The Contrast Study of the Using Features of Modal Verbs in Argumentative Essays

Abstract

The focus of the research is the different using features of modal verbs between Chinese students and native speakers and through the comparison of the corpora, the findings are as follow: 1) modal verbs of deontic modality such as can, should, will are overused by Chinese students; 2) modal verbs characterized by epistemic modality like would, could, might are underused. 3) In two groups of Chinese students, there is no obvious difference and also no progress in the use of epistemic modal verbs over these years.