A Corpus-based Study On Chinese English Majors’ Use Of Modal Auxiliary Can In Oral Production

Modal verbs are important part of English language, which take up a higherfrequency than content verbs. As one significant method of expressing modality, modalverbs have drawn a lot of attention from researchers. Modal verbs always have differentmeanings and definite rules and different modals even interact with each other on somemeanings, which put a higher demand on learners if they want to use them correctly. Thecomplication of modals’ meanings does not only lie in the multi-aspects and differentorientations but also in the interaction between semantic and pragmatic meanings. Thepresent thesis will focus on the modal verb can and try to figure out the whole picture ofits meaning distribution based on speaking material of the year2006in SECCL2.0, erroranalysis will also be conducted to classify the inappropriate uses based on context.Finally, the possible reasons for those problems on the use of can will be presentedtentatively. Results show that Chinese English majors have certain tendency in usingmodal verb can and they tend to overuse some meanings like possibility, ability,suggestion and quality or fact on something while neglect others like meaning of orderand offer. Besides, there are misuses of some meanings as well as grammatical mistakes.The figures indicate that Chinese English majors are likely to confuse the modal verb canand other modal verbs such as will and auxiliary verbs such as do or does. It can beconcluded that creative and various methods need to be employed to inspire students tothink, helping them understand and master modal verbs more efficiently and exactly.