Modality As Portrayed in Upper Secondary School Textbooks

MODALITY AS PORTRAYED IN FINNISH UPPER SECONDARY SCHOOL EFL TEXTBOOKS: A CORPUS-BASED APPROACH Pro Gradu Thesis Department of English University of Helsinki January 2010 Taneli Nordberg Student number: 012101353 To Kisu, although this may well have killed us Table of contents ABBREVIATIONS ................................................................................................................ 1 1 INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................... 2 1.1 PREVIOUS RESEARCH ........................................................................................................ 5 2 CORPUS LINGUISTICS.................................................................................................... 8 3 EDUCATIONAL FRAMEWORK ....................................................................................12 3.1 CEFR AND THE COMMUNICATIVE APPROACH ................................................................13 3.2 SYLLABUSES .....................................................................................................................16 3.2.1 THE NATIONAL CORE CURRICULUM FOR UPPER SECONDARY SCHOOLS ..........................17 3.2.2 TEXTBOOK SYLLABUSES .................................................................................................19 4 ISSUES OF CATEGORISATION.....................................................................................20 4.1 CATEGORIES AND INDETERMINACY.................................................................................20 4.2 SEMANTIC INDETERMINACY AND THE MODALS ...............................................................23 4.3 KINDS OF INDETERMINACY ..............................................................................................26 5 DEFINING MODALITY ...................................................................................................29 5.1 WHAT IS MODALITY? .......................................................................................................30 5.2 WHAT TRIGGERS MODALITY?..........................................................................................33 5.3 MODALITY, MOOD AND MODAL SYSTEM ..........................................................................34 6 CORE MODAL AUXILIARIES .......................................................................................36 6.1 FORMAL DEFINING CRITERIA...........................................................................................36 6.2 SOME TERMINOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS ....................................................................39 6.3 THE SO-CALLED SEMI-MODALS ........................................................................................41 7 SEMANTIC DISTRIBUTION OF CORE MODALS.......................................................45 7.1 SOME PRELIMINARIES ......................................................................................................45 7.2 PRIMARY MODALS ............................................................................................................48 7.2.1 CAN – MEANINGS ............................................................................................................48 7.2.2 CAN – FREQUENCIES ........................................................................................................50 7.2.3 MAY – MEANINGS ............................................................................................................51 7.2.4 MAY – FREQUENCIES .......................................................................................................52 7.2.5 MUST – MEANINGS ..........................................................................................................53 7.2.6 MUST – FREQUENCIES .....................................................................................................54 7.2.7 WILL – MEANINGS ...........................................................................................................55 7.2.8 WILL – FREQUENCIES ......................................................................................................58 7.2.9 SHALL – MEANINGS AND FREQUENCIES ............................................................................59 7.3 SECONDARY MODALS .......................................................................................................60 7.3.1 SOME GENERAL REMARKS ..............................................................................................60 7.3.2 COULD ............................................................................................................................63 7.3.3 MIGHT ............................................................................................................................64 7.3.4 WOULD ...........................................................................................................................65 7.3.5 SHOULD ..........................................................................................................................67 7.4 SUMMARY .........................................................................................................................69 8 MATERIAL AND METHODS..........................................................................................69 8.1 MATERIAL ........................................................................................................................69 8.2 DATA COLLECTION AND PROCESSING ..............................................................................74 9 RESULTS ...........................................................................................................................76 9.1 OVERALL FREQUENCIES ..................................................................................................77 9.2 THE ‘PERMISSION/POSSIBILITY/ABILITY’ MODALS ..........................................................77 9.3 THE ‘OBLIGATION/NECESSITY’ MODALS..........................................................................80 9.4 THE ‘VOLITION/PREDICTION’ MODALS ............................................................................81 10 DISCUSSION ...................................................................................................................83 10.1 CRITICAL APPRAISAL OF THE STUDY .............................................................................83 10.2 DISCUSSION OF RESULTS ................................................................................................84 10.2.1 OVERALL FREQUENCIES ................................................................................................85 10.2.2 THE ‘PERMISSION/POSSIBILITY/ABILITY’ MODALS .........................................................86 10.2.3 THE ‘OBLIGATION/NECESSITY’ MODALS ........................................................................88 10.2.4 THE ‘VOLITION/PREDICTION’ MODALS...........................................................................90 10.3 SUGGESTIONS .................................................................................................................91 11 CONCLUSIONS ..............................................................................................................93 11.1 SUMMARY OF RESULTS...................................................................................................93 11.2 IMPLICATIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH .........................................................................94 PRIMARY SOURCES ..........................................................................................................96 SECONDARY SOURCES ....................................................................................................96 1 Abbreviations AmE American English BrE British English BNC British National Corpus CC2 Culture Café Course 2 CC7 Culture Café Course 7 CEFR Common European Framework of Reference for Languages EFL English as a Foreign Language FLE Foreign Language Teaching IT4 In Touch Course 4 IT7 In Touch Course 7 LSWE Longman Spoken and Written English Corpus NCCUSS National Core Curriculum for Upper Secondary Schools 2 1 Introduction It has been well said by many a prominent scholar that modality in many ways constitutes one of the key areas of English linguistics in general and semantics in particular that contributes to the overall complexity of the language. This, as Römer (2004: 185) suggests, is perhaps especially true of English as a foreign language (EFL) learners. English, ubiquitous in the Finnish culture, is regarded by some as an ‘easy’ language to learn and one which requires little to no effort on the part of the learner, the assumption in many cases being that English is somehow magically absorbed from the surroundings. Upon entering the upper secondary school, however, many learners are confronted with a new degree of complexity which may leave them bewildered. The inspiration for this study originated partly from personal experiences as an EFL teacher of both upper secondary school students and adult learners. Whenever the discussion turned to the so-called modal auxiliary verbs or modal auxiliaries, there was a feeling of uneasiness that pervaded the classroom. This was due, no doubt, to the teacher’s own lack of proper understanding of the subject matter. A closer look at the way in which EFL grammar books deal with modality was not helpful: there was a strong feeling that much of the intricacies involved were being hidden or that the authors themselves had not fully mastered

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