Consider a time that you answered the phone or made a phone call.

What kinds of words did you use?

What kinds of grammatical structures were important?

In today's report, we will explore a point of grammar connected to phone calls.

You will learn about some uses of modal verbs.

We describe English verbs in terms of three ideas: tense, aspect, and modality.

That might sound like a lot to think about, but here is a simple explanation.

Tense has to do with time.

For example, tense can show present and past actions.

Time beyond the basic present or past is often expressed by adding helping verbs to the present or past verb forms.