情态动词在英语专业学生作文中的使用

摘　要:本文通过收集四个年级英语专业学生的作文，从情态动词的分类，情态动词的语义学含义以及情态动词的实用意义，对比分析了他们在使用表示责任的情态动词的使用情况上的差异,同时也考察了不同水平英语学习者在这方面的异同。结果表明,中国英语学习者总体上存在过多的使用情态动词,但就某些情态动词而言,过少使用的情况也存在,比如说OUGHT TO,NEED. 除此之外中国学生在使用情态动词时没有做出正确的选择，通常选择的情态动词带有直接的命令语气，没有起到说服、劝解的作用。另外,较高水平英语学习者使用情态动词的情况总体和较低水平的英语学习者没有存在很大有意义的差别。通过认真的分析、研究所收集的英语专业学生的作文，可以发现之所以有这样的结果是由于各国文化的差异，在上下文中的实际的实用分析能力以及教学背景的影响。

关键字：情态动词；英语专业学生作文；使用

情态动词在英语专业学生作文中的使用
Study on the Use of Modal Verbs in English Majors ’Compositions

Abstract: The present article reports on a contrastive study of the different usages of the modal verbs expressing responsibility through collecting the compositions wrote by English majors’ students of four grades in the aspects of classification, semantic meaning and pragmatic meaning. It also investigates whether learners at different English proficiency levels differ from each other in terms of their use of modal verbs. The results show that Chinese EFL learners generally overuse the category of modal verbs, but there is some modal verbs used not very frequent, such as OUGHT TO, NEED TO. Besides, Chinese students usually tend to chose commanding or direct modal verbs which do not act on the function of persuasion. It also found that learners at four different proficiency levels have a few differences when they use of modal verbs, which have no significance. By the way of careful study on the English majors’ compositions, we understand that the different culture between east and west, the pragmatic meaning and the teaching background influencing the usage of the modal verbs.

Key words: Modality; English majors’ composition; Usage

Contents   7300字
Abstract………………………………………………………………………………. 1
Key words…………………………………………………………………………….2
Introduction………………………………………………………………………….. .2
1 Literature Review……………………………………………………………………3
1.1 Previous linguistic researches on modal verbs ………………………………….. .4
1.1.1 Classification of modal verbs…………………………………………………....4
1.1.2 Semantic meaning of the selected modal verbs………………………………….5
1.1.3 Pragmatic meaning of the selected modal verbs………………………………...7
1.2 Previous non-linguistic researches on modal verbs……………………………….7
1.2.1 The relationship between the modal verb and culture…………………… ….. ...7
1.2.2 Culture transfer in the use of modal verbs...…………………………………..8
2 Study on the usage of modal verbs in English majors’ compositions……………….9
2.1 Sample collection……………………………………………………………….…9
2.2 Analysis Framework……………………………………………………………...10
2.3 Results……………………………………………………………………………11
2.3.1 Comparison on the use of MUST in English majors’ compositions…............11
2.3.2 Comparison on the use of HAVE TO in English majors’ compositions...…....11
2.3.3 Comparison on the use of SHOULD in English majors’ compositions....... …12
2.3.4 Comparison on the use of OUGHT TO in English majors’ compositions ......13
2.3.5 Comparison on the use of NEED TO in English majors’ compositions ...…..13
2.4 Discussion .......................................……………………………………………..14
Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………...16
Notes ………………………………………………………………………………...16
Bibliography …………………………………………………………………………17
Acknowledge…………………………………………………………………….…..18