Grammar: Groups & phrases: Verb group: Adjusting interactions: modality
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Expressing 'usuality' |
What is usuality?
Usuality refers to our judgements about how often something happens or how
typical something is. Some things happen all the time, other things never happen, and of course, most things fall in between: they happen either frequently, or seldom. When we
interact with other
people, we need some way of indicating how usual we think a situation is or how
frequently something happens. What we are
doing is expressing a form of modality called 'usuality'. 
If we want to talk about the frequency of an event such as the school bus arriving on time every morning, we can say something like:
| Mr Wing is usually late. |
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In English, we have a number of ways of indicating usuality. |
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For more information, see:
For a PrimeTeach teaching activity which
provides KS2 students with practice in using adverbs to describe frequency,
see:
Food bingo
For more information, see
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Text types: General Descriptions:
Generalising |
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