Chinese Undergraduates’ using Pattern of Modal Sequences in Argumentation Corpus

Abstract

This paper studies the grade features of using modal sequences in the WECCL (2.0) corpus towards Chinese English majors. Main findings revealed: (1) the modal sequences overall were overused or underused in Chinese English majors’ argumentation corpus, (2) the average keyness of overused modal sequences tended to descend however the average keyness of underused tended to rise, (3) most overused modal sequences were deontic ones, while most underused modal sequences were epistemic ones. In the end, this paper tried to give a reasonable explanation about this phenomenon.