Hi. My name is Gaby and today,
I'm going to be talking to you about using special verbs to express your
opinions in academic English.
I'm sure you're familiar with must, should and need.
You may have seen these words before. They're types of verbs.
Should and must are examples of modal auxiliary verbs.
Need is a regular verb although it can be a modal verb too.
When we use need, must and should in academic writing,
we can use them to show our academic opinion - our opinion of what we
think is a good idea for something to happen.
Let's now take a look at a text from a first year university textbook to
say how you can use these special verbs academically in speaking and writing.
Let's have a look at two sentences from a paragraph.
This is a text about sustainability.
Governments around the world need to develop rules which speed up the change
to sustainable business practices. If change is to happen,
government leadership and the business community must be strong.
Can you see those special verbs in the sentences? Need and
must?
Need can be both a regular verb and a semi modal verb.
Here we are using need as a regular verb. In the second example,
we're using need as a semi modal verb, but for this lesson,
we are not going to use need as a modal verb because we're using it to show our
opinion. In these sentences here,
the speaker is saying, in my opinion, you need to eat lunch.
Or in my opinion, you don't need to eat lunch. And take note,
it would be very unusual to say, I needn't eat lunch.
The semi modal verb form of need is not very high frequency.
We can use should and must in the same way
to show the speaker's opinion.
Let's look at an academic sentence in which the author is expressing their
opinion. Governments
around the world need to develop rules which speed up the change to
sustainable business practices.
Governments around the world should develop rules which speed up the change to
sustainable business practices. What do you think need means in this sentence?
Can you think of modal verbs which can do the same job? Yes,
that's right. You can use should.
Governments around the world should develop rules which up the change to
sustainable business practices.
You can also use must. Governments around the world must develop rules,
which speed up the change to sustainable business practices.
Now let's think about which is the strongest opinion here.
Australia needs to save koalas. Australia should save koalas.
Or Australia must save koalas. What do you think?
That's right. It's c). Australia must save koalas.
When we use must in academic writing, it's much stronger.
The writer is very, very sure,
very certain about their opinion and believes very strongly that it is a good
action to take. Let's write
some sentences about things that would be good if they happened to help the
environment.
Look at the list of actions that Australia can take to protect its environment.
A) reduce rubbish,
b) recycled glass and paper, c)
increase the number of electric cars and d) save bilbies, e) save koalas and
look at the modal auxiliaries and the regular verb
in the table.
Which of these actions do you feel most strongly about?
Here's a picture of a bilby. I really like bilbies.
I'm going to make a sentence about bilbies. This is my sentence: Australia
must save bilbies. This means, in my opinion,
I strongly believe that Australia should save bilbies.
What tells you that I strongly believe this opinion? Yes,
it's the word: must. Great work if you spotted that.
Now it's your turn.
Choose an action that you feel most strongly about and write a sentence using
must. Now I'm going to choose two other sentences about issues that I think are
important and say what I think Australia needs to or should do.
Australia needs to reduce rubbish.
Australia should recycle glass and paper.
Now it's your turn.
Choose two actions that you think are important and write a sentence about each
using should or need to,
to tell us what your academic opinion is.
When you're writing an argumentative essay,
use both need and should for variety. So the reader doesn't get bored.
If you want to show very strong opinion in your writing or speaking,
you can use must. You may be familiar with words like must,
need and should already. However,
being advanced speaker of English is not just about how many words you know,
but how many different ways you can use the words that you already know.
We often use words that you may be familiar with in new and different ways in
academic English.
Use a dictionary to help you learn about the different meanings of one word and
how it's used.
Thank you for joining me today. I hope you're ready to use should,
need and must to express your opinions in your writing and speaking.
Bye.