 be supposed to
I had to explain this at the nursing college yesterday and I wasn't quite prepared for the question.
In the dialogue:
Nurse: She's supposed to take this three times a day.
The students have really good grammar and I thought they would already have covered this in high school. Anyway, I don't translate and ended up saying:
'be supposed to' is a polite way or softer way of giving a command or saying 'have to.'
I'm actually not so sure. I've run a few examples through my head and that's what I came up with. Does that sound about right to everyone else or have a missed a usage? |