Medical English.pptx

O. Blinova (2021) MODAL VERBS AS A CHALLENGE IN AN ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE CLASS: THE MODAL SHOULD, EDULEARN21 Proceedings, pp. 204-210., 2021

The paper explores the English modal verb Should and addresses the challenges of introducing it to adult EFL / ESL learners. I focus on the modal meanings of Should: obligation, duty, probability, predictions, as well as unfulfilled actions and obligations (the other uses of Should, such as in conditional clauses, reported speech or in the subjunctive mood, are not the subject of this study). The choice of this particular focus is informed by the needs of the learners: due to its relatively simple form and straightforward range of meaning, Should appears to be a good starting point to introduce lower-level learners to the modal verbs system of English. Then I proceed to analyse common learner issues regarding the modal should (use and meaning, such as using Must for advice instead of Should; confusion resulting from the negative forms of Shouldn't, Mustn't and Don't have to, as well as form and phonology mistakes). I conclude with a series of suggestions that EFL / ESL teachers can use in their classroom practices to help their learners avoid these mistakes (these include awareness raising activities, focus on meaning rather than form, and written production).

2009

The present study investigates how advice writers employ move sequences and modal verbs to achieve intended discourse functions. This paper aims to testify two research hypotheses: 1. Advice writers of different topics employ different moves and modal verbs to achieve discourse function, and 2. The differences may imply writers’ intentions, emotion and expectancy of effects on the readers to interpret. The corpus of five advice columns for investigation is collected from the website Creators.com. Locher’s (2006) ten moves for advice columns and Leech (2005)’s proposal of discourse function of modals are the frameworks for data analysis. The results indicate four frequent moves: advice, assessment, explanation, and general information. In addition, the columnists use different modal verbs in dealing with different issues. This study has shed light on language learning about the discourse function realized by moves and modals.

A great number of scholars have long dealt with the question “what is modality” and it is still a much-examined topic, especially from a cross-linguistic point of view. The aim of this paper is to examine the use of English modal verbs by native speakers and German students of English in an academic setting. More precisely, it aims to compare and contrast the employment of the modal verbs may, might, must, ought to, shall and should in the BAWE (British Academic Written English) and the ICLE (International Corpus of Learner English) corpora. The data recovered from the quantitative and qualitative analyses will not only be deployed to show the similar and different linguistic strategies native and non-native speakers enact, but will also be used to understand the motives underlying the differences and similarities. While the modal verbs can, could, will and would are used very similarly by both native and German mother-tongue speakers and thus not particularly interesting material to analyse, the remaining modal verbs produce results that are more engaging when trying to understand the different approaches native and non-native speakers have towards the English language. In fact, native speakers’ use of may, might, must, ought to, shall and should discloses a wider but at the same time more specific range of usage, unlike German mother-tongue speakers who, being bound by grammar rules, find it hard to use these modals in such a flexible and versatile manner. It would seem that the errors that occur in the German mother-tongue speakers’ use of these modals could indeed be explained by the lack of a true equivalence between these English modals and their German counterparts and by the interference played upon the foreign language by the mother-tongue.

Atlantis, 2006

This paper shows how the indiscriminate combination of the form-function criterion in the traditional presentation of modal verbs brings more confusion than light to the subject due mostly to the fact that the grammatical simplicity of modal verbs clashes with their semantic complexity. In order to verify the treatment of modals in the EFL classroom, both a reduced but representative sample of textbooks and English grammar books will be analysed. Based on the findings of research conducted in this field, this article concludes that when studying modals in the EFL classroom the pragmatic uses of modal verbs should be primed over potential polysemic often indeterminate semantic values and/or grammatical criteria based on a higher or lower rank of graded modality.

2020

The aim of the study described in this paper is to verify whether the structure of a modal predicate influences the type of modality expressed by the English modal verb should. The study uses language samples excerpted from The corpus of contemporary American English. It has adopted the model of the semantic field of modal expressions proposed by Angelika Kratzer. Additionally, this framework has been used to determine types of modality in this study. The analysis focuses on the interaction within the semantic field of the modal should with various forms of the main verb within the modal predicate structure.

Modal verbs are also called auxiliary verbs, helping verbs and modal auxiliaries. They are special auxiliary verbs that express the degree /of certainty of the action in the sentence, attitude or opinion of the writer concerning the action. These auxiliary verbs are can, could ,may, might, must, ought to, shall, should, will, would and had better. Modality is one of the most difficult aspects of learning English, because the form of modals does not follow the conventional rules of grammar, and there are so many meanings of modals that students often get confused about which modal to use. Also, many EFL learners face difficulty in choosing the proper modal verb that fit certain situations because each modal verb has many functions. The present study is conducted to investigate fourth-year-college students " ability in signifying English modals appropriately and using them correctly. To fulfill the basic requirement of this study, the researchers organized a test, which consists of two questions; the first one is recognition, the second is production. The results show that the students have a real problem in recognizing and using modals. Section one: Introduction 1.1 The problem and Significance of the Study Modals of English derive from a special Germanic class of verbs (the ancestor of English and the other Germanic languages). They always differ from ordinary verbs, and in the course of history of English, they have diverged from verbs even further, to the point where they now belong to a syntactic category of their own (Siewierska, 1991: int.).They are important because they form tenses and alter the meanings of sentences to show "necessity, demand, strong deduction, recommendation, permission and desire"(phpBB Group, 2014:int.). Modality refers to the speaker " s attitude towards the judgment / or assessment of what he says. The complexity and multi-use of English modal auxiliaries comprise a serious challenge to EFL Students. EFL students have serious problems in using modals. Such problems are: 1. The misuse of modal auxiliary, that is attributed to the fact that the same modal can express different meanings in different contexts as in Mathies(1995: 73).

International Journal of Languages and Culture, 2021

This is a cross-linguistic, cross-cultural study investigating the components of oral advice in Egyptian Arabic and American English as L1. Two data collection instruments were employed: A role play task, and observation of naturally occurring data. Analysis of the data obtained in the study revealed that very similar components were used by both groups when performing the speech act of giving advice in their mother tongues. The most frequently employed components by both group included giving an informative followed by a directive and a justification. Though both subject groups were similar in using some components, differences did exist in the order and frequency of each component as well as in the way these components phrased.

2019

This study aim to describe the type of modal auxiliary used which is not in line with the usage or semantic meaning and illustrates the errors on the use of modal auxiliary that is often done by English Education Students at Muhammadiyah University of. The instrument used in this study is an essay test containing 9 modal auxiliaries. Subject in this study were 100 students of the English Education Students at Muhammadiyah University of Surakarta. The results showed that the semantic meanings had a lot of errors, namely 'prediction' (11%), while the modal that often had errors was 'may' (28.9%) and 'will' (27.2%) and the lowest was 'could' and 'might' (2.7% for each), as for modal that does not appear at all namely 'shall '. This study also examined 4 types of errors that occurred, namely 'misformation' with the highest number (48.2%), followed by 'addition' (26.5%), and 'omission' (25.2%), while the type was &#3...