A Corpus-based Study On Modal Sequences In English Majors’spoken And Written Language

This research analyzes the distribution of the use of modal sequences in the sub-corpus of Spoken and Written English Corpus of Chinese Learners (SWECCL) and Chinese Learner English Corpora (CLEC) and the compositions written by university students in British National Corpus (BNC) and Louvain Corpus of Native Essays (LOCNEE) from the view of syntax and semantics by qualitative analysis and quantitative analysis.The aim of this research is to study the features of modal sequences which are used by our Chinese English major students in their writing and speaking. The author adopts the method of CIA (Contrastive Interlanguage Analysis) to analyze the corpus. And then the author gains the finding after the data statistics and analysis by the employment of some softwares.Firstly, the frequency of modal verbs is different from Chinese English major students and British and American university students when they use modal verbs in their writings. In Liang Maocheng’s study (2008), he does the research of modal sequences which adopted by non-English majors. This study’s finding is different from Liang Maocheng’s, the modal verb "must" is not overused by English major students.Secondly, there are some obvious differences between native speaker and Chinese English major students when they use the modal sequences in their writing and speaking.(1) The native speakers’application of the subject before modal verbs is not the same as Chinese English majors, the first and second pronouns are overused by the later. The modal verbs are usually followed by the verbs which are overused with unmarked tense and aspect. While adopting this unmarked verb, dynamic verbs are more likely to be chosen. But native speakers prefer stative verbs.(2) Besides the underused modal sequences which formed by "could, would", it is obvious that the modal verb which followed by the passive voice is underused. Through analyzing, the author finds that the overused deontic modal sequences are the significant characteristic of Chinese English majors in their writing and speaking.Thirdly, compared with predecessors’researches, especially in Liang Maocheng’s study (2008), while non-English major students adopting modal sequences in their writings, the frequency of deontic modal sequences is much higher than English major students’. This result can prove Liang Maocheng’s finding that there is relevance between the students’ language proficiency and the frequency of deontic modal sequences.The finding of this research shows some inspiration for our English teaching and learning and testing.(1) Modal sequences should be learned at the same time when we learn modal verbs, just as new words and their collocations are supposed to be learned simultaneously. That will help us to learn the use of native speakers’modal sequences when we compare the native speakers’corpus and Chinese students’corpus.(2) When students tend to overuse deontic modal sequence and underuse epistemic modal sequence, some complicated modality in their writing and speaking are difficult to be presented. And the strong narrative features are showed in their writing and speaking. It is a very good attempt and application to make use of the result of corpus linguistics in writing class and speaking class.(3) It has some reference function to the automated essay scoring systems.