specific situations, okay?

So we talked about it, and if you were listening carefully, you noticed I said, should is for

general situations, had better is for specific situations.

This is kind of reminiscent as when we use was able to and could, and we'd use those

If you didn't study that lesson, we'll go back and check, it's there for you, okay?

Alright, so specific and should is for general suggestions, so let's take a look, okay?

Let's go to the board here, and let's measure these puppies up.

If something is advisable, and I want to tell you, let's use an example, you tell me what

should go in here, alright?

Now you're going to wonder who E is, right?

My man, and he's always serious about his drink, he's got a little jug of juice, okay?

So what would you put in there?

Now let's go through the rules, okay?

We talked about advisable, one of them is deviation from expectation, doesn't seem like

that fits, which one was that?

Deviation from expectation, take a guess, that's right, deviation from expectation is

should, and should doesn't fit, there's no deviation from your expectation.

What was the other one we said?

We talked about a general rule, right?

General rule that covers most cases, not everyone, but most cases.

Now look at this, all drivers would mean every single driver, so we'd have to make a rule

for every single driver, wouldn't we, because this is a group, a large group, so if it's

a general group we're talking about, it's a general rule, so we should put this, right?

Should not drink and drive, general rule, we're talking about all drivers, general rule

that would cover all drivers.

Now Ezekiel, he's good at the beer, Ezekiel is what?

One person, and this is one specific instance, so would it be deviation from expectation,

would it be a general rule, or what was the third one we discovered?

Specific instances?

And remember what else we said, had better is a consequence, okay?

Ezekiel has a knife, so if you take Ezekiel's beer, he's going to cut you like a fish with

a knife, so you'd better not take Ezekiel's drink, he will kill you.

So you'd better not take Ezekiel's drink, okay, say this, he will kill you, punctuation,

he will kill you.

So when we look at this, should and had better, I really should have put that in red, sorry

guys, I'll do it for you, there you go, rinse with blood that you will spill, the blood

of your blood he will spill, the blood on the floor, had better, had better not, okay?

And we can see how there's a difference between the two, right?

Now what I want to do right now when I'm doing this is introduce the modal rules, there's

two that I want to, actually I want to introduce one, we'll do modals later on, I'll introduce

the second one.

So this is rule number one for modals, it'll help you, because you notice when I put this,

I'm sure you noticed that I put drink and I put kill and I put take, so I'm going to

give you this rule, my students love this rule because they don't get it right and they

can do push-ups and I'm not joking, they're all big hulking students because they don't,

they're very stupid.

I'm joking, I love you all, my students, okay I love you, alright.

So rule number one for modals, I'd like you to just remember this because it'll help you,

number one, number one rule, now this should, after this is drink, after this is take, after

this is kill, okay?

The verb that follows the modal has to be in its base form, okay?

So the number one rule is remember, if you have should, could, would, had better, the

verb that follows in the base form, base form means don't add on s, e, d, or i, n, g, okay?

So that's rule number one, next time we do the next modals, or next time we work on modals,

what I'll do is tell you rule number two, it'll come in handy because you'll wonder

about should have, and what does that mean, right?

So we have should, you know it's about what?

Deviation from expectation, as well as is the right or best thing to do, had better

means there's consequence, which can be used as a general rule, and I'm out of here, I'd

better go, I've got other places to go and see, and you should, can come back, and where

should you come back to?

Well let me tell you, remember, should, best place, best thing to do, right, invid.

Now there's gonna be a quiz, so please check out the quiz, answer the questions, see how

well you did, and a good place to go check out your answers and see how well you fared

is this place, the happiest place on earth, yes, Disney named it after us, www.disney.com.

Go there and you'll actually see me right with my left hand, see I'm left handed with

my right hand instead, it's a trick, I tell you, come, come see me, take care, see you soon.