A Study On Negated English Modal Verbs By Chinese EFL Learners

The structure of negated English modal verbs is a complicated point in English grammar.It has two scopes of negation and can express two kinds of modality,which as a result puzzles EFL learners in learning and using it.This study,therefore,from the perspective of English grammar,aims to explore the features of negated English modal verbs used by Chinese EFL learners from three aspects:the distributions,the syntactic features,and the modal features of negated English modal verbs by Chinese EFL learners.This research adopts corpus-based approach,combines quantitative analyses and qualitative analyses,and applies modern statistical means.After the data statistics and analyses,the research results are reached as follows.Firstly,the frequency of negated English modal verbs by Chinese EEL learners differs significantly from native speakers.Moreover,Chinese EFL learners use negated modal verbs more proficiently in written English than in spoken English.Secondly,negated English modal verbs used by Chinese EFL learners share some common syntactic features with native speakers.However,they possess their unique syntactic features.As to the sentence subject,pronouns appear more frequently than nouns in both BNC and SWECCL.However,the use of every concrete negated modal verb differs greatly,which reflects that some negated English modal verbs are misused.As to the voice,Chinese EFL learners apply less marked voice in the expression of modality.And to the aspect,Chinese EFL learners have not mastered the combination of aspect and negated modal verbs yet with less than ten times in both perfect aspect and progressive aspect.Thirdly,the epistemic modality of negated English modal verbs in extracted examples are expressed properly by Chinese EFL learners.However,not all negated English modal verbs are properly used in the expression of the deontic modality.Results of this research can provide some insights into English learning and teaching.On one hand,English learners themselves can get a general understanding of what they produce and may have some new discoveries.On the other hand,English teachers can get a general impression on the students' different competence in using negated English modal verbs.As a result,they can readjust their teaching focuses,methods,strategies.