Chinese College EFL Learners' Acquisition Of English Modal Adjuncts Under Theme-Rheme Theory

Undoubtedly, English modal adjuncts are indispensable for people to express their personal attitudes and make subjective comments in the speaking and writing communication by adding interpersonal meanings to the mood elements directly or the whole clause indirectly. In the theory of systemic-functional linguistics, M.A.K Halliday advances the three metafunctions, in which modal adjuncts are umbilically linked with the theme-rheme system in the textual function as well as the modal system in the interpersonal function. In clause structuring and message planning, thematization of modal adjuncts is just one of the important linguistic devices to make it possible to produce certain textual effect. Compared with native speakers of English, Chinese college EFL learners would initially use finite modal verbs and consider modal adjuncts redundant and overlook them or process them in delay in their acquisition of modality. It is rather uncommon for them to use modal adjuncts freely in the initial position of the clause in their writing. This thesis therefore explores the insights concerning the relationship between Theme and Rheme derived from the theory of Systemic-Functional Grammar, with the aim to make a comprehensive analysis of modal adjuncts. Based on the Chinese Learner English Corpus (CLEC) and the native speaker corpus (BROWN), together with a small corpus of randomly selecting50English compositions, to which the theory of thematized modal adjuncts of textual function is applied, this thesis conducts research on the frequency and usage of modal adjunct themes. In order to ensure the reliability of the statistics result and the research conclusion, the present study makes a good use of the searching software AntConc3.2.1to examine the frequency of examples of mood adjuncts and comment adjuncts. A conclusion is drawn that generally speaking, students chosen in this experiment have a relatively low tendency to use the modal adjunct themes in their English writing, while there are some they highly rely on and overuse. Later, the thesis continues to explore the underlying reasons for the results. On the basis of the findings above, the thesis attempts to provide some theoretical support and practical reference on the use of modal adjunct themes in modern English writing.