A Corpus-based Study On Modal Verbs Used By Chinese English Major Learners

Corpus approach has been increasingly employed in a great number of languageresearches with the development of computer technology. It is a great shift for foreignlanguage learning and teaching. In the past, masses of language researches are mainlyconducted by qualitative analysis, while nowadays both qualitative analysis and quantitativeanalysis are employed in the language researches. In addition, language researches are basedon the actual language used in real contexts, which makes the researches more accurate andmakes it easier for students to study foreign languages by providing real and practicalexamples.Modal verbs are an important part of traditional grammar, including CAN, COULD,MAY, MIGHT, SHALL, SHOULD, WILL, WOULD, MUST and so on. Lots of othermethods can express the modality, but modal verbs are the main way to express the modality.Although modal verbs are simple in form, they are complex in semantics and pragmatics. Andmany empirical researches found that Chinese English learners have a great number ofdifficulties in acquiring and using modal verbs. Therefore, it is a challenge for both Chineseteachers and students to teach and learn the modal verbs easily.This paper is based on the corpora of CLEC (Chinese Learner English Corpus) andLOB (Lancaster-Oslo/Bergen Corpus). It adopts the CIA (Contrastive Interlanguage Analysis)to compare the differences of Chinese English learners and native English speakers on the useof modal verbs and finds on the whole, modal verbs are overused by Chinese learners. Indetail, CAN, WILL, SHOULD are overused while COULD, WOULD, SHALL, MUST, MIGHT are underused. And then the paper analyses the nine modal verbs from their ownsemantic meanings and offers some tentative reasons for the misuse of modal verbs. The firstreason is the imperfection of Chinese education system. The Chinese text books excessivelyemphasize the use of modal verbs but neglect the importance of other modal ways. Thesecond reason is the acquisition order of the modal verbs. It is possible that the first oneacquired is used most. The third reason is the culture differences between native speakers andlearners. Chinese people advocate the collectivism while native speakers advocateindividualism, which can lead to the different thinking modes. The fourth reason is thetransfer of the mother tongue. The fifth reason is that the simplification and the convenienceof the distinctive features of modal verbs make them easy to use so they are overused. Thelast reason is the avoidance strategy. Learners always tend to avoid using some meanings thatare unfamiliar to them. At the end of this paper, some suggestions are discussed for Englishteaching and learning. Teachers should introduce something about western cultures in theclass, which can not only inspire the learners’interest, but also make it easier to master modalverbs. Teacher should take corpus-based approach in the class to compare the authenticlanguage materials with learners’own writing in order to make the students know theirmisuses. Besides the above two approaches, teachers can also offer students some other waysto express modality such as adverbs and intonation, which can give them more choices as wellas decreasing the number of misuses.