Try to imagine what the most likely reasons are for the situations mentioned below. If you’re not sure, you can give negative sentences about the least likely situations.
| Useful phrases
almost certainly almost certainly not can’t could possibly might/ may must probably probably not |
- Someone calls at 2 a.m.
- Someone who you don’t know leaves a message on your answer phone (= answer machine) asking you to call them back as soon as possible.
- Someone’s home phone is engaged (= busy) all day.
- The receptionist asks you to hold (= hold the line) and then nothing happens for five minutes.
- They put you through (= connect you) to the wrong person.
- They tell you someone is away from their desk but don’t offer to take a message.
- When you answer your wife’s phone, the caller hangs up without speaking.
- You call an office at 12:30 p.m. and no one answers.
- You call an office at 8 p.m. and no one picks up.
- You leave a message with someone’s secretary but no one gets back to you.
- You phone the girl who you were chatting to in a bar the other night but she gave you the wrong number.
- Someone left a message on a Post-It note for you telling you to ring your mother as quickly as possible but not giving the reason.
- You are cut off while speaking to someone on their mobile phone (= cellphone).
- Someone calls you from a payphone (= public phone) but is cut off halfway through the call.
- Your teenage child’s mobile phone bill is much much higher than usual.
- Someone asks to be put through to your boss but refuses to say who they are.
- The official website for the product you just bought doesn’t have a customer support call centre phone number on it.
- You get lots of salesmen cold calling on your mobile number.
- There is lots of background noise that sounds like water when you phone a friend on their mobile.
Without looking above, brainstorm language for guessing, including negative and unsure expressions, into the right places below.
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Add the phrases on the first page into the right places above.
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PDF for easy saving and printing: Telephoning language modals of deduction
Related pages
Teaching Telephoning: Interactive Classroom Activities
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