Giles Parker English Academy Podcasts

Modals to speculate about the past – Who could have poisoned Banjo? Hi! Welcome to another great English lesson with New English Academy. My name's Giles Parker and I'm your guide for today's lesson. I live in the beautiful Green Heart of Italy but life isn't always as pleasant as it seems here. So today we're going to hear about how my dog, Banjo was poisoned recently. The grammar point for this lesson looks at how to use modal auxiliaries to make a theory about or to speculate about the past. This is when you see something now but you don't know for sure what really happened so you make a theory or speculate about what happened. We’re going to look at phrases such as Someone must have done it; Someone could have done it; Someone might have done something, or Someone couldn't have done something. We'll do the reading and listening lesson first and then look at the grammar point after. As you listen to the podcast or read the transcript, try to look for these kinds of modal auxiliaries that speculate ab