The “Permission/Possibility/Ability” Modals in Malaysian English Textbooks: A Corpus-Based Analysis

Abstract

Malaysian learners are observed to be error-prone in terms of semantic functions of modal auxiliary verbs in English. ESL Malaysian learners’ challenges in terms of using modal auxiliary verbs suggest that there might be some inadequacies in the syllabus, which could have led to the problems encountered by these students. Thus, the semantic functions of four modal auxiliary verbs, can, could, may and might, used by and introduced to Malaysian learners in Forms 1–5 textbook corpus were the focus of this study. Apparently, the findings show that these textbooks offer a relatively one-sided picture, overemphasizing the minor semantic functions and overlooking the frequent functions used in the presentday English. It is also argued that although there are invaluable insights available in terms of modal auxiliary verb forms and their semantic functions in major corpus-based studies, this real-life language has not been well presented in Malaysian English language textbooks. The findings of this study contribute to the improvement of the pedagogical practices in the teaching of the modal system, and emphasize that the semantic functions of each core modal in the teaching materials should be given adequate importance.