Mastering Modals, Health Vocabulary, and Student Essays
Mastering Modals in English
Modals
- Ability: (can/could/be able to)
- Possibility and Certainty: (could/might/may/must not/can’t)
- Obligation: (need to, needn’t/have to/must not)
- Prohibition: (mustn’t)
- Advice: (should/ought to)
Health Vocabulary
- Cold: resfriado
- Food poisoning: intoxicación
- Headache: dolor de cabeza
- Ill: enfermo
- Medicine:
- Pill: píldora
- Stomach ache: dolor de estómago
- Stressed: estresado
- Tablet: pastilla
- Temperature: fiebre
- Tired: cansado
- My ankle: mi tobillo
- My wrist: mi muñeca
- Myself: por mi (romper/hurt)
I’m going to take (tomar la temperatura)
I’ve hurt (romper)
I feel (yo me siento…)
I’ve got (yo tengo)
Phrasal Verbs
- Cut down on/have less: dejar de tomar
- Get over/recover from: superarse, recuperarse
- Put on/gain: aumentar o ganar peso
- Take up/start: empezar o tomar
do a favour / make friends
do exercise / make an effort
do your homework / make a mistake
do your best / make a mess / make a phone call
Adjective Suffixes
Enjoyable / famous / beautiful / sporty / thoughtless
dangerous / successful / careful (cuidadoso) – careless (descuidado) / fashionable / moody / suitable (adecuado) / useful (útil) – useless (inútil) / washable (lavable) / sunny
thoughtless (irreflexivo) – thoughtful (pensativo)
Student Essays
The Dangers of Smoking
1) Nowadays, people increasingly start smoking at a younger age. This implies that more and more people get sick from cancer. Besides cancer, smoking causes other diseases in our body. I think our government should remove snuff once and for all, as it only brings problems and also addiction to people.
2) In my opinion, snuff is something negative. I think it’s a bad example for our generation, as snuff only brings diseases. There are enough diseases that we cannot control, so we shouldn’t add one more through smoking. There are people who have lung cancer without ever having smoked, so I think we should facilitate not having this cancer.
3) Another reason that you would have to ban snuff is its price. Each time it costs more to buy a pack of snuff. This is because our government raises prices because they know it is a means to make money.
4) In conclusion, I think this is very sad, because a government should want the best for us and not sell us carcinogens. They had to make advertisements on the effects of snuff and its consequences. Physicians also should support these campaigns and educate people that stopping smoking is good for our health, the people around us, and good for our wallets.
Childhood Obesity
1) Nowadays, in my country, we hear news of children increasingly becoming obese. Children are sitting all day, playing on the computer, and they eat unhealthy food. They don’t do exercise. In my opinion, I think children should learn to cook healthy food in school.
2) At school, they should teach more about healthy foods and healthy cooking. On TV, they advertise a lot of junk or unhealthy food, for example, burgers and pizza. These meals can be made at home much healthier.
3) I think that children have to be educated from childhood to have good habits. Kids have to eat everything in a healthy diet rich in protein. If they only eat junk food and do not exercise, we will have obese children in the future.
4) In conclusion, parents and teachers tend to instill these values since the children are small. I think that colleges should offer healthy cooking classes, games where you practice sport… fun but healthy methods.