A Contrastive Study Of Modality In Spoken English Between Chinese Learners And Native English Speakers

Mood and modality are two important ways to realize the interpersonal function in our language.In the past,linguists tended to study the modality system from the perspective of traditional grammar,semantics,pragmatics and cognitive linguistics.Some scholars have done some researches on the modal expressions in different discourses of written language based on corpus.As a matter of fact,modal expressions appear more frequently in spoken language.Therefore,based on the theoretical framework of modality theory in Systemic-Functional Grammar(SFG),this thesis makes a contrastive analysis of modal expressions in spoken English between Chinese EFL learners and native speakers.This study intends to answer the following two research questions:1.What are the differences in the frequency and the distribution of the modal expressions used by Chinese EFL learners and the native English speakers in spoken English?2.What are the differences in modal meanings used by Chinese EFL learners and the native English speakers in spoken English?The present study adopts Spoken and Written Corpus of Chinese Learners(SWECCL)and Open America National Corpus(OANC).The learner corpus is extracted from the Task three: Role play in TEM-4 Oral Test and the comparison corpus is extracted from the Interview Section in OANC.With the help of concordance tool Ant Conc3.5.0,the author mainly analyzes the modal expressions in the spoken English of Chinese EFL learners and native speakers(NS)from four aspects,that is,the distribution of modal expressions,the type of modality,the orientation of modality and value of modality.The author intends to research the differences in the expression of modal meaning between Chinese EFL learners and native speakers and attempts to discuss the possible causes to the differences.The results are presented as follows.Firstly,both Chinese EFL learners and NS depend on modal operators and modal adjuncts to express modal meanings.Other modal expressions appear in a low frequency.However,compared with NS,Chinese EFL learners overuse modal operators and projecting clauses.Secondly,in terms of the types of modality,Chinese EFL learners underuse the modal expression of usuality but overuse the modal expressions of probability,inclination and obligation;as for the orientation of modality,Chinese EFL learners prefer subjective orientation,including subjective implicit and subjective explicit.The frequency of subjective orientation in Chinese EFL learners’ corpus is significantly higher than that in NS corpus;in terms of modal value,Chinese students prefer low-valued modal meanings while native English speakers are inclined to choose modal expressions with median value or high value.These differences may result from different culture values and the negative interference of mother tongue.This study is a contrastive analysis of the modal expressions in the spoken English of Chinese EFL learners and native English speakers.This study not only promotes the learner’s ability to express modal meanings in spoken English in a proper way,but also provides some guidance for the teaching of spoken English.