How textbooks (and learners) get it wrong: A corpus study of modal auxiliary verbs

Many  elements  contribute  to  the  relative  difficulty  in  acquiring  specific  aspects  of  English  as  a foreign  language  (Goldschneider  &  DeKeyser,  2001).  Modal  auxiliary  verbs  (e.g.  could,  might), are  examples  of  a  structure  that  is  difficult  for  many  learners.  Not  only  are  they  particularly complex  semantically,  but  especially  in  the  Malaysian  context  reported  on  in  this  paper,  there  is no direct equivalent in the students’ L1. In other words, they are a good example of a structure for which  successful  acquisition  depends  very  much  on  the  quality  of  the  input  and  instruction students  receive.  This  paper  reports  on  analysis  of  a  230,000  word  corpus  of  Malaysian  English textbooks,  in  which  it  was  found  that  the  relative  frequency  of  the  modals  did  not  match  that found  in  native  speaker  corpora  such  as  the  BNC.  We  compared  the  textbook  corpus  with  a learner  corpus  of  Malaysian  form  4  learners  and  found  no  direct  relationship  between  frequency of presentation of target forms in the textbooks and their use by students in their writing. We also found a very large percentage of errors in students’ writing. We suggest a number of possible reasons for these findings and discuss the implications for materials developers and teachers.