Underline the correct modal verb in these sentences.

1. She can / can’t be Italian with a name like Smith!

2. I may / can’t be able to come.

3. A: Someone’s at the door. B: That can / will be Joan.

4. You could have been / must have been crazy to do something as dangerous as that!

5. He can’t have been / may have been the murderer because he has an excellent alibi.

6. I might / can not be able to come, so don’t wait for me.

7. It may / must be cold tomorrow.

8. Who could have / should have done such a terrible thing?

9. Hurry up, we’re late! We might / should have been ready hours ago.

10. He could / can have been the one who started the fire but we’re really not really sure.

6. Choose and underline the function of the modal verb from the following options: offer, suggestion, obligation, absence of obligation, prohibition, permission, ability, certainty, probability, deduction, advice, request.

JUDGE: You’ve been found guilty of not stopping at a red traffic light when you should have done. What do you have to say for yourself?

ACCUSED: But I often stop at green traffic lights when I don’t have to!

Use modal perfect forms with the verbs in italics to complete this passage about the photograph. Translate the text.

The Cottinngley Fairy Photographs

We all know fairies don’t exist. If they can’t exist now then presumably they (exist) in the past either. Yet in 1917 a photograph appeared which seemed to prove the opposite.

When Frances Griffiths and her cousin Elsie were late for tea one day in 1917, their mother asked them what they had been doing. They claimed they had been playing with fairies at the bottom of the garden. The girls (be) lying. Nonetheless, they told their mother they would prove their story by taking a photograph next time they played with the fairies. We know they (play) with fairies, yet a few days later the girls produced a photograph which seemed to confirm their story. Somehow they (fake) the picture but at the time nobody could work out how it had been done. They (combine) two negatives, they (make) models and hung them with wires in front of the lens, or they (paint) the fairies onto a sheet of glass – the technique frequently used in modern film-making. Whatever they did (be) very ingenious because many scientists examined the negatives and found nothing. Even Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, was convinced they were genuine.

For over fifty years the mystery was unsolved. Then in 1983, when Frances and Elsie were both very old women, they decided to tell the truth. They had simply cut some figures out of a book of fairy stories and supported them on hat pins in front of the camera. Like all the greatest hoaxes, it was its simplicity which had made it so convincing.