The Contrast Study of the Using Features of Modal Verbs in Argumentative Essays (original) (raw)
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English Language Teaching, 2013
This research studied the use of modals in argumentative written tasks by Form 5 Malaysian secondary school ESL students. The aim of this study was to examine the use of English modals at the syntactic level from data presented in the MCSAW Corpus. The research design comprised a qualitative technique through discourse analysis aided by descriptive statistics from a concordance, which was utilized to identify the modal verbs used by the Form 5 level in Malaysian schools. The research findings showed that Malaysian students had little problem using modal verbs grammatically in argumentative writing. It was also found that Malaysian students preferred to use a lot of modals in their writings. However, the use of these modals was limited to a few words only. It was concluded that despite the inaccuracies in terms of meanings, most students were able to use syntactically accurate modals in their sentences. Several recommendations are proposed with the aim of improving the teaching of modal verbs in Malaysian schools.
A Corpus-Based Study of Malaysian ESL Learners’ Use of Modals in Argumentative Compositions
This study attempts to examine the use of English modals in terms of their frequency and functions. For this purpose, Form 4 and College students' argumentative compositions were extracted from the Malaysian Corpus of Students' Argumentative Writing (MCSAW). In order to analyze the data, this study employed discourse analysis and some descriptive statistics by using the WordSmith Tools Version 4.0. The findings of the study showed that Form 4 and College students used can and will more frequently in argumentative compositions compared to other modals. Moreover, the result illustrated the exploitation of present tense form of modal than the past tense form. Finally, it was also revealed that the modals of ability were the most frequent modals found in Form 4 and College students' compositions in terms of their appropriate function. In order to improve the teaching, learning and effective usage of modal auxiliaries among ESL learners, all the central modals must be emphasized repetitively to enhance students' understanding of modals and their functions.
2009
This thesis examines, by way of a corpus-based investigation, usage patterns of modal expressions by British learners of German as a foreign language. Modality plays a pivotal role in all texts and discourses that deal with the discussion or examination of practical or theoretical problems and is crucial for the process of argumentation and reasoning. It is therefore an integral part of foreign language learners‟ writing at university level. The study is more comprehensive than previous approaches, as it incorporates the full semantic range of modal meanings as well as all the different types of modal expressions in the German language, i.e. modal verbs, modal adverbials and modal lexical verbs, modal infinitives and the subjunctive mood. The investigation is methodologically based on a multiple-comparison approach involving a corpus of learner German (CLEG), which has been compiled for the study, and several other L1 and L2 native speaker corpora. The results indicate that learners exhibit in their argumentative writing specific patterns of modality use that are different from those of native speakers and at various levels of proficiency. On the whole, learners tend to overuse modal expressions. The specific overuse and avoidance patterns of epistemic modal verbs are strongly linked to L1/L2 form meaning equivalents (e.g. MUST – MÜSSEN). Where modal verbs are avoided, modal adverbials are overused to fill the semantic gap. Modal adverbials tend to develop into fossilised formulaic sequences, where the expression of modality is extrapolated from the rest of the utterance in a sentence-initial matrix clause, usually of the “es ist...” („it is...‟) type. The development of the use of the subjunctive mood is indicative of the learners‟ growing proficiency; however, learners even at the advanced stage exhibit difficulties in the morphological distinction between indicative and subjunctive verb forms. On top of these findings on learner modality, the results from this study can corroborate previous research on general characteristics of learner language, specifically the tendency to be more explicit than native speakers, to overuse personalised expressions that indicate subjective writer involvement, and to exhibit a less formal, more speech-like register in the learners‟ written argumentative productions.
Polysemous verbs and modality in native and non-native argumentative writing: A corpus-based study
The present study is a corpus-based analysis of a selection of polysemous lexical verbs used to express modality in student argumentative writing. Twenty-three lexical verbs were searched for in three 100,000-word corpora of argumentative essays written in English by American, Filipino and Spanish university students. Concordance lines were examined to determine their use in the three corpora. After presenting the overall results for all verbs studied, more in-depth linguistic analysis was performed on the polysemous verb feel. These analyses revealed that the non-native writers, unlike their native counterparts, had a limited grasp of the full range of meanings of lexical verbs such as feel. It also showed that all student writers under study employed only a restricted range of lexical verbs to convey modal meanings in their writing.
Modality Meanings in Student's Argumentative Writing
2015
This paper presents some exploratory observations on the use of epistemic and deontic modality in a set of 30 undergraduate students’ argumentative writing as classified by Nuyts (2006) and Bybee (1994). It is important to know the students’ understanding about when to use these expressions through the use of these epistemic and deontic modality expressions because by acknowledging the students’ understanding about them, we as a teacher will realize that our students do understand the use of them or they need better perception about modality meanings. Since the way they apply those expressions in their writing reflect their comprehension about the actual use of these expressions in the English language and culture and the indication that the area students need help with. The study finds that in terms of deontic modality, the students used modality auxiliaries more frequently than to the use of lexical verbs, adverbs, adjectives or multi word units to show modality meanings in their...
International Review of Management and Marketing, 2016
Argumentative writing is regarded as an essential form of written discourse in Malaysia, specifically in Malaysian University English Test (MUET). Accordingly, there are numerous studies on argumentative essays which demonstrate the increased interest in linguistic features. Conversely, limited studies have been conducted on the written discourse of the MUET argumentative essay at pre-university level. For this purpose, using a compiled representative learner corpus, a preliminary study is conducted to investigate the linguistic features; lexical verbs used in Band 5 and Band 3 argumentative essays produced by students of a pre-university college in Malaysia. Subsequently, the lexical verbs utilized in the respective essays were compared. As a descriptive analysis and corpus-based study, the use of lexical verb forms was examined via a computer-assisted corpus analysis, for short (CACA), reflecting the learners’ knowledge of applying this linguistic constituent into their written es...
English Language and Literature Studies, 2019
Based on the result of the trends of modal sequences in Chinese English majors' argumentation, this research focuses on the relationship between English majors' tendency to use modal sequences and their college campus time. The paper reveals that the tendency to use modal verbs is not related to their college campus time, and that epistemic and deontic modality to uses are not related to their college campus time, either. This study offers reference to the understanding of how Chinese students acquire modal verbs and gives suggestions for modal verb teaching which are the following: (1) We should bear in mind when compiling textbooks that more exposure to epistemic modal verbs with euphemism modality for students is needed in early senior high textbooks; (2) Native speakers' tendency to use modal verbs should be explicitly clarified in class; (3) native speakers tend to use should be consciously presented both in and after class; (4) The proper pragmatic meaning of modal verbs, the basic value view and social philosophy of Anglo-American Culture involved as well as the differences in cultural tradition and value between East and West should be underlined in English modal verbs teaching.
2017
Modality has been a field of deep study by semantictians and pragmatists. This field has been of interest for professors of Complutense University of Madrid as Marta Carretero (1995) and Angela Downing (2015), among others. The present study aims to analyze the use of the modal verb “can” and its counterparts “could”, “cannot” and “could not” in written texts by English native students (NS) and Spanish non-native students of English (NNS). More specifically, the study tries to answer the following research questions: (1) Are the modals under analysis used more frequently by NS or NNS? and (2), Do NS or NNS use modality differently regarding the degree of formality? To this purpose, two subcorpora (academic and informal texts) were gathered by means of analyzing online journals and online chats, rendering a total of 243 modals in NS and 282 in NNS texts. The analysis of the data reveals that a high frequency of modality depends on a high degree of formality
Cross-cultural Variation in the Use of Modal Verbs in Academic English
Sky Journal of Linguistics, 2014
English academic writing has some specific characteristics that have been broadly defined by researchers. Nevertheless, English is undergoing constant modification as a result of being used as a lingua franca by international speakers. In this paper, my main objective is to determine whether language variation may be identified in cross-cultural communication when modal verbs of ability and possibility are used by speakers with different linguistic backgrounds. Furthermore, I would like to establish whether English writers tend to be more explicit than Spanish writers when both groups use English to communicate. The two corpora used in this study consisted of a set of fifty academic papers written in English by Spanish researchers and a set of fifty academic papers written in English by native English-speaking researchers. Both corpora were analysed to identify synchronic language variation in academic English when used by writers of different linguistic and cultural backgrounds. The results showed that there are disparities in the use of possibility and ability modal verbs and the conclusion reached is that writers with dissimilar mother tongues express volition through modal verbs differently in international journals.