Re-evaluating the Representation of Central Modal Verbs in Secondary Level ELT Textbooks: A Corpus-Driven Analysis for Curriculum Enhancement in Chitral Pakistan

Abstract

Modal verbs, especially the nine central modal verbs including can, could, will, would, may, might, shall, should, must, carry pivotal roles in communication. They are employed to convey various meanings such as permission, prohibition, and overall judgment of speaker towards an event. Studies have shown that ELT students, particularly secondary level EFL students face challenges in the use of these modal verbs due to various factors like interference of L-1, complexity of model verb function, and over generalization. The present study aimed at finding the frequency and distribution of the nine central modal verbs used in ELT textbooks at secondary level being taught in Chitral to redress these challenges. Data comprised of ELT textbooks for secondary level and BNC were selected. Through adopting descriptive quantitative corpus-driven methodology with the integration of two data analysis tools including Antconc and CLAW POS Tagger, it was revealed that there are significant discrepancies in the distributions of the nine central modal verbs in the ELT textbooks and in the BNC. The findings demonstrate that the presentation of central modal verbs in the textbooks don’t concord with that in the BNC. The study identified that the most dominant modal verb in the textbooks was ‘will’ with frequency 139 and 22.03%, while in the BNC the most commonly used modal verb was ‘would’ with 19.41%. Similarly, the second frequently modal verb in the textbook was ‘can’ with percentage 21.24%, while in the BNC,’ will’ carries second position. Like these, other dissimilarities were also found in the both corpus. Such dissimilarities and inappropriateness trigger challenges in the proper use of modal verbs. The findings of this study will help curriculum developers, educators and linguists to properly incorporate the modal verbs in ELT textbooks.