Modal sequences in Chinese senior school students' English compositions

摘要

This study examines the characteristics of modal sequences used in ST2 from CLEC, with A Level from LOCNESS as a reference corpus. Main findings reveals: Firstly, modal sequences led by can, will and must are overused while those constructed by could, would and should are underused. Secondly, Chinese senior school students tend to overuse personal pronouns as subjects before modal verbs, and overuse verbs with unmarked aspect and voice after, making it rather difficult for students to express relatively complex modal meaning. Consequently, they overuse deontic modality and underuse epistemic modality, making their English comparatively strong on narrative and short on evaluation of their statements.