Use modal verbs + have + V3 to work out what probably, certainly or impossibly happened.
In Unit 6 you learned to make deductions about the present: She must be tired. Now you will do the same for the past. When you have no direct proof but you can read the clues, English lets you say how certain you are with a single, powerful structure: a modal verb + have + past participle (V3).
This is the language of detectives, scientists and confident speakers. Instead of "Maybe he forgot" you can say "He must have forgotten" (I'm sure), "He can't have forgotten" (that's impossible) or "He might have forgotten" (perhaps). One small change of modal, and your whole level of certainty changes with it.
The pattern never changes: pick your modal, then always add have and the past participle (V3). The modal shows how sure you are; the have + V3 shows that you are talking about the past.
| Function | Structure | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Certain — it happened | must + have + V3 | She must have left early. |
| Certain — it did NOT happen | can't / couldn't + have + V3 | He can't have known the truth. |
| Possible — perhaps | might / may / could + have + V3 | They might have missed the bus. |
| Continuous idea | modal + have been + V-ing | You must have been sleeping. |
Think of a line from 100% yes to 100% no. The modal you choose places your idea somewhere on that line. This is the whole point of deduction: not the fact, but how confident you are about it.
| Certainty | Modal | Example |
|---|---|---|
| ~100% — I'm sure it happened | must have | The road is wet; it must have rained. |
| ~50% — perhaps it happened | might / may / could have | She's late; she may have overslept. |
| ~0% — I'm sure it did NOT happen | can't / couldn't have | He can't have finished so quickly. |
These two are a pair: must have for what you are sure did happen, can't have for what you are sure did not. You read the same evidence, but it points in opposite directions.
could have + V3 does two useful jobs. First, like might/may have, it shows a past possibility. Second — and this is very B2 — it describes a missed opportunity or a near miss: something that was possible but did not actually happen.
| Meaning | Example | Idea |
|---|---|---|
| Past possibility (= might have) | She could have taken the earlier train. | Perhaps she did. |
| Missed opportunity | We could have won, but we played badly. | It was possible; it did not happen. |
| Near miss / lucky escape | You could have hurt yourself! | It nearly happened; luckily it did not. |
The only difference is when the situation is true. Add have to move a present deduction into the past. Compare each pair carefully — the certainty is the same, only the time changes.
| Idea | Present (Unit 6) | Past (Unit 7) |
|---|---|---|
| Certain | She must be tired. | She must have been tired. |
| Impossible | He can't be at home. | He can't have been at home. |
| Possible | They might be lost. | They might have been lost. |
These are the errors B2 students still make with past deduction. Check your own sentences against every row.
| Wrong ✗ | Right ✓ | Why? |
|---|---|---|
| She must have went home. | She must have gone home. | use the participle (V3 = gone), not the past (went). |
| He must left already. | He must have left already. | the structure needs have: must + have + V3. |
| They mustn't have seen us. | They can't have seen us. | for past impossibility use "can't have", not "mustn't have". |
| You can't have been knowing that. | You can't have known that. | "know" is stative → no continuous form. |
| It must have rain last night. | It must have rained last night. | after "have" you need the participle (rained). |
Two colleagues wonder why Dan never arrived at an important meeting. Read it twice and watch the certainty shift: must have for a sure conclusion, can't have for an impossible one, and might/could have for a guess.
Choose the correct answer. — 10 questions, each one is marked instantly. Questions get harder as you go.
Learn the words, then use them to explain what probably happened.
Write 8 sentences explaining a real or imagined mystery — something odd that happened and how you worked out the reason. Use at least 8 of the words above.
Sentence starters (you can begin with these):
Değerlendirme öğretmenin tarafından yapılacak. (Your teacher will review your task.)
Read the mystery, then answer the questions.
Good readers prepare before they start. Before you read, think about these three questions (you do not need to write the answers):
Words to spot (from the Speaking section): clue · evidence · suspect · witness · trace · vanish · deduce · suspicious
Snow had been falling steadily over the village of Hartwell since midnight, and by the time the telephone rang at the police station, the roads were almost impassable. Inspector Hale, who had solved more strange cases than anyone cared to remember, pulled on his heavy coat without a word of complaint. He had learned long ago that the most interesting crimes rarely wait for good weather. As the police car crawled up the hill towards the Vance estate, he could see the great house glowing faintly through the storm, every window lit as if the family had been expecting trouble.
The house itself was more than two hundred years old, full of narrow corridors, hidden staircases and rooms that nobody used any more. Mr Vance had inherited it from his grandfather, along with a diamond necklace that had belonged to the family for generations. It was said to be worth a small fortune, and the old man kept it in a heavy iron safe inside his private study, upstairs on the upper floor. Only he knew the combination, or so he claimed. That single detail, Hale suspected, would matter a great deal before the night was over.
When Inspector Hale arrived at the old house, the study door was still locked from the inside, yet the famous diamond necklace had vanished from the safe. The owner, Mr Vance, insisted that nobody could have entered the room. Nevertheless, Hale was certain that someone must have taken it, because jewels do not simply disappear on their own.
Mr Vance was a nervous, red-faced man who paced up and down as he spoke, wringing his hands. 'I locked the door myself at nine o'clock,' he repeated. 'The key never left my pocket. This is impossible, Inspector — absolutely impossible.' Hale listened politely, but he had heard the word 'impossible' far too many times to trust it. In his experience, nothing was ever truly impossible; there was only the explanation that had not yet been found. He asked the household to gather in the hall and began, slowly and methodically, to piece the evening together.
The household was small. Apart from Mr Vance, there was a cook, an elderly housekeeper, and the owner's young nephew, Daniel, who had arrived only a few days earlier for a long winter visit. The cook had spent the whole evening in the warm kitchen, and the housekeeper had gone to bed early with a headache. That left the nephew, whom nobody had seen since dinner. Hale made a quiet mental note of this, yet he was careful not to jump to conclusions. A good detective, he believed, must gather the facts patiently before he dares to name a suspect.
Hale examined the scene carefully. The window was wide open, although it was a freezing winter night. Therefore, he reasoned, the thief must have climbed in from the garden. However, there were no ladders and no footprints in the flowerbed below. The criminal couldn't have jumped that high, and he can't have flown, so how had he reached the second floor?
He leaned out of the open window and studied the ground below. The snow lay smooth and untouched, like a clean white sheet spread across the garden. If a ladder had stood there, it would have left deep marks; if a man had landed heavily, the snow would have told the story at once. Yet the surface was perfect. For a moment Hale wondered whether the thief had come from somewhere inside the house after all, but the locked door made that theory just as difficult. Every answer seemed to raise a new question.
He crouched down and examined the window frame with his small torch. There were faint scratches along the outer sill, as though something had rubbed hard against the paint. They were fresh — the wood beneath still showed pale and clean. Whatever had made them could not have been there long, because the falling snow would soon have hidden any older marks. Hale straightened up slowly, feeling the first flicker of understanding. The thief had certainly come in through this window, but not, it seemed, by any ordinary means.
Then the inspector noticed a thin rope mark on the balcony rail. Someone must have used a rope, he thought; moreover, that person must have been both strong and light. Whereas an ordinary burglar would have struggled, this thief had moved like an acrobat.
An acrobat, he thought — or at least someone trained like one. To climb a rope up the smooth face of the wall, in the dark and the bitter cold, a person would need remarkable balance and very little weight. Most burglars, in his experience, were clumsy men who broke windows and knocked over the furniture; this one had left almost nothing behind. The very neatness of the crime was itself a valuable clue. Hale had learned over the years that criminals often reveal themselves not by their mistakes but by their unusual skills.
Hale remembered a useful piece of evidence: Mr Vance's young nephew had once worked in a circus. The nephew had claimed to be asleep upstairs, but he might have lied. Since the rope was still slightly warm from friction, the theft could only have happened minutes earlier.
He climbed the stairs to the guest bedroom, where a thin line of light showed beneath the door. Inside, the nephew was sitting fully dressed on the edge of the bed, though it was long past midnight. His shoes were damp, and a faint smell of rope and chalk hung in the air. He greeted the inspector with a bright, easy smile, but his eyes moved a little too quickly, and his hands would not keep still. Hale had questioned enough guilty people to recognise the signs. A man with nothing to hide, he thought, does not smile quite so hard.
'You can't have slept through this,' Hale told the nephew quietly. 'You must have known exactly where the safe was.' The young man turned pale. Although he said nothing, his face had already confessed.
For a long moment neither of them spoke. Outside, the snow kept falling, softening every sound in the old house. At last the young man sank back onto the bed and covered his face with his hands. He admitted that debts had driven him to it: he had planned the theft for weeks, waiting for a night when the storm would hide his tracks and cover his escape. The rope was still coiled inside his suitcase, and the necklace, wrapped in a handkerchief, lay hidden beneath a loose floorboard where he had hoped nobody would ever think to look.
Hale recovered the necklace and returned it to its astonished owner, who could scarcely believe that the mystery had been solved before dawn. 'But the door was locked,' Mr Vance kept saying. 'How could anyone possibly...?' The inspector only smiled and reminded him gently that a locked door proves nothing on its own. 'The truth,' he said, buttoning his coat against the cold, 'is rarely as impossible as it first appears. It simply waits for someone patient enough to listen to what the evidence has to say.'
Choose the correct answer.
Are these sentences true or false, according to the text?
Complete each sentence with ONE word from the text. Mind the deduction structure (modal + have + V3).
Write your answer in your own words. These questions are not marked automatically.
1. Why was Hale sure that the necklace had been stolen, even though the door was locked?
2. How did the rope mark help Hale work out what kind of person the thief was?
3. Do you think Hale had enough evidence to be certain? Why or why not?
Find these connectors in the text — each one appears at least once: however, therefore, nevertheless, although, whereas, moreover, since, yet. (You will use these same connectors in the Writing section.) Note them down, then check.
Todd talks to Abidemi about life with an Inuit community in northern Canada: food, games and music.
You will hear a conversation: Todd asks Abidemi about living with the Inuit in the far north of Canada — the food they eat, the games they play and their music. You will listen TWICE. First listen: answer questions 1-5. Second listen: answer questions 6-10. (Kaydı İKİ kez dinleyeceksin: ilk dinlemede 1-5, ikinci dinlemede 6-10.)
Write and submit your account; your teacher will review it.
At B1 you linked ideas with and, but, so, because. At B2 you sound noticeably more advanced when you use formal, precise connectors. Four of them are essential this unit — and two familiar ones, although and however, become sharper tools.
| Connector | Use it to... | Example |
|---|---|---|
| moreover | add a stronger, extra point | The door was locked. Moreover, the window was shut. |
| therefore | show a logical result | There were no keys; therefore, someone must have climbed in. |
| whereas | contrast two ideas directly | I suspected the neighbour, whereas my brother blamed a stranger. |
| nevertheless | say "in spite of that" | Nothing was missing. Nevertheless, it felt suspicious. |
| although | concede a point inside one sentence | Although the door was locked, the necklace had vanished. |
| however | contrast between two sentences | He denied it. However, the evidence proved otherwise. |
See the difference — the same facts, written two ways:
| Basic linking ✗ | Confident B2 writing ✓ |
|---|---|
| The money was gone. The door was locked. Nobody came in. I thought about it. I found the answer. | The money had vanished, although the door was still locked. Therefore, I studied every clue. Whereas the others assumed a thief, I concluded that it must have been an inside job; moreover, the evidence proved me right. |
A "mystery" paragraph has three parts. The skeleton stays the same — you change the content, not the structure:
| Part | What to write | Example |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Opening | Set the scene: what strange thing happened | One morning we found the back door wide open. |
| 2. Body | Present the clues and your deductions. Use must have / can't have / might have + V3 to say how sure you are. Link with B2 connectors. | Nothing valuable had vanished; therefore, a thief can't have been inside. |
| 3. Closing | Reveal or reflect on what you finally concluded | In the end, it must have been the neighbour's dog. |
Write about a strange event or a small mystery from your own life — something disappeared, something unexpected happened, and you had to work out why. Use the past modals of this unit.
Değerlendirme öğretmenin tarafından yapılacak. (Your teacher will evaluate your writing.)
Mixed questions from the whole unit, then check what you can do.
14 questions: grammar + vocabulary + reading + listening. Each question is marked instantly.
Tick what you can do now. Honest answers help your teacher.
İşaretlemediğin madde varsa ilgili bölüme dönüp tekrar çalış — soldaki menüden her bölüme geri dönebilirsin.
Oturum kontrol ediliyor...