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It's the first day at a new school! Help the student understand the rules by choosing the correct option for each blank.
All students _________________________ wear a uniform — it's the school's rule. However, you _________________________ bring your own laptop because the school provides one for every student. You _________________________ use your phone during lessons — teachers will confiscate it immediately.

The correct answers are have to, don't have to, and must not.

We use have to for external rules and obligations — the school requires uniforms. Don't have to means something is NOT necessary — bringing a laptop is optional because the school provides one. Must not expresses prohibition — using your phone is forbidden, and there is a consequence if you do.

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Modal verb

A modal verb is a special class of auxiliarycan, could, may, might, must, shall, should, will, would — that adds shades of meaning around possibility, ability, permission, obligation, or speculation. I can swim (ability), You should rest (advice), It might rain (possibility), You must leave (obligation).

Modals are grammatically peculiar: no -s in the third person (she can, not she cans), no infinitive, no participle, followed by the bare verb (I can swim, never I can to swim). Mastering them is the move from describing facts to expressing how you feel about them — likelihood, necessity, recommendation.

Negation

Negation in English usually places not after the auxiliary or modal verb: I am not going, She does not know, You must not go. When there's no auxiliary, you add do-support: I goI do not go. Most combinations contract: don't, can't, won't, isn't.

The trickiest rule for many learners: double negatives are not standard English. I didn't see nothing is non-standard; the standard forms are I saw nothing or I didn't see anything. Negative words like never, nobody, nothing already carry the negation — adding not on top doubles up.

Auxiliary verb

An auxiliary verb (or "helping verb") is a verb that combines with a main verb to add grammatical meaning — questions, negation, tense, aspect, voice, or modality. The English auxiliaries are forms of be, have, do, plus the modal verbs (can, could, will, would, should, may, might, must).

Auxiliaries are what let you build past tense (have gone), continuous aspect (is going), passive voice (was eaten), and questions (Do you know?). Without them, you can't form most of the structures you need beyond the simple present and past — they're the engine that powers half the tense system.

A2 | Elementary | Pre-intermediate

A2 is the elementary level in the CEFR framework, sitting between A1 and B1. At A2 you can handle routine exchanges — ordering food, asking directions, making small talk — and describe your immediate environment in simple sentences.

Grammatically, A2 introduces past simple and past continuous, present perfect for experiences, basic modal verbs, and the first conditional. You're also picking up collocations and learning which verbs take gerunds vs. infinitives. Knowing your level here is the difference between confident progress and frustration: A2 material consolidates the basics; B1 will overwhelm you.

Difficulty: Medium

The Medium difficulty tag marks questions and challenges in the middle of the difficulty range — typically suitable for A2 to B1 learners. Expect a single rule with realistic distractors, longer sentences, and contexts where you have to think before answering rather than reading off the obvious choice.

Filter by Medium when you're past the absolute basics and ready to consolidate. It's the level where most lasting progress happens — easy enough that you can finish without exhausting concentration, hard enough that getting it right means you've actually understood.