⛔ Grammar A2-22: must / mustn’t

The twenty-second material of the Fleydo A2 grammar series, and the first of the obligation topics. It treats must and mustn’t as a single decision made in three steps: is there a rule here at all, which way does the rule point, and is the verb after the word still plain? The form is short — must never changes, takes no -s, refuses to, and builds its own negative and its own question without do or does — so the material spends its weight on meaning instead. The error it is designed against is the big one: learners read mustn’t as a gentle “no need” and drop it into sentences where nobody is stopping anything. A compare-and-verdict pair puts an order beside the opposite of an order, and a note box reads three sentences in a row so the learner hears the difference between a rule that asks, a rule that forbids, and a situation with no rule at all, where the honest word is can. Two worked examples run whole sentences through the procedure, one ending in must clip and one in mustn’t tap. Practice is spread over four sets of eight, seven, eight and eight items, each answer explaining itself, plus ten actions to sort into two bins, six signs to turn into sentences before the card opens, six real errors to repair and three traps. A four-paragraph story about a first hour at a climbing centre carries eleven tappable phrases, including one notice that prints the full must not. Teacher notes give a 45-minute sequence, a board drawing of a door with an arrow and a bolt, what to do with a learner who is stuck, the Cambridge A2 Key relevance and the hand-off to have to.