What am I supposed to do without your love? Oh, hi. James from EngVid and welcome,
future native speakers. E’s making fun of me, because he’s saying, what are you supposed to do?
Because my seeing isn’t that great. But he’s actually bringing up today’s lesson.
And what we’re going to learn today is the modal verb that is used for
obligation, expectation, and plans: supposed to. People sometimes confuse supposed to with must,
and have to. I’ve done a lesson on that. So you can go check that out on the website at EngVid.
But today, what we want to work on specifically is supposed to,
and how am I going to do that? Well, I’m going to reduce you to the three most common ways people
use it and give you examples. Okay. And then we’re going to do a quiz, of course,
to test your knowledge on it. Why is it important, because supposed to is about plans. And we all
know we make plans, from flying to different countries to what we’re going to have for dinner.
So supposed to will help us make sure you sound more like a native speaker?
Are you ready? Let’s go to the board. So what are you supposed to do? Supposed to:
our first meaning we look at is to talk about expectations, what you think should happen.
So if you went to a store, and you saw this, you said “$20? It’s supposed to be on sale.”
My expectation was it should be $15. But it’s not 15, it’s 20. That’s more than I expected.
And that’s where the expectations come in. It’s an idea that you’ve had in your head,
about a way a thing should be alright, if you’re going on a date, and you go out of, I’m going on a
date to meet a woman, I come out, I’ve seen her on Tinder or whatever. And I look at her Whoa, you’re
supposed to be smaller. Maybe she’s 20 feet tall. I’m like, I expected you this tall, not basketball
height. Who knows, you never know. Okay, so my example is: “supposed to be on sale”, you thought
it would be one price, but it’s another price. Now we talk about obligations. An obligation
is similar to an expectation, but they are different. An obligation is similar to more like
must, something that you should do, because you have this job or duty. And because
of that you have certain expectations. Most of us know that if you have a job,
and you’re supposed to be there at 9am, that is an obligation. It’s not merely an expectation like,
well, we kind of expected it to be, but it could change. That’s your job. And if that’s
difficult to understand, I want you to think about going to a store. Imagine going to the bank, the
bank is supposed to be open at 9am. And the bank opens at 10 o’clock, the guy just walks up like,
hey, just slept in, you’re going to be angry, right? Because it’s not an expectation, not just,
it’s stronger than that. So you’re having you have an obligation to be here on time, look at all of
these people lining up, we’ve been waiting for you. In this case, you might say, or you would
say “you’re supposed to be here at this time”. It’s not just expectation, it’s more of a duty.
Okay, so it’s stronger than the expectation. But it still comes from the family of expectation,
right? So “you were supposed to pay your taxes on time”, in this case, supposed to take on the
idea of must, is, you could say must. But once again, remember, this lesson is about teaching you
how we more casually use our English. And that’s why this lesson goes from a beginner lesson to an
intermediate, because you’ve got more of an understanding to use it more appropriately.
“You’re supposed to be on time Johnson”: you can say you must be on time,
that clearly, they weren’t on time. So you say you’re supposed to because that’s part
of your obligation. Cool. So we notice how expectation is going morphing or changing into
an obligation, something stronger. Now number three, we say to say I have
heard or people believe something to be true. And you kind of going What do you mean I have
heard or that’s a confusing sentence? Well, I have heard means people have told me right? I
heard you I heard a sound. People have told me so I have heard this is true. We can also say it’s a
different way of saying people believe so they tell other people. For instance, I have heard
that Paris is a romantic city. Or you can say what what is it? “Paris is supposed to be a romantic
city.” See? And then once again, it goes back to that expectation thing we were talking about at
the beginning. Because people have said it, you expect it. It’s not an obligation for Paris to be
romantic. It is not the city of love just because you think it is... no, it is your expectation not
our obligation. Yes. My best French accent. Okay, so it’s something that people believe to be true,
but it doesn’t have to be. But people talk about it. So you expect it or you believe it,
okay? Because you’ve heard it or people believe it. So these are the three most common uses I
discussed at the beginning things that people use supposed to for. And this is how you’re supposed,
oh, I’m about to say you’re supposed to use it expected to use it. Right? Okay.
So, what is this supposed to? How do we write it just because I said it and you’re like, Okay,
I get it. What is the form? So let’s discuss the form and the pronunciation of it. Okay,
I’m going to teach you how to put it how to pronounce it, we’ll get the proper pronunciation
because there are two. But let’s go to the board and look at the form. In red I have verb “to be”,
“supposed”. And then I got to verb base. If you don’t know what that is, that is the infinitive
form. When you have the preposition to, before a verb in the base is, especially with a modal
verb in front of it, it is the infinitive form. So we have the verb to be supposed,
and has to have a D. And I’ll explain why in a second or two. And then the infinitive form of
the next verb. I’m supposed to meet my friend for dinner, you were supposed to be here an hour ago,
you’re supposed to go home. That is the form. Now, when we say in the present,
or future, we can use this and we will use a probe the verb to be in its appropriate
form for the pronoun. So if the pronoun is I, then it’s “am”. If it’s he she it? “Is”.
They, we, an “are”. All right, so that’s are so we are supposed to see my friend,
I am supposed to see my friend, she is supposed to see your friend. Right? If it’s the future, you
use the same form. And you say, I am supposed to see my friend tonight. That’s in the future. Easy
enough, right? And it’s that expectation, or yeah, in this case expectation for this sentence.
Now when what happens if you want to say something negative? Well, we’re going to have to put a
negative form in it. And that form is going to take the form of ‘not’, which I didn’t write.
I didn’t want it too confusing, but we’ll put it here: not. And we put the not with the verb to be.
So we don’t put it with the verb at the base, we put it with the verb to be so we change it.
So the test, it wasn’t supposed to be hard, hard. We change was Remember, we said it was okay. And
this is actually negative and past. So I’ve done a whammy on you. So before I do that, why don’t
we go here? They’ll come back to there. Okay? So don’t look here for a second. Let’s go here.
Let’s do, we did future and present, let’s do the past form. We take the verb to be and there
you go. It’s in the past. So I was he was she was they were we were okay, you just put that
form. And that’s the past. This is very specific. And I want to take a second to you to explain.
The past form is a little different than the present form. Present Future means planning ahead.
Past form is used to mean, something has changed. What? I was supposed to meet my friend
at the mall, it means I probably didn’t meet my friend at the mall. That was the plan. But it has
changed. So when someone says to you in that this moment, you’re standing here and they’re standing
here. I’m supposed to go home tonight means that was the plan. That may change or may have changed.
Cool? All right. So look out for “was” because something’s changing. And you have to be aware
of it. Right? He was supposed to be the best guy, the best guy for president. Things change.
Alright, so in this case, I have I was supposed to be home by now. Am I home? Probably not.
That’s what the was for. There was a plan for me to be home. But clearly I’m not.
Now I’m going to go back to the other form. And I apologize greatly for doing that to you. Because
I really liked the lesson. It was a good one up until here. But I wanted to show the negative
form because sometimes things change, right? So in this case, something’s changed, but it’s negative.
You could say... here’s an example. It was supposed to be it’s supposed to be a nice
day today. Sunny, great weather. Right? Or you could say it wasn’t supposed to rain. What? Well,
Sunny is good weather. Rain is bad weather. I could make that negative change by adding “not”.
It wasn’t supposed to rain. Right? It is supposed to be a nice day with a sentence on the board.
It wasn’t supposed to be hard, right? It is supposed to be easy. Flipping it by changing
the end of that verb. So what I want to say is we’ve gone over three. Yes, sir. We have... oh,
I almost jumped ahead of myself. I promise you the pronunciation. And you’re gonna say what’s,
what’s the big deal. That’s what this crazy thing down here is.
We actually don’t usually say “supposed to”. And that’s why many students spell it incorrectly
and they drop off the D because they always hear “suppose” when you’re speaking quickly, we usually
drop the U sound. And we also drop the D sound. So it comes out to sppose to, I’m sppose to do this,
you’re sppose to do this, we’re sppose to go. Now, when someone wants to get your attention,
they’ll say, you were supposed to be at work on time. Don’t play around, they’re not playing with
you. They took the time to say all the sounds. So fast speech, you’ll notice the U and the D
gets done, or dropped. Cool. So we’ve gone over the three
definitions, some people break it into four, I think three is sufficient.
We’ve gone over to the present and future form. Alright, we’ve gone over the past form. And we’ve
even shown you the negative form. And I went one step further negative, the negative post form.
But it’s not a lesson if we don’t do our quiz and have a bonus feature homework, is it?
So I’d like you to stay with me. And after you know, we’re supposed to do something
a little different, or we’re supposed to do the test. I want you to do it with me now.
And we’re back. So we were supposed to do our quiz, which we’ll do now. Do you
remember the three meanings for “supposed to”? Obligation, expectation, and belief.
And that is part of what’s going to happen to the quiz here as we have three boxes,
and you’re going to try and fill out what should go there. Which one? Which part of
supposed to we’re talking about in the meaning. Now, I’m over here. Let’s start here. Mr. E says,
You must not smoke in here. And James says okay, cuz I love a good stogie. Stogie is like cigar
people will talk with so on to talk about the stogie with these lousy stogies. All right. So:
“You must not smoke in here.” You have two jobs to do.
What is it that James is there to do? And is it obligation, expectation, or belief? Okay.
That’s right. “James isn’t supposed to smoke in here.” We have not being the
negative part of the sentence. We know what’s supposed to means right? And we’ll be sorry.
James isn’t supposed to smoke in here. And what is this? Is it obligation, belief, or expectation?
Well, if you remember rightly, I put must when we were talking about obligation.
It’s not just expectation, I expect you not to -- you’re not supposed to.
And we know must, like have to, is necessity, right? So in this case, obligation. You’re not
supposed to. It’s like a rule, or law. What about this one, two? “Many people
believe that Oxford is the best university in the world.” How would you write that? Sorry, I was
just going to put this here before I forget. How would you write that? Alright, so it is Oxford.
“Oxford is supposed to be the best university in the world.” Now, I tried to help you here
by saying something and if you can pick it out, you’ll know if this is obligation,
belief, or expectation. What word should help you here? That’s correct. “Believe.” So this is a
belief that people hold. Of course, if you’re from Harvard, you probably want to argue with that one,
but let’s just say Oxford for now. Okay. Now, can I do this? Just as a quick question to see if you
remember the grammar and how it’s supposed to be structured. Can I put supposed to like that?
No. Now what we said was people may say it like that very quickly. It’s s’ppose to be,
but you do not write it like that, you need the D. Okay? Just like we don’t add an ing or an S
here. When we say supposed to, it’s in the passive voice. So we use the verb to be supposed to be,
and then sorry, supposed to, with the infinitive. Good. I’m glad you remember the grammar.
And I’m glad you remember what the meanings are. So we’re going back over that.
Now for the final one. You should get it because there’s only one left. But this is a tough one.
My girlfriend shouldn’t be here. She should be at work at this time. Maybe somebody is up to
something bad, naughty person. You’re not supposed to be doing that. But what sentence would you
write? And what part of the meaning of supposed to are we looking at? Alright, so let’s do it.
It’s a long sentence. We get the point. And I’m going to fill this in. Because I already know
you should know this one already. Right? You should know this one. Oh, you know what?
I put the S too close so I should do this. She’s, she’s supposed to. Okay. She’s supposed
to be at work. But what is it? It’s going to be... expectation. And for those of you who
are confused, why is this expectation not obligation? Because she’s at work? Well,
I think it has nothing to do with her work. I am not her boss talking. Maybe I’m her boyfriend. And
I expect her to be at work at 12 o’clock, except she’s home. But what am I doing that I’m afraid...
to be continued. Alright, so we’re looking at it, and I’ve used it twice.
My girlfriend isn’t supposed to be here. Now we know that is a negative use, we use the negative,
right? And she’s supposed to be at work at this time. So we use the positive,
both are in the positive or sorry, in the present form. Right. So we talked about a change in plans.
Remember, we talked about that. So there was a change in the plan. She’s supposed to be at work.
And she’s not supposed to be here, now. My expectation. So we’ve covered all the things
we talked about, we have three examples of obligation, or sorry, one example each
of obligation, belief, and expectation. And now I would like to give you a couple
other things. Well, some phrases you can use with supposed to that will help to round out
your English. Because as I said, why we’re learning this is because it’s about planning.
And in this case, you can see there’s a change in the plan. And a lot of people say this, instead of
“have to” or “must”, like I have to go to work I’m supposed to go to work is more common. So I would
like to give you a couple of phrases -- three to be exact, that can help to fill out your use of
“supposed to”. So you can use this modal verb like you’re supposed to. Oh, yeah, I like it, too.
So let’s move to the bonus section of the video. And I’m going to explain
other uses of supposed to, that are used commonly when we talk about
our duties. We could talk about frustration, and the purpose of something. Okay, so:
“What am I supposed to do?” Notice this question in frustration.
It’s... there was... okay. A perfect example was there was a guy I know, named Matt,
and was a pretty decent guy because he would help out with the photocopier.
And he could have said it like this, like, “What am I supposed to do?” but he didn’t use to do
that. And I’ll explain because his classroom was right by our photocopier. And it would break down
a lot. And a lot of the times the teachers would be complaining and this and that making noise,
and Matt would come out and help fix it. Now he could have said it because it happened regularly,
like “what am I supposed to do? Do I look like the Xerox guy?” but he didn’t do that, he would just
help them. But a lot of times people would use frustration if it’s a questioning frustration. If
someone is asking them and saying this photocopier doesn’t work, and then just another teacher.
“Well, what am I supposed to do? It’s not my job.” And that’s that frustration. As much as it
seems like a question, it’s a frustration that it’s not my responsibility or obligation to do
something. Matt, hope you’re doing well, because you helped us a lot with that photocopier.
Now, we can ask the same question, What am I supposed to do, but we can use it in line of duty?
What’s your job or responsibility? So you come in and they go, okay... “Daniel’s going to be doing
this, Josh will be doing this.” And I go and go: “So what am I supposed to do?” What is my job in
all of this? In this case? It’s not frustration. It’s what do you expect of me? Or what would you
like me to do? So what am I supposed to do? Sit over there. Okay. Cool, right?
Next we can say it is what does something do? But we would say, what is this supposed to do?
So you get rid of this. You go, what is it supposed to do? What is this supposed to do?
You could turn around and I’m looking around at this. Oh, interesting.
What is this supposed to do? Notice I said “s’ppose” to remember I said we dropped the U
and the D, I use that what is this supposed to do? Meaning what is its function? What is its purpose?
Tell the weather, tell the time? I don’t know. You tell me what is it supposed to do? Cool.
So now I’ve given you the three meanings of supposed to in verb. I’ve given you three
different ways you can use it in conversation to... I want to say elicit and elicit means
get more information from someone or something. As in frustration, you can let people know you’re
frustrated when something’s not your obligation. Right? What am I supposed to
do about it? Do I look like I’m the prime minister or president, prime minister, president, Canada?
President of the United States or the prime minister of Canada? Oh, wow. Too much TV.
What do you expect of me, so what am I supposed to do, help with the guys over there? Would
you like me to work over there? So you’re asking me, what is my duty in this situation?
And then we can say, what is the purpose of something? What is it supposed to do? Is it
supposed to be an air conditioner? Is it supposed to be a computer? What is it?
Now, I’ve given you your test? I think you did rather well,
remembering what the three meanings of supposed to are,
and how we can use it. I’ve given you some bonus material. And as always, you have
some homework. So what does Mr. E want you to do? Well, it says fill in what is supposed to be done.
And I want you to fill this in underneath... in the comment section, either here, or in
EngVid or wherever you’re watching this particular video. Okay, the first one is Mr. E says you were
supposed to like this video. Give it a thumbs up. And you say okay, now I want you to do it.
I know tricky, huh? Alright. But now you know how it works, it’s good. The second thing is Mr.
E says Mr. E says you are supposed to write out three sentences with “supposed to”. And I would
like to add, I would like you to try to use at least the meaning or the intention, of obligation,
of belief, or expectation and try and show that you know the difference. Cool. All right.
Well, I want to say before I go, I’ve got a quote for you. And because this lesson was about
supposed to and obligation, here’s a quote, you might like: “You were born with three obligations,
and only three. That is to live, to love, and to be happy.” And before I take off, I’d like to say
please go visit EngVid. And that’s www. eng as in English, vid as in video .com. And before you go,
I’m sure you’ve already hit that like button, or I hope you have because you stayed this long,
right? It means you must like the video, you’re at the end, hit the subscribe button. And there’s
a little bell there. If you hit that, that’s for notification, which means when you hit
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I’m supposed to get going right now and I hope you you were supposed to learn something from
this lesson. You have a great one and as I say, future native speakers: see you soon.