Modal verbs in english and their uses in writings by 10th graders at an upper secondary school in hanoi

The study provided some insights in the use of modal verbs by Vietnamese learners of English as Foreign Language and thus informed teaching of modal verbs in the English classroom and co

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

VŨ THỊ LAI

MODAL VERBS IN ENGLISH AND THEIR USES IN WRITINGS BY

10TH GRADERS AT AN UPPER SECONDARY SCHOOL IN HANOI

(Động từ tình thái trong tiếng Anh và những cách sử dụng chúng

trong các bài viết của học sinh lớp 10 trường THPT Hà Nội)

M.A MINOR THESIS

Field: English Linguistics

Code: 8220201.01

Hanoi, 2020

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

VŨ THỊ LAI

MODAL VERBS IN ENGLISH AND THEIR USES IN WRITINGS BY

10TH GRADERS AT AN UPPER SECONDARY SCHOOL IN HANOI

(Động từ tình thái trong tiếng Anh và những cách sử dụng chúng

trong các bài viết của học sinh lớp 10 trường THPT Hà Nội)

M.A MINOR THESIS

Field: English Linguistics

Code: 8220201.01 Supervisor: Prof Dr Hoàng Văn Vân

Hanoi, 2020

DECLARATION

I, the undersigned, hereby certify my authority of the study project

report entitled “Modal Verbs in English and Their Uses in Writings by

10 th Graders at an Upper Secondary School in Hanoi” (Động từ tình thái trong tiếng Anh và những cách sử dụng chúng trong các bài viết của học sinh lớp 10 trường THPT Hà Nội) submitted in partial fulfillment of the

requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts at the Faculty of Post Graduate Studies, University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi Except where reference indicated, no other person‟s work has been used without due acknowledgement in the text of the thesis

Hanoi, 2020

Vũ Thị Lai

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Hoàng Văn Vân, Prof Dr., for his inspiring me to do this research If not for his helpful material supply as well as invaluable guidance, insightful comments and kind support, my thesis would not have been accomplished

I also wish to thank all my lecturers in Vietnam National University, Hanoi, Postgraduate Department for their precious lectures, which are partly applied in this study Particularly, I am immensely grateful to Nguyễn Thị Minh Tâm, Dr., whose interesting and useful lectures on semantics and modality have facilitated much my doing the research

I am indebted to my friends both at home and abroad for their suggestion, encouragement and enthusiasm in helping me distribute the survey questionnaires and collect information for the study

Finally, I owe the completion of this study to my family: my parents,

my son, my daughter and my relatives and especially my husband who gave

me understanding and encouragement throughout the study

ABSTRACT

Modality is important in academic written discourse as it conveys the writer‟s attitude both to the propositions he/she makes and to the readers According to many researchers, the ability to use modality appropriately contributes significantly to pragmatic aspect in English writing and may reflect an advanced level of both linguistic and pragmatic proficiency in the written mode However, past research has shown that learners of English seem to have difficulty in using modal verbs appropriately Therefore, it is necessary to investigate how Vietnamese learners of English use modal verbs

in their writings For this purpose, a collection of 75 pieces of writing from 30 students in grade 10 in an upper high school in Hanoi were analyzed Findings indicated that Vietnamese learners of English do not use modal

verbs frequently in their writings Besides, they tend to overuse can, should, will and rarely use other modal verbs Based on analysis of the students‟

writings, this study proposed possible reasons that account for these issues The study provided some insights in the use of modal verbs by Vietnamese learners of English as Foreign Language and thus informed teaching of modal verbs in the English classroom and contributed to the academic curricula design

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

ABSTRACT iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS iv

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES vi

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AND CONVENTIONS vii

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Rationale for the study 1

1.2 Aims of the study 2

1.3 Method of study and research questions 2

1.3.1 Method of study 2

1.3.2 Research questions 3

1.4 Scope of the study 3

1.5 Significance of the study 3

1.6 Organization of the thesis 4

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 5

2.1 Modality 5

2.2 Modal Verbs 11

2.3 Studies of modal verbs in writing 17

2.4 Overview of English textbooks of grade 10 currently in use in Vietnam 21

CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 24

3.1 The research setting 24

3.1.1 Students 24

3.1.2 Teachers 24

3.1.3 Facilities 25

3.2 The study 25

3.2.1 Research approach 25

3.2.2 Data collections 25

3.2.3 Method of data analysis 26

CHAPTER 4: DATA ANALYSIS 28

4.1 Overall counts 28

4.2 The use of can, should, will, may and must 30

4.3 Syntactic Analysis of Students’ Usage of Modals 33

4.4 Misuse of modal verbs 34

CHAPTER 5: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 36

5.1 Summary of research findings .36

5.2 Discussions of the findings 37

5.3 Recommendations for better teaching modal verbs to learners 39

5.3.1 For teachers 39

5.3.2 For textbook designers 40

CHAPTER 6: CONCLUSION 42

REFERENCES 44 APPENDIX I

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES

Table 1: Biber et al.’s (1999) description of modal semantic class 13

Table 2 Frequency counts of nine modal verbs in writing corpora 28

Figure 1 A spatial modal tense, aspect and modality 6

(Chung & Temberlake, 1985: 47) 6

Figure 2 Description of modality 8

(Huddleston & Geoffrey, 2002: 175-177) 8

Figure 3: Percentage of modal verbs can, will, should, may, must in corpora 29

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AND CONVENTIONS

BNC: the British National Corpus

Conv: Conversation

CEFR: The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages EFL: English as Foreign Language

ELT: English Language Teaching

LSWE: the Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English

L1: first language

L2: second language

MOET: Ministry of Education and Training

VNFLPF: Six- level Foreign Language Proficiency Framework for Vietnam VNU- ULIS: Vietnam National University- University of Languages and

International Studies

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

1.1 Rationale for the study

Modality as an important component of linguistics has been extensively studied from syntatic, semantic and pragmatic perspectives The study of modality expressions within linguistics is one of the most complicated problems As Palmer (2003, p 4) says “modality is realized by linguistic terms from a wide range of grammatical classes, covering not only modal auxiliaries and lexical verbs, but also nouns, adjectives, adverbs, idioms, particles, mood and prosody in speech” Even modality is significantly important in academic written discourse as it conveys the writer‟s attitude both to the proposition he/ she makes and to the readers The ability to use modality appropriately also contributes significantly to pragmatic aspect in English writing (Hyland, 1994; Myers, 1989) and may reflect an advanced level of both linguistic and pragmatic proficiency in the written mode (Chen, 2010) However, modal verbs are a challenge to many English language teachers and learners due to its complexity According to Thompson (2002), modals are considered a complex unit and one may not find it easy to put together such intricacy into something that is meaningful to learners If one managed to reduce the complexity of the modals, English language learners may find learning English modals to be less problematic

Past research has shown that learners of English seem to have difficulty

in using modal verbs appropriately and that they frequently overuse or present certain modal verbs meanings or forms (Hinkel, 1995; DeCarrico, 1986) This leads to the need for an examination of modal verbs and their use

under-by non-native speakers in the specific genre of research articles Besides, the teaching of English language has always been a main concern in Vietnam and

is often vastly highlighted in the media Several steps have been proposed in the teaching of grammar of the foreign and second language, especially in teaching modals Byrd (2004) discusses the teaching and learning of modals from the easy items to the more difficult ones However, she discusses and foresees that there is a problem in determining what is difficult or easy and to whom it is difficult or easy – questions which need to be given consideration

Unlike most research on learner corpora in which non-native speaker corpora are compared with native speaker corpora or a comparison between learner corpora with professional corpora, this study is set to analyze the use

of modal verbs of 10th graders‟ writings in an upper high school in Hanoi It is hoped that the discussion of the use of modal verbs and patterns by grade 10 students could give an understanding of the use of modal verbs by high school students, contribute to academic writing curricula design and thus help improve second language learners‟ academic writing competence

1.2 Aims of the study

This study was carried out with the aim to:

 ascertain the frequent use of modal verbs by the grade 10 students in

a school in Hanoi in their writings

 investigate how grade 10 students in a school in Hanoi use modal verbs in their writings

1.3 Method of study and research questions

English levels, so the result of the research could be reflected more accurately

1.3.2 Research questions

In order to achieve the above-mentioned aims, the study was conducted

to answer the following research question:

 What modal verbs do grade 10 students use in their writings and how

do they use them?

1.4 Scope of the study

According to Chung and Temberlake (1985: 25), modality in English may be expressed grammatically or semantically by auxiliaries, verbs, adjectives, nouns or adverbs, in which modal verbs are the most frequent expressions of modality Quirk et al., (1985), identified nine core modal verbs

including can, could, may, might, shall, should, will, would and must, which

were also the focus of this study

The research analyzed writing corpora of students at an upper high school

in Hanoi The subjects were selected for this study are students in grade 10 of three levels based on their grades of English subject at class including under-average students, average students and good students Due to limit of time and resources, the researcher only analyzed students‟ writings to figure out some findings and propose some recommendations for the research topic

1.5 Significance of the study

The significance of the study lied in its focus on forms, modal verbs and their use by high school students of English as a foreign language in their writings Information about students‟ use of modal verbs in research articles may assist learners, their teachers and textbook writers to understand more about the appropriate or common frequencies and functions of modal verbs use

EFL students and teachers also benefit from considering the implications of the findings from the research

The focus on modal verbs is significant because of their complexity

in both syntactical form and semantic meaning, which makes them challenging for Vietnamese students as non-native speakers to learn and use in any setting

The choice to study grade 10th students‟ use of modal verbs is important because of the potential to offer useful information to learners and teachers The results of this study helped to provide teachers overview about the frequency of grade 10 students‟ use of modal verbs and how they use modal verbs in their writings From that, some recommendations are proposed

to better teaching students‟ use of modal verbs and promote them to use modal verbs in their writings

1.6 Organization of the thesis

The research includes six chapters as follows

Chapter 1 provides a brief introduction to the issue and an overview of the paper

Other chapters are Literature Review (Chapter 2), Research Methodology (Chapter 3), Data Analysis (Chapter 4), and Findings and Discussion (Chapter 5) In greater detail, chapter 2 reviews the theoretical background of modality and modals, the use of modal verbs in writing and provides review of English textbook of grade 10 currently being used in Vietnam Chapter 3 describes the methods used to carry out the study Chapter 4 analyzes the data collected from students' writings Chapter 5 provides the results of the research and discuss these findings

Chapter 6 summarizes the main issues so far touched upon in the research, some suggestions for the betterment of using modal verbs in writing Following the chapters are the references and appendices

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter is concerned with literature review of the minor thesis It will first examine two key concepts “modality” and “modal verbs” Then it

will provide an overview of studies of modal verbs in writing, and of two

English textbooks of grade 10 currently in use in upper-secondary schools throughout Vietnam: one is of the seven-year curriculum, and the other is of the new ten-year curriculum

2.1 Modality

Modality is one of the most complex aspects of English grammar that many EFL learners find it very difficult to learn However, the study of modality in English language is regarded as the most persistent and fascinating area of philosophical and linguistic inquiry (Hoye, 1997) Despite the long existence, the definition has not been fully agreed upon in various linguistic schools In simple terms, modality is defined as the speaker's verdict about the “necessity” and “possibility” of subjects (Huddleston, Pullum et al, 2002) Likewise, Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech, and Svartvik (1985) defined modality as “the manner in which the meaning of a clause is qualified

so as to reflect the speaker‟s judgement of the likelihood of the proposition of the sentence being true” (p 219) Halliday (1998) also defines modality as the expression of necessity and possibility He claims that modality is “the speaker‟s assessment of probability and predictability It is the external to the content, being part of the attitude taken up by the speaker.”

A rather different view is taken by Lyons (1977: 848, 452) who defines modality as “the speaker‟s opinion or attitude towards the proposition that the sentence expresses or the situation that the proposition describes.” In traditional usage, modality is applied to subsets of inflected form of verbs and

is distinguished by means of term “indicative”, “imperative”, “subjective”,

etc Lyons has chosen to respect this usage because he says one of the advantages of doing so is that it helps learners to draw a distinction, not only between utterances and sentences but also between sentences that are sub-classified as declaratives, interrogatives, jussives, permissives, etc in terms of syntactic features and in terms of the mood of the main verbs

Chung & Temberlake (1985: 25) state that English sentences are categorical or modalized In modalized sentences, modality may be expressed grammatically or syntactically by means of auxiliaries, or it may be expressed

in various lexical ways (for example by full verbs, adjectives, adverbs, etc.) However, they further argue that grammatically modality is expressed in

terms of mood If the mood is expressed morphologically, it is considered as synthetic The subcategory synthetic mood has two types, namely the subjunctive and the imperative Both of these are expressed by the

“inflection” (in case of the subjunctive often by be instead of is), but they can

be told apart by their behavior with respect to subjects If mood is expressed

syntactically by means of auxiliaries, it is considered as analytic The

subcategory analytic mood has two factors as well, namely possibility and

necessity, which are expressed by the auxiliaries may, might, can, could, must, should, need respectively This analysis can be illustrated in Fig 1.1

Figure 1 A spatial modal tense, aspect and modality

(Chung & Temberlake, 1985: 47)

Deborah Cameron (2007) illustrated modality with an example

“[Modality] is what makes the difference between a factual assertion like

unicorns never existed, and a more guarded view, such as it seems unlikely that unicorns could ever have existed- or a bolder claim like the existence of unicorns must always have been a myth.” He added that speakers and writers

used modality as a resource when they are asserting claims to knowledge: it allows them to formulate different kinds of claims and indicate how committed they are to those claims In general, modality refers to linguistic device which expresses the attitude of the speaker or writer toward the state of affairs expressed in a sentence

Palmer (1986) states that “modality expresses the speaker‟s attitude or opinion regarding the contents of the sentence or the proposition that the sentence expresses”, and modality is considered as a linguistic feature that is realized by a variety of linguistic means such as modal auxiliaries According

to Quirk at al (1985), modality may be considered as “the manner in which the meaning of a clause is qualified so as to reflect the speaker‟s judgement of the likelihood of the proposition it expressed being true.”

Downing and Locke (1995) have set forth modality as “semantic category by which speakers express their attitudes towards the event contained in the proposition as possibility, necessity, and temporal notions such as usuality.”

Van der Auwera (2001: 1) states “modality has traditionally been dealt with in relation to the analysis of semantic features associated with the speaker‟s attitude and/ or opinion about what is said” According to Palmer (2001: 1), “modality is a valid cross language grammatical category that can

be the subject of a typology study” Palmer‟s definition of modality is the same as the view point of Matthews (2005: 228) He defines the term modality as “category covering either of a kind of a typology study”

The definition of modality applied in this study is used most widely, agreeing with the view of Huddleston & Geoffrey (2002: 172) and Palmer (2003: 4): “modality is as category of meanings which, in verbal system, is grammaticalized by mood.” In their usage, mood comprises modal auxiliaries However, expressions of modality are not limited to the verbal auxiliaries and lexical verbs, as well as nouns, adjectives, adverbs, idioms, particles, mood, and prosody in speech

In analyzing the different meanings associated with modality linguistic means, Huddleston & Geoffrey (2002: 175-180) suggests the different expressing means of modality that have been described in flexible ways, and have been given various meanings, i.e., model of description: any given

expression of modality will have a value on each of the three factors: kind (epistemic to deontic), strength and degree These are shown in Fig 1.2 as

following:

Figure 2 Description of modality

(Huddleston & Geoffrey, 2002: 175-177)

Huddleston & Geoffrey (2002: 175-177) explain that the group of

strength expresses the speaker‟s strength of commitment to the truth value of

a proposition and the semantic strength of an utterance Kind can be

categorized in three subtypes: epistemic, deontic, dynamic The third group of

modality described by Huddleston & Geoffrey (2002) is degree where they

discuss the problem of identifying modal meaning clearly A modal element may be difficult to recognize because it does not necessarily change the

meaning of an expression greatly Like strength, degree of modality can also

be expressed on a scale from strong form to weak form These categories are often subdivided further into possibilities, inference and necessity for epistemic; volitions, necessity, predictions and possibilities for deontic; and abilities, possibilities, predictions, necessity and habits for dynamic

A modality is a set of modal meanings attributed to an identical semantic basic In the study of modality, linguists have identified epistemic modality, deontic modality (Lyons, 1977), dynamic modality (Palmer, 1986,

2001, 1990), and agent-oriented modality (Bybee at al., 1994), etc The last two types of modality have been reformed and renamed by Van der Auwera

& Plungian (1998) as participant-internal modality and participant-external modality

Lyons (1977) uses the term “epistemic modality” to refer to the type of knowledge the speaker is going to say, and “deontic modality” to indicate the speaker‟s views or stance towards what he/ she saying Coates (1983) states that the term “attitude” has been expanded into that of “subjectivity” understood as “subject or speaker‟s involvement” in order to emphasize both types of modality Therefore, it can be said that modality is concerned with the expression of the speaker‟s involvement towards the propositional content

of an utterance, whether in form of agency or subjective Quirk at al., (1985:

intrinsic and extrinsic modality Intrinsic modality indicates “permission”,

“obligation”, and “volition” that refer to deontic Extrinsic modality signifies

“possibility”, “necessity”, and “prediction” that imply epistemic Dik (1989), who bases his observation on previous work by Hengeveld (1987, 1988),

suggests three types of modality: (i) inherent modality, which denotes

"relations like “ability” and “willingness” between a participant and the

realization of the state of affairs in which he is involved; (ii) objective modality, which signals the speaker‟s evaluation of the likelihood of

occurrence of a state of affairs (in terms of certainty or obligation), (iii)

subjective modality, which expresses the speaker‟s commitment to the truth of

what he says

Halliday (1994: 357) differentiates modality types further; i.e., (i)

epistemic modality (which he labels modalization) conveys either probability

or possibility; (ii) deontic modality (what he calls modulation) expresses either obligation or inclination Modalization is typically realized as indicative, while modulation is considered as imperative; (iii) dynamic modality (what he calls ability/ potentiality) However, he claims that

ability/potentiality is one further category that lies outside the deontic system and that corresponds to inherent modality in Dik‟s division

epistemic-In general, modality can express a wide range of semantic meanings which can be obligatory, necessary, requesting, permissible and so on These meanings can be expressed through a variety of formal and lexical means such as the morphological mood of the verb (indicative, subjunctive,

indicative), sentence adverbials (e.g maybe, perhaps, possibly, necessarily), modal auxiliaries (e.g can, may, must, should), and syntactic means

However, modal verbs are the most common devices being used and they are also the focus of this study

identified in past literature as core modals (Quirk et al., 1985; Biber,

Johansson, Leech, Conrad & Finegan, 1999) Likewise, according to Biber et

al (1999) can, could, may, might, must, shall, should and will are classified

into the category of central modal verbs These modal verbs can be used to express the modal meanings of permission, possibility, ability, obligation, necessity, volition, and prediction These verbs forms are distinguished from lexical verbs by the following characteristics (Halliday, 1976):

1 They have no finite, to, -ing, -ed, etc forms: * “maying, to may”

2 Negative and interrogative forms are made without expansion It is not necessary to include a “to do” or “to be” form when creating questions or making negative statements with modal verbs “He will not” “Can she go?" rather than * “Is she can go?” and * “He doesn‟t will”

3 Negative forms are reducible They can be contracted, as in “I can‟t write this paper.” “I won‟t be able to finish.”

4 They can be used as “code verbs” in ellipsis This means that when two equivalent clauses using a modal verb occur together, the second clause does not need to repeat the accompanying lexical verb, as in, “I can go So can she.” In

this case, the second modal verb (can) represents the lexical verb (go)

5 They do not require a third person singular -s: * “She cans.”

6 They are not found in imperative clauses

7 They do not combine with each other and do not co-occur in a clause (except in some nonstandard dialects: “She might could go.”)

Despite these clear characteristics, Biber at al (1999) argue that the distinction between modal verbs and lexical verbs is not completely clear Some normally non-modal lexical verbs can also function as modal verbs, especially in spoken contexts These forms are classified in two categories

Marginal modal verbs include need to, dare to, used to and ought to modals include had better, have to, have got to, be supposed to, be going to

Quasi-and can co-occur with modal verbs (Collins, 2009: 15)

This study‟s focus, based on the defining characteristics of modal

verbs, is on the nine core modal verbs: can, could, may, might, must, shall, should, will, and would

While the list of modal verbs is fairly limited, the list of possible semantic functions of these verbs fulfill is rather extensive There is not a one-to-one correspondence of meaning and form, and most modal verbs can fill more than one semantic function Different modal verbs can have different meanings when they are used in different contexts According to Biber et al (1999), modal verbs can be divided into three main categories based on their meanings

1) “Permission/ possibility/ ability”: can, could, may, might

2) “Obligation/ necessity”: must, should

3) “Volition/ prediction”: will, would, shall

The following table is the classification of the semantic functions of modal verb

Table 1: Biber et al.’s (1999) description of modal semantic class

CAN

1 Permission evidence of some condition

that determines whether an agent is or is not permitted to

A brief view of the century as

a whole can be useful

(textbook)

3 Ability evidence of an animate agent

that is capable of doing something

I can hear what she’s saying

to somebody (conv, LSWE)

He goes, I can’t swim (conv,

LSWE)
 COULD

1 Permission used in its past tense to refer

Meaning Definition Example

2 Possibility express the degree to which

something was possible

That could be her (conv,

LSWE)


It could be anything you choose (conv, LSWE)

3 Ability evidence of an animate agent

that was capable of doing something in the past

They asked me and I just couldn’t refuse (conv, LSWE)

I couldn’t feel my hand.
MUST

1 Obligation express an agent‟s

2 Necessity logically conclude that

something is likely/ necessary based on evidence available

to the speaker/ writer

It must have something to do with the government (study

group)

She must have left already

(conv, LSWE) SHOULD

1 Obligation the agent is obliged to do

That should have been Sydney

(textbook)

Meaning Definition Example

MAY

1 Possibility express agent‟s doubt in the

truth of proposition (Coates, 1983) or slight possibility

So you may not see it as a joke (conv, LSWE)


That may be wrong, though

(conv, LSWE)


It may rain tomorrow (conv,

LSWE)

2 Permission refer to present or future time

when used to ask for permission or to make a polite request and giving permission

1 Possibility express agent‟s doubt in the

truth of proposition

It might rain tomorrow

(conv, LSWE)

2 Permission refer to present or future time

when used that the agent was permitted to do something

She said I might go (conv,

LSWE)

SHALL

1 Prediction make predictions that are not

completely certain or definite

We shall be away on holiday for a fortnight from Wednesday 29 August

2 Volition express intention I shall help you.


Meaning Definition Example

WILL

1 Prediction make predictions that are not

completely certain or definite

Gas prices will drop soon

2 Volition express immediate decisions

or intention

“And then I’ll take you home

to get it.”

WOULD

1 Prediction be used for future time

reference when there is a sense of possibility or capability It is generally regarded as a weaker alternative to will when used

in this sense

The President is proposing a new bill that would significantly change Social Security

2 Volition express immediate decisions

“certainty”, and of “inclination”, “ability”, “permission” and “obligation”

From the pragmatic perspective, Halliday (1994) attaches the values of high, medium and low to different modal verbs Halliday and Hasan (1989) divided modal verbs in terms of their pragmatic values as follows

High value modals: must, ought to, need, and have to;

Intermediate value modals: will, would, shall, should;

Low value modals: may, might, can, could

Different groups of modality are related with different politeness degree of the speech Leech (1983) proposed that modal verbs of high value indicate an impolite speech, which is liable to cause the reader/ listener‟s disfavor, whereas low value modals suggest a most polite use of language Due to its variety of communication and function value, modal verbs appear

as a challenge for language learners

2.3 Studies of modal verbs in writing

The huge amount of research into English modal verbs has been carried out over the last decades Many influential studies are motivated by the complexity of functions of modal verbs and focus on the investigation of how they are used Others are concerned with linguistic analyses of modal verbs in spoken and written discourse, especially the use of modal verbs in writing Research in modal verbs use in writing has been revealed similar results

In the research studying the use of English modal verbs in argumentative writing by Malaysian EFL students, Jayakaran et al (2013) found that EFL 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 and most of modal verbs used by students were the modals of ability The

modal can was the most highly used by the students and the second highest was the modal will Other modal verbs such as could, should, may, and have

to were used less frequently in students‟ written work Another finding is that

Malaysian students have knowledge to use modal verbs and use the correct modal verbs in their sentences Their incorrect modal structures could be mainly categorized into: 1) Modal + wrong verb forms: non-infinitive 2) Modal + a non-verb word/ lack of verb/ non-English word The researchers also noticed that students showed the ability to utilize modal verbs that are not set in the syllabus (would and shall), which demonstrated that the learning of modal auxiliary also take place outside the classrooms

Yang (2018) found that Chinese learners tend to use modal verbs more frequently than professional writers (both native and non-native speakers) when comparing Chinese learners‟ academic writings with professional corpus which consists of published research articles His result showed that Chinese learner writers employ modal verbs almost twice more than the

professional writer The modal can, will, would, could are the most overused while may is underused However, professional writers tend to use may more

frequently than the learner writers The researcher proposed possible reasons that count for these differences The overuse of modal verbs by Chinese learner writers indicated that Chinese learners have stronger tendency to transfer conversational use of modal verbs to academic genres since modal verbs are more frequently used in spoken rather than written text (Biber et al, 1999) It also reflects how modal verbs are taught to students in China, which focus on the accuracy of the form rather than appropriateness in pragmatics Words are presented to students with their Chinese translation rather than in the context in which they are used Another reason which may help explain

the over use of will and can is that they are the two first modal verbs taught in

junior high school English classes in China and that learners tend to use

modal verbs that are first taught to them (Ma & Liu, 2007) Would and could

can be used to realize interpersonal metafunction (Halliday, 1994) and express more tentative and more polite tones (Biber et al., 1999) However, in

the learner corpus, they are most frequently used as past forms of can and will and that explain their overuse The under-use of may may be partly due to the variety of substitutes that students have for it The overuse of can may help explain the underuse of may as it frequently functions in the learner corpus to

propose uncertainty and hedging It may suggest that learner writers write

overly positive, confident statements of facts The more use of may in

professional corpus indicates that they are less assertive in a similar context The researcher also used cultural differences to explain the differences Since Chinese culture views certainty as a sign of strength and hedging as a sign of weakness and this cultural ideology influenced on Chinese learners‟ L1 writing and transferred to their L2 writing

In the analysis on semantic functions depicted by modals used by advanced EFL Iranian students, Najmeh et al (2015) found that some meanings were overly used and some of them were not really used by

learners EFL advanced learners had great tendency to use ability meaning

of modal can and could while their possibility meaning was not used frequently Regarding may and might, their possibility meanings were predominated by their permission meanings Should was mainly understood as obligation/ advice than necessity Will and would tended to

be mainly used with the prediction meaning The modal shall had not been

used by EFL learners From the findings, the researchers showed the importance of drawing learners‟ attention to other pragmatic functions of modals

From the pragmatic perspective, Halliday and Hasan (1989) divided modal verbs into three categories based on their values High value modals

which include must, ought to, need and have to indicate impolite speech

causing the readers/ listeners‟ disfavor Intermediate value modals include

will, would, shall, should (Leech, 1983) Low value modals consist of may, might, can, could suggesting the most polite use of language In Li Qian‟s

(2017) analysis of modal verb use in English writing by Chinese EFL learners and native speakers, it was found that both natives and non- natives have similar preference for modal use, however Chinese students tended to use more Learners preferred to use more modals of high and intermediate

value than native speakers Can and will tend to be used the most frequently

by both English learners and native speakers while might, ought to and shall were used less frequently British students used could frequently, whereas

learners seldom used this word The researcher also proposed reasons for the differences between L2 learners and native speakers Learners tended to use high value modals which indicated an absence of reader/ audience awareness since they were not probably well informed of the politeness degree of modal verbs In other words, they were not well informed the pragmatic meaning of modal verbs The overuse of modal verbs in writing also suggested that learners used modal verbs only to express the possibility or necessity of certain propositions, with no concern about pragmatic functions

of modal verbs Both non-natives and native used can the most frequently among all the modals Natives used can frequently to fit different types of

contexts but non-natives did not understand the subtle differences among

modals and they used one to fit all contexts Another finding was that could

was used less frequently than other modals by learners whereas natives used

could more frequently than other modal verbs

Many researchers have studied the use of modality and modal verbs and the reasons about differences in the way people use modal verbs HinKel (1995) carried out a study on how cultural values are reflected in the way people from different countries use modal verbs By analyzing essays written

by speakers of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Indonesian and Vietnamese and essays on similar topics written by native speakers of American English, the

results of the study indicate that the usage of root modals must, have to, ought

to and need in native speakers and non-native speakers writing appears to be

culture and context dependence While the fundamental social values and presuppositions associated with the notions of harmony maintenance, family

and group responsibility, and extrinsically imposed obligation and necessity are often expressed through root modality in non-native speaker writing,

native speaker writing express the preponderance of need to convey

intrinsically imposed responsibility and necessity

All previous research conducted regarding to the use of modal verbs by non-native ESL learners revealed that students were uncertain about which modal verb to use to express modality in their sentences This could be easily seen in the inaccuracy of modals at the syntactic and semantic levels They tended to overuse some modals or particular meanings, lack knowledge about register-interference aspects of modals or information about modal phrases and larger sentence patterns Many research results also showed that language learners wrote compositions in a non-proficient way in terms of modal auxiliaries and had major problems producing them The countless difficulties students face in terms of modal auxiliaries have been reported by well-known linguists such as Thornbury (1999); Celce-Murcia and Larsen-Freeman, (1983); Wong, (1983) and Hoye, (1997), yet not many learner-corpus studies have covered the root of these difficulties by L2 learners with different nationalities To the knowledge of the researcher of this study, no one has done

a learner corpus study to investigate whether Vietnamese learners, especially high school students, are familiar with the use of modal verbs Consequently, this study is conducted to find answers for this issue

2.4 Overview of English textbooks of grade 10 currently in use in Vietnam

In Vietnam, there are two types of English textbook currently used for

grade 10 students The first text book Tieng Anh 10, which is often referred to

as the old textbook, was intended for students who began to learn English in Grade 6 Another set of English 10 textbook is the new Tieng Anh 10, which was developed based on the Pilot English Curriculum for Vietnamese Upper

Secondary Schools (Chương trình giáo dục phổ thông môn Tiếng Anh thí điểm cấp trung học phổ thông) (for details, see Bộ Giáo dục và Đào tạo,

2010, 2012a, 2012b; see also Hoang Van Van, 2018) This new set is being piloted in most of upper high schools in Hanoi The upper high school in this study is currently using this new textbook

The new Tieng Anh 10 is a new 10- year textbook series, which was

intended for students who began to study English in Grade 3 The textbook is

divided into two volumes: Tieng Anh 10 volume 1 and Tieng Anh 10 volume

2 It is published by Vietnam Education Publishing House Limited Company

in collaboration with Macmillan Education The textbook development team includes Hoang Van Van (the general editor), Hoang Thi Xuan Hoa (editor) and other authors This new textbook consists of 10 units and 4 reviews The textbook is designed based on time allocated for upper secondary school level, which is 105 periods There are 10 teaching units and 4 reviews in the book Unit 1: Family life, Unit 2: Your body and you, Unit 3: Music, Unit 4: For a better community, Unit 5: Inventions, Unit 6: Gender equality, Unit 7: Cultural Diversity, Unit 8: New ways to learn, Unit 9: Preserving the environment, Unit 10: Ecotourism In terms of unit structures, each unit is composed of 8 periods/ lesson In terms of the number of components, each unit consists of 5 sections: Getting started, Language (Vocabulary, Pronunciation and Grammar), Skills (reading, speaking, listening, writing), Communication and Culture, Looking back and Project According to Hoang Van Van (2018), the text book lays emphasis on “the learning needs of the students, the development of students‟ positive attitudes towards English, the contribution of English learning to the overall educational development of the students, the development of communicative competences through integrated practice of four communicative macro-skills of listening, speaking,

reading and writing, the delivery through coherent themes and topics which are meaningful and relevant to students‟ worlds, the learning centered teaching approach, the coherent integration” (Hoang Van Van, 2018)

According to textbook development team, the writing subsection in this textbook prepares students to deal with the “two most common problems” that students are experiencing: “lack of idea and lack of necessary language to

express ideas” (Tieng Anh 10, 2018) The textbook has 10 writing

subsections equivalent with 10 units Each writing subsection often begins with a pre-writing activity The aim of this activity is to present topic and gives students an opportunity to brain storm ideas for the topic The following activities provide students useful structures and phrases they may use in their writing Sometimes, a model text is presented for students to understand more thoroughly about its structure and format before producing their own writings

At the end of each writing subsection, there is always a writing task that requires students to produce their own writing Students are required to write paragraphs which are from 50 words to 100 words in length for each writing

topic (For more details of the new Tieng Anh 10, see Hoàng Văn Vân et al.,

2019)

CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

3.1 The research setting

3.1.1 Students

The study was carried out in an upper high school located in Me Linh,

a rural district of Hanoi It is one of the five high schools in Me Linh This is

a new school which was founded in 2006 Most students come from poor families but they are very hard working In fact, the students are aware of the importance of learning English

75 pieces of writing were collected from 30 grade-10 students in the school Since it took a great deal of time to analyze, the number was believed reasonable These pieces of writing were written belonging to 5 themes

selected in the new Tieng Anh 10 including Family Life, Your Body and You,

Inventions, Preserving The Environment and New Ways To Learn These writings were chosen among students of all three English levels including bad, average and good students, which was decided by their English grades at class In each writing topic, the researcher only collected 15 pieces in which 5 pieces from a group of good students, 5 pieces from a group of average students and last 5 pieces from a group of bad students

3.1.2 Teachers

There are six teachers of English in the school where the study was carried out Their English proficiency is not the same level Moreover, they have different teaching methods Two of them graduated from VNU ULIS, two from the in-service course in Thai Nguyen University, the others from Hai Phong University These teachers all attended the training courses carried out by Vinh Phuc Education and Training Department Three of them are teaching 10th grade students

3.1.3 Facilities

There is a shortage of facilities in the classrooms; there are two rows of five desks and tables Each table is for four or five students In addition, in the middle, there is small space left for teachers and students‟ movement Moreover, not all classrooms are equipped with modern facilities There is only one public room which is equipped with one major projector for all subjects

3.2 The study

3.2.1 Research approach

In this study, quantitative method is utilized to achieve the desired aims Quantitative method can be defined as “the numerical representation and manipulation of observation for the purpose of describing and explaining the phenomena that those observations reflect” (Babbie, 1983: 537) This method was chosen for this study for the following reasons Firstly, it helped

“seek facts or causes of social phenomena without regard to the subjective states of the individuals” (Nunan, 1989: 4) In this study, quantitative method, realized by means of student writing analysis, was adequate to find

„objective‟ answers to such questions as “How often do grade 10-students use modal verbs in their writings?” and “How do grade 10-students use modal verbs in their writings?”

3.2.2 Data collections

Writing analysis was employed in this research The author collected pieces of students‟ writings in 5 topics to analyze This method was chosen because it was the best way to reflect students‟ use modal verbs in their writings Moreover, the writings were chosen from students of all English levels, so the results could be reflected more objective

The followings are the five writing topics of the research

1 Write a short paragraph of 100 words about how people in your family share housework

2 You receive a letter from Scott as following

Dear expert,

I am sitting an important exam next week and I don’t know what to eat and what not to eat in order to feel at my best during the test I would be very grateful if you all could give me some advice on this Many thanks

3.2.3 Method of data analysis

The purpose of this study is to examine the use of modal verbs in students‟ pieces of writing To achieve this purpose, quantitative analysis was conducted to investigate the frequency of modal verbs to identify second language learners‟ ability to use modal verbs in the academic written discourse

Due to the constraints of time and other resources, only nine modal

verbs were surveyed: can, could, may, might, shall, should, will, would and must A part from must, these are usually paired as present and past tense

counterparts of single lexemes (can/ could, may/ might, shall/ should, will/ would), although the relationships between counterparts are complex For

present purposes it is useful to treat them as individual items, as it has its own function (Bowie, Wallis & Aarts, 2013)

Word count function by Microsoft Word was used to capture all of instances from learners‟ writings of the nine modal verbs Counts were made

of total as well as individual modal use in writings

It is hoped that the findings of this study could complement language learning on Vietnamese students and thus inform teaching of modal verbs in the English classroom and contribute to the academic writing curricula design

CHAPTER 4: DATA ANALYSIS

This chapter presents the result of the writing analysis and show the use

of modal verbs in these pieces of writing

4.1 Overall counts

The overall frequency counts of the use of modal verbs by the students are provided in Table 2 below

Table 2 Frequency counts of nine modal verbs in writing corpora

Frequency Ranking

The results in Table 2 shows that only 5 out of 9 modal verbs were found

in students‟ writings, which showed that student corpora exhibited a low frequent use of modal verbs The high count in the corpora was 12.5 modal verbs per 1,000 words and the low was zero modal verbs per 1,000 words

While can and should were used more frequently than others, some modal verbs such as could, would, might, shall were not used by students in the

writing corpus In total of 8433 words, modal verbs were only used 236 times

Can was the most frequently used modal verbs with 105 times in all form

(positive form, negative form, shortened negative form) in total of 8433

words The second place was should which appeared 78 times in the corpora Will is another modal verb that was used with high frequent level in the

corpora in comparison with other modal verbs, however it was used 46 times,

nearly 30 times less than modal verb should May and must was used only

twice and five times respectively Other low frequent modal verbs such as

could, would, might, shall were not used at all in the corpora

The finding can be further complemented by Figure 1, which shows a

comparison of the percentage of modal verbs can, will, may, should, and must

Figure 3: Percentage of modal verbs can, will, should, may, must in

corpora

Looking at the chart, it is immediately obvious that three modal verbs

can, should and will occupied the majority of modal verb used by the learner writers, which account for 97% while may and must were rarely used by students in their writings Can was the greatest use with 45%, taking up nearly half of all modal verb use Should was the second frequently used

modal verbs, which account for about one third of all modal verb use in

comparison with 19% of the use of will in learners‟ writings Must and may

are the least frequently used modal verbs, accounting for 2% and 1% respectively

4.2 The use of can, should, will, may and must

I can type, set up presentations I can study online without going to class just by a computer, all my contacts or assignments I do on my computer,

I can send my assignments easily My computer can take notes Audio data,

photos very long Computers can also perform calculations (File Topic 3)

We can listen to music without having to turn on the radio or any other music player with just one click as well as play games or watch movies

without the need for a laptop or TV (File Topic 3)

so she can spend more than 1 hour each day to clean the house

(File Topic 1)

I can save the document file off-screen and manage it easily (File Topic 5)

Can was used in almost situations when students wanted to indicate

ability although there were many other ways or modal verbs that students

could use such as be able to, may, might

2 Possibility

Can is also used to express possibility, however this kind of meaning is

used with low frequency

it can bring good luck to you (File Topic 2)

it can cause you stomach pain or allergies (File Topic 2)

In some situations, students use can to indicate uncertainty or tentativeness, which is inappropriate In the writing corpus, there were 8 times that can was used to express the possibility but 6 out of 8 times it was used to express uncertainty The following are some examples of incorrect use of can

If you believe in luck, you can eat a few chocolate Kitkat bars

because it can bring good luck to you (File Topic 2)

When we further the own education, we can help others people

understand the importance and value of environment (File Topic 4)

In these situations, may is more suitable since it expresses the uncertainty

However, Biber et al (1999: 492) state that can is especially ambiguous

in academic prose, since it can often be interpreted as marking logical possibility or ability” This is particularly true in the learner corpus as besides

the above three functions, can is sometimes used with ambiguity between

legitimacy and ability or as a chunk For example:

It can be said that this is the simplest and easiest work (File Topic 4)