A Study Of The Use Of Modal Verbs In Chinese Students’ Spoken English From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

Modal verbs play an important role in expressing speakers’ feeling, attitude and politeness in spoken English. If properly used, modal verbs can help us strengthen the communication and shorten the distance between the speakers; otherwise, the result of conversation is unpleasant. But every modal verb possesses several sorts of meanings; meanwhile, different modal verbs may have the same meaning. It is so sophisticated to teach and to learn that learners hardly master them very well. It is also difficult for Chinese learners to express their rich feelings in spoken English as well. Compared with native speakers, Chinese speakers have made a sea of mistakes in using modal verbs.To make it clear what the situation of Chinese learners’modal verbs in their spoken English is like, this paper is of micro level, concreteness as well as combined with quantitative and qualitative methods. It analyzed the particular differences in verbally using modal verbs between native speakers and Chinese learners so as to find the answers to the following questions:1) What is the situation of Chinese learners’use of modal verbs in spoken English? 2) How does Relevance Theory explain the use of modal verbs? 3) How would Relevance Theory be applied to learning and teaching English modal verbs?In order to respond to the questions above, as well as to ensure the spoken English rather than written English, the materials were derived from the Friends’subscripts with Chinese translation for the sake of the convenience of volunteers’comprehension. The materials were assembled by means of five conversations about every modal verb which stand for the five types of usage of every modal verb. Then all the modal verbs included in sentences are deleted and 100 students which are 75 undergraduates and 25 masters of English major were asked to fill in the blank.The number of usage convergence and the frequent number of every modal verb were made clear, and then the convergent rate and the frequent rate of every modal verb were also worked out. The conclusion of overusing and under-using certain modal verbs can be made from their frequent rates, and the result of misusing certain modal verbs can be found out by calculating the convergent rates.There are three results stemming from analyzing the data, one is that Chinese students are more likely to use can, should and must, which leads to the overuse of can, should and must and under-use the high modal value of might, could and be going to, have got to and be supposed to, which also leads to a fewer kinds of modal verbs to be used. The third is that might, could and will also are misused according to the convergent rate. The overuse, under-use and misuse of modal verbs can be explained according to Relevance Theory. The result is given rise to by context, in the view of Relevance Theory, context possesses the function of constraining and restricting the semantic meaning of modal verbs. The semantic meanings of modal verbs largely rely on the context, so English teachers are not supposed to teach modal verbs in traditional process that the first step is to introduce the usage of a certain modal verb and the second is to make a sentence to give an example of the semantic meaning. What English teachers do in traditional way overlooks the significant part played by context. Moreover, what English teachers do in conventional way gives rise to the complication of the knowledge concerning modal verbs. They could not succeed in giving legible information of the modal verbs possessing the same Chinese meaning which are distinguished in mood and modal value. As a result, the learners’ cognitive contexts have a negative effect on the usage of modal verbs with the same Chinese meaning. The cognitive contexts of Chinese learners affect the context effects and reduce the relevance of the utterance. According to cognitive principle, when language users encounter the similar and familiar modal verbs, they would like to make the least efforts to choose one to express themselves, which gives rise to the under-use, overuse and misuse of certain modal verbs. The suggestion should be proposed that English teachers pay more attention to the different kinds of modal verbs in the same semantic meaning and adjust the teaching method by combining context.