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영어교육 62권 2호 2007년 여름

A Corpus-based Study of Epistemic Modality in Korean College Students’ Writings in English

Sun-Young Oh (Seoul National University)

Oh, Sun-Young. (2007). A corpus-based study of epistemic modality in Korean college students’ writings in English. English Teaching, 62(2), 147-175.

Epistemic modality is concerned with how writers (or speakers) convey their evaluation of possibilities and the degree of confidence in what they write (or say). This study investigates how epistemic modality is expressed in Korean college students’ English writings by comparing the ranges and frequencies of lexical items used to communicate writer commitment in the two corpora comprising essays written by Korean learners and by native speakers of English. The results indicate that compared with the native speakers, the Korean learners rely on a much narrower range of epistemic devices and their use of the epistemic devices is less balanced in terms of the grammatical classes and semantic categories of the items. The learners tend to transfer spoken features to writing and show stronger commitments to statements than the native speaker writers. Some misuses and different patterns of use between the two groups are also identified. These characteristics are accounted for by the cultural and rhetorical differences between Korean and English as well as the limited L2 competence of the learners. The findings of the present study may be used to improve the teaching of and help the preparation of pedagogical materials for this significant facet of pragmatic competence.

I. INTRODUCTION Recently the prospect of using corpus for teaching and learning English has been

widely discussed (Aston, 2000; Granger, Hung & Petch-Tyson, 2002). Several suggestions have been made on the effective use of corpus for this purpose (Carter, Hughes, & McCarthy, 1998; Fox, 1998; Johns, 1997; Tribble & Jones, 1997; Willis, 1998) and many researchers are encouraging teachers to make use of corpus in foreign language classrooms (Barnbrook, 1996; Flowerdew & Tong, 1994; Johns, 1994; Simpson & Swales, 2001; Wichmann et al., 1997). There are at least three ways in which corpus can contribute to English language teaching and learning (Sun-Young Oh, 2004). First,

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corpus-based research on various aspects of English provides enhanced description of the English language that is much more accurate and detailed than what is suggested by the native speakers’ intuition, and can improve the content of the English teaching. Secondly, corpus analysis can be adopted as a language teaching/learning methodology, which enables learners to discover from authentic data various patterns and uses of the target language by themselves (“data-driven learning,” Johns, 1991, p. 2). Finally, learner corpus can be compiled and analyzed to provide information on the learners’ linguistic competence and areas of difficulty they experience. Learner corpora are “systematic computerized collections of texts produced by language learners” (Nesselhauf, 2004, p. 125). As it has often been pointed out, comparing the target language with the learner’s native language (i.e., traditional “contrastive analysis”) is not enough by itself to predict the learning difficulties. Learner corpora can be used to compare the interlanguage of a particular group of learners with the target language on the one hand, and with the interlanguage of other group(s) of learners (typically from different native language backgrounds), on the other hand (“contrastive interlanguage analysis,” Granger, 2002, p. 11). Using learner corpora, learners’ errors also can be identified and classified by computer-aided technologies in more systematic ways than in the past. The information provided by the analysis of learner corpora can be used to revise syllabus and teaching materials in order to make them meet the learners’ needs more effectively. Currently, there is a rapidly increasing number of learner corpus studies in diverse areas such as grammar (Aijmer, 2002; Biber & Reppen, 1998; Granger, 1999), vocabulary (Altenberg & Granger, 2001; Myung-Hee Kim, 2002; Ringbom, 1998a), phraseology (De Cock, 1998; Milton & Freeman, 1996), and discourse (Altenberg & Tapper, 1998; Cheng & Warren, 2000; Flowerdue, 1998; Petch-Tyson, 1998).

Epistemic modality is concerned with how writers (or speakers) convey their evaluation of possibilities and the degree of confidence in what they write (or say) (Coates, 1983). To make statements with the precise degree of certainty or doubt that one intends is very important for any effective writing. To have a variety of epistemic devices of the target language at one’s disposal, however, is generally considered to be difficult for language learners because languages possess a great many different ways of realizing epistemic modality. Furthermore, what is an appropriate degree of confidence in a given context may differ across languages. Previous studies have evidenced the difficulties that second/foreign language learners of English face in this particular area (Allison, 1995; Hu, et al., 1982; Hyland &Milton, 1997; McEnery & Kifle, 2002). There is not much known yet, however, about how Korean learners conceptualize and convey epistemic modality in English, and in what respects they are similar to and/or different from the native speakers. In order to help fill this gap, this study attempts to investigate how epistemic modality is expressed in Korean college students’ English writings by comparing and contrasting the


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ranges and frequencies of lexical items used to communicate (different levels of) writer commitment in two corpora, i.e., a Korean learner corpus and an English native-speaker corpus. By identifying the difficulties and problems that Korean learners have in employing epistemic modality in English, the present study hopes to contribute to the teaching of and the preparation of pedagogical materials for this “important area of pragmatic competence” (Hyland & Milton, 1997, p. 184).

II. BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

1. Epistemic Modality Modality is typically divided into two types, i.e., epistemic modality and root modality

(Halliday, 1994; Holmes, 1988; Hoye, 1997; Hyland, 1994, 2000; Leech & Svartvik, 1983; Lyons, 1977; Quirk et al., 1985). Epistemic modality is concerned “with the speaker’s [writer’s] assumptions or assessment of possibilities” and “indicates confidence (or lack of confidence) in the truth of the proposition expressed” (Coates, 1983, p. 18). By saying that “John must be in New York by now,” for example, the speaker or writer is conveying his/her confidence in the proposition that John is currently in New York while the replacement of the modal verb must with may reduces such confidence significantly. Root modality, on the other hand, has to do with interactional meanings instead of logical possibilities (Celce-Murcia & Larsen-Freeman, 1999). Typical examples include the meaning of obligation expressed by the modal verb must in the sentence “You must go out of this room now” or permission signaled by the modal verb may in “You may leave the room.” Modal expressions are potentially complex for second/foreign language learners because they can convey a range of different meanings (Hyland & Milton, 1997). For example, could can express ability, permission, and possibility depending on the context of its use.

Traditionally epistemic modality has tended to be discussed only in terms of modal verbs such as must, may, might, should, etc. (Coates, 1983; Hermeren, 1978; Palmer, 1979). Other grammatical classes, however, are also regularly used to express epistemic meanings (Holmes, 1982, 1983, 1988; Hyland & Milton, 1997; McEnery & Kifle, 2002, etc.): for example, lexical verbs (e.g., think, know, believe), adverbs (e.g., indeed, probably, definitely), nouns (e.g., possibility, doubt, belief), and adjectives (e.g., clear, certain, probable). According to one study, there are as many as 350 lexical devices in English that can be employed for epistemic function (Holmes, 1988, p. 27). Epistemic modality is thus difficult for second/foreign language learners to acquire partly because it can be conveyed

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through a number of different means.1 On the other hand, devices of epistemic modality can be placed along a continuum

expressing different degrees of certainty/doubt. Hyland and Milton (1997) have suggested the following five categories of epistemic commitment, which divide up the epistemic continuum:

(a) certainty (certainly, must will, argue, in fact, etc.) (b) probability (would, seem, probable, believe, etc.) (c) possibility (may, might, perhaps, possible, etc.) (d) usuality (always, often, usually, etc.) (e) approximation (about, approximately, almost, etc.) The researchers admit that this categorization is somewhat arbitrary and classifying

each individual example into these categories is to some extent subjective. However, several other researchers have used the same or similar semantic categories and found them useful (Halliday, 1994; Holmes, 1983, 1988; McEnery & Kifle, 2002, etc.). It seems critical for second/foreign language writers to learn and be aware of these categories of epistemic modality as well as be exposed to the extensive range of epistemic devices if they are to use the target language as native speakers do.

Beyond simply signaling the degree of their certainty or doubt, writers’ use of epistemic devices further has an affective dimension in the sense that it helps to build a relationship with the reader (Hyland & Milton, 1997). Experienced writers are sensitive to the concept of audience and the possible responses from the audience to their statements. In order to be accepted and approved by the reader, writers need to moderate (the firmness of) their assertions to some degree. Too strong and unqualified assertions are likely to obviate the reader’s feedback and the need to engage in a dialogue with the writer. By means of the relevant use of expressions marking uncertainty or tentativeness, writers can not only display their willingness to consider and accept the potentially conflicting views of the audience but also avoid taking the full responsibility for the assertions.

1 In addition to these linguistic devices, non-linguistic, e.g., prosodic, devices may also serve to

signal epistemic modality. Prosodic devices are an important means of expressing modal meaning but they are not considered in the present study, which deals with the written language. It has been suggested that it is better for second/foreign language learners to focus on the acquisition of lexical devices initially and move toward the learning of prosodic devices later, due to the relative difficulty of the latter (Holmes, 1982).


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2. Previous Studies Previous studies have shown that learning to manipulate epistemic modality in the

target language is a challenging task for second/foreign language writers (Allison, 1995; Flowerdue, 2000; Hu, et al., 1982; Hyland & Milton, 1997; Milton & Hyland, 1999; Silva, 1993; Skelton, 1988, etc.). The results of these studies indicate that it is not easy for L2 writers to make statements with the proper degree of conviction or uncertainty by the native speakers’ standards. In particular, the writings of the students who learn English as a Foreign Language (EFL) were often described as direct and categorical. Hu, Brown and Brown (1982) found that compared with native speakers, Chinese L2 writers are more direct and definite and make more use of strong modals. Allison (1995) made a similar observation with Hong Kong writers who learn English as a Second Language (ESL). Hyland and Milton (1997) also note that Hong Kong learners employ a narrow range of epistemic devices and are more direct than native speaker writers. McEnery and Kifle (2002) who examined Eritrean learners report that while these learners also make use of a limited array of epistemic devices, they are more indirect than native speakers. Thus far virtually no study has been undertaken, at least to my knowledge, which investigated Korean learners of English specifically for their employment of epistemic modality.

Some studies have looked at pedagogical materials to see how adequate they are in presenting epistemic modality to the learners. According to Holmes (1988), who compared the native-speaker corpora with ESL textbooks, the textbooks focus only on modal verbs, ignoring other equally frequent and effective devices of epistemic modality. These textbooks seem to be responsible for the overuse of modal verbs by some learners (Aijmer, 2002). Hyland (1994) similarly points out the inadequacy of English for Academic Purposes (EAP) textbooks for teaching hedging in academic writing. McEnery and Kifle (2002) found that the teaching materials that the subjects of their study used are biased, putting special emphasis on tentative and weak devices of epistemic modality, and influenced the epistemic performance of the students accordingly. One problem in second/foreign language learning and teaching of epistemic modality thus seems to be the fact that there are few, if any, pedagogical materials and textbooks that deal with this area to a satisfactory extent.

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III. METHOD

1. Data The present study made use of two sets of corpus – i.e., a nonnative speaker (NNS) and

a native speaker (NS) corpus. The NNS corpus is a collection of essays written by college students from several universities in Korea. The essays are of argumentative (67%) and expository (33%) type, and the topics are concerned with contemporary social issues (e.g., abortion, euthanasia, etc.) or more general subjects (e.g., ideal spouse, the most influential historical event, the writer’s community). The essays that were used for this study had been classified by the researcher as low- to mid-intermediate level (The classification was made in terms of the three aspects, i.e., vocabulary, grammar, and topic development). Those essays that were categorized either as beginning or advanced level were excluded since their numbers were not enough, compared with the number of intermediate-level essays. The total number of words in the NNS corpus is 97,999 words (416 essays in total).

As a reference native-speaker corpus, the Louvain Corpus of Native English Essays (LOCNESS) was used. The LOCNESS is a corpus of native English essays written by British pupils and university students and American university students, which was compiled and has been widely used by the researchers who work with the International Corpus of Learner English (ICLE).2 For the present study only those essays collected from the university students were used to ensure the comparability with the NNS corpus. Most of the essays are argumentative, with some literary and expository types. The total number of words in the NS corpus is 263,973 words.

2. Data Analysis Procedure

To analyze the data, the following procedures were taken. First, a list of lexical devices

of epistemic modality was prepared on the basis of Holmes (1983, 1988) and Hyland and Milton (1997), who reported the use of such devices in native-speaker corpora. A total of 110 epistemic devices were examined in the study (See the Appendix for the complete list of the items, together with the raw and normalized (per 100,000 words) frequencies of

2 ICLE, one of the earliest and the most famous learner corpora, was compiled in 1990s under the

initiative of Sylviane Granger. It is composed of 500-word argumentative essays written by advanced learners of English as a foreign language, who are undergraduate students in the department of English language and literature. The ICLE database is divided into subcorpora, each of which is produced by learners from one country (or with one first language) and consists of 200,000 words. Eleven countries in Europe participated in the project initially, and subcorpora from eight additional countries including China and Japan are currently being added.


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each in the NNS and the NS corpus). Second, all the tokens of each epistemic device under examination were extracted from

each of the two corpora, using a concordancing program. For the concordancing program, this study made use of the WordSmith Tools (version 3.0). Concordancing programs capture all occurrences of the target word or phrase from the corpus and show them in context. The concordance output was then closely examined in order to remove non-epistemic uses of some of the devices. For example, modal verbs may work both for epistemic and root modality function, so epistemic modal verbs were isolated from the other uses of modal verbs. Other devices such as appear and clear also have non-epistemic functions (i.e., for the meaning of ‘to become noticeable or to be present’ in the case of appear and ‘pure or easy to see through’ in the case of clear), which were identified and deleted.

Third, all the devices of epistemic modality were categorized according to their grammatical classes: i.e., modal verbs, lexical verbs, adverbs, nouns, and adjectives. The epistemic devices were also classified into the five categories of epistemic commitment identified by Hyland & Milton (1997): certainty (e.g., will, know, certainly), probability (e.g., would, seem, probably), possibility (e.g., could, perhaps, possibility), usuality (e.g., usually, generally, always), and approximation (e.g., about, almost).

Fourth, the two corpora, i.e., the NNS and the NS corpus, were compared and contrasted in terms of (a) the ranges and frequencies of the epistemic devices used in total, (b) the distribution of the devices across the grammatical classes and (c) the semantic categories.

Finally, the uses of the epistemic devices were also analyzed qualitatively in order to identify common misuses by the learners and/or the different patterns of use between the NNS and the NS writers.

IV. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

1. Frequencies and Ranges of Epistemic Devices In this subsection, the NNS and the NS corpus are compared in terms of the frequencies

and ranges of the epistemic devices employed. Table 1 displays the raw and normalized (per 100 words) frequencies of the lexical devices used to express epistemic meanings in the two corpora.

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TABLE 1 Overall Frequency of Epistemic Devices

NNS NS Total number 2752 7463 Tokens per 100 words 2.81 2.83 Top 10 items 1672 (61%) 3953 (53%) Top 20 items 2181 (79%) 5161 (69%)

A comparison of the normalized frequencies of the epistemic devices found in the two

corpora reveals one remarkable similarity: The nonnative speakers use 2.81 devices per hundred words and the native speakers, 2.83 devices. Despite this superficial similarity in the overall frequency of the epistemic devices used, one difference readily emerges when the relative percentages of the top 10 and 20 items in each corpus are compared. The top 10 items account for 61% and 53% of the total numbers of the epistemic devices in the NNS and the NS corpus, respectively, and the top 20 items show a parallel tendency (compare 79% in the NNS corpus with 69% in the NS corpus). This means that the NNS writings contain a more restricted range of epistemic devices than the NS counterparts.

A closer look at the variety of the epistemic devices used in the two corpora indicates that epistemic items are distinguished according to the frequency of occurrence in both corpora (see Table 2) (the frequencies are normalized as per 100,000 words for easy comparison between the two corpora).

TABLE 2

Variety of Epistemic Devices Frequency of occurrence of device

(per 100,000 words) NNS NS

500-600 1 0 400-499 0 0 300-399 0 2 200-299 2 0 100-199 3 6 50-99 10 6 10-49 23 43 5-9 16 18 3-4 8 18 1-2 19 10 0 28 7

As can be seen in Table 2, certain devices occur with much greater frequency compared

with others. While one epistemic device belongs to the 500-600 frequency band in the NNS corpus, there are as many as 28 items that do not occur at all, suggesting that the


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Korean learners of English tend to depend heavily on a smaller range of epistemic devices. Compared with the NNS corpus, the NS corpus displays a relatively more balanced distribution of the epistemic devices. In other words, although neither the NNS nor the NS writers used all of the 110 epistemic devices that were examined in the study, the latter group made use of a wider range of epistemic devices than the former. This finding is consistent with those of the previous studies that examined other nonnative learners of English (Hyland & Milton, 1997; McEnery & Kifle, 2002). In fact, learners’ greater use of a limited range of vocabulary is a phenomenon that is not confined to the area of epistemic modality, and many other learner corpus studies have reported similar findings. The most common lexical items (including connectors) and word combinations (“prefabs”), for example, occur much more frequently in the learner corpora than in the native-speaker corpus (Altenberg & Tapper, 1998; de Cook et al., 1998; Ringbom, 1998b).

Let us now look at Table 3, which is a list of top ten most frequent devices used in the NS and the NNS corpus.

TABLE 3

Ten Most Frequent Items Expressing Epistemic Modality in Rank Order Rank NNS NS

Device

Frequency (per 100,000 words)

Device

Frequency (per 100,000 words)

1 think 554 would 368 2 will 254 will 305 3 know 216 think 122 4 feel 160 feel 121 5 sometimes 122 believe 119 6 always 112 idea 103 7 opinion 84 may 102 8 would 73 know 100 9 usually 68 seem 88 10 hope 61 fact 70

The two corpora show some similarities: for instance, there are five common items

occurring among the top ten most frequently used devices both of the NS and the NNS writers (think, will, know, feel, would). There exist, however, some striking differences as well in the epistemic device usage between the two groups. Although would is found in both lists, for example, it occurs five times more frequently in the NS corpus than in the NNS corpus, which shows the native speakers’ preference for more tentative expressions. On the other hand, think which expresses writer’s certainty occurs more than four times as often in the NNS corpus. The verb think is in fact overused not only by the Korean learners but also by learners from other first language backgrounds, such as French,

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Spanish, Finish, Swedish, German, and Hong Kong (Hyland & Milton, 1997; Ringbom, 1998b). It thus appears that the preponderance of the verb think is one typical feature of nonnative writings. The reason may have to do with the informal nature of this verb, which makes it very frequent in spoken language. As will be discussed in Section 3, transferring spoken linguistic features to writing is characteristic of language learners.

2. Epistemic Modal Verbs

Considering the special status that modal verbs have long enjoyed as a device of

epistemic modality, they are considered in this subsection separately from the rest of the grammatical classes. Table 4 displays the relative frequencies of the seven different epistemic modal verbs in the NNS and the NS corpus.3

TABLE 4

Relative Frequency of Epistemic Modal Verbs Modal verb Frequency (per 100,000 words) Chi-square value (X2)

NNS NS will 254 305 6.5

would 73 368 158.9*** could 4 11 3.4 should 7 16 3.8 may 60 102 13.9***

might 20 28 1.5 must 19 15 0.9

*** Statistically significant (p<.001) As can be seen in Table 4, all the epistemic modal verbs except must were used by the

learners less often than by the native speakers, although the difference is not always statistically significant. Would and may are underused in the NNS corpus to a highly significant degree, compared with the NS corpus (X2=158.9 and 13.9, respectively (df=1), p<.001). The differences on the frequencies of the other five modal verbs were not statistically significant. Would and may belong to the ‘probability’ and ‘possibility’ category, respectively, in terms of epistemic commitment. The fact that Korean learners underuse these modal verbs thus indicates that they tend to make more assertive statements than the native speakers do.

3 The modal verb can is not included because it is not used epistemically (Coates, 1983). It may

work for epistemic function when negated (i.e., can’t), but there was only one such instance in the NS and none in the NNS corpus.


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3. Grammatical Distributions This subsection considers how epistemic devices are distributed across grammatical

classes in the two corpora. The relative (raw) frequencies and percentages of the five different grammatical classes (i.e., modal verb, lexical verb, adverb, noun, and adjective) in the NNS and the NS corpus are shown in Table 5 and Figure 1.

TABLE 5

Distribution of Epistemic Devices across Grammatical Classes Grammatical class NNS NS

Raw frequency Percentage Raw frequency Percentage Modal Verb 430 16% 2229 30% Lexical Verb 1187 43% 2141 20%

Adverb 767 28% 1514 20% Noun 295 11% 1235 17%

Adjective 73 3% 344 5% TOTAL 2752 100% 7463 100%

FIGURE 1

Distribution of Epistemic Devices across Grammatical Classes It can be easily seen in Figure 1 that all the grammatical classes are relatively more

evenly distributed in the NS corpus than in the NNS corpus. The NNS writers show a much stronger preference for lexical verbs (43%) compared with the NS writers (20%). The next frequent grammatical class in the NNS corpus is adverbs (28%), followed by modal verbs (16%), nouns (11%), and adjectives (3%). In the NS corpus, modal verbs are the most frequent (30%), and lexical verbs (20%), adverbs (20%), and nouns (17%) are

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relatively equally used while adjectives (5%) are the least frequent option for the NS writers.

The above results are apparently inconsistent with those of the previous studies. Hyland and Milton (1997) and McEnery and Kifle (2002) both found that NNS writers rely highly on modal verbs and adverbs and less on lexical verbs. According to Hyland and Milton (1997), adverbs are easier for the NNS writers to manipulate because there are no grammatical and lexical complications involved in the use of adverbs (unlike in the case of lexical verbs). In addition, adverbs are much more frequent in speech than writing (Holmes, 1983), and it may be an instance of the NNS writers’ transferring spoken characteristics to a written genre.

Given the unexpectedly high frequency of lexical verbs in the current NNS corpus, an attempt was made to see the range and frequency of the lexical verbs that were actually employed. Table 6 lists the three most frequent verbs in each corpus.

TABLE 6

Three Most Frequent Lexical Verbs Expressing Epistemic Modality in Rank Order Rank NNS NS

Verb Frequency (per 100,000 words)

Verb Frequency (per 100,000 words)

1 think 554 think 122 2 know 216 feel 121 3 feel 160 believe 119 Subtotal 931 (77%) Subtotal 362 (45%) Total lexical verbs 1211 (100%) Total lexical verbs 811 (100%)

The table suggests that the use of lexical verbs by the NNS writers is much more

severely restricted than by the NS writers: The sum of the frequencies of the three most frequent lexical verbs account for as much as 77% of the total frequency of lexical verbs in the NNS corpus, but only 45% in the NS corpus. That is, although lexical verbs are the grammatical class that the nonnative writers make the most frequent use of to express epistemic modality, the range of lexical verbs that are in actual use is extremely limited. The nonnative students’ overuse of a small array of lexical verbs might be at least part of the reason why they underuse modal verbs.

Think and feel are common to both corpora, while know and believe are unique to the NNS and the NS corpus, respectively. All of these verbs are frequent in informal spoken register, and students (both from the NS and the NNS groups) appear to transfer conversational linguistic features to formal writing although the tendency is much stronger for the NNS students. Several studies that have compared the ICLE and the LOCNESS corpora also indicate that nonnative learners tend to use traits which are typical of spoken


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register when they write academic essays (Arts & Granger, 1998; Biber & Reppen, 1998; Granger & Rayson, 1998; Petch-Tyson, 1998). For example, learner essays display characteristics that signal high writer-reader involvement, such as pronouns, emphatic particles, and reference to the situation of writing or reading (Petch-Tyson, 1998) and thus become more interactive than the native-speaker counterparts. A similar kind of transfer of spoken characteristics to writing is also observed in the learners’ use of nouns, verbs, and pronouns (Granger & Rayson, 1998) and the most frequent sequences of word-class tag (Aarts & Granger, 1998). In a similar vein, Biber and Reppen (1998) report that complementation patterns of verbs such as think, say, and know in the Longman Learner Corpus (a collection of essays produced by intermediate/advanced learners of English) are closer to the conversation register than to the academic prose register of the Longman Grammar Corpus (i.e., native-speaker corpus). Interestingly, there is evidence that employing spoken linguistic features in writing is characteristic of as-yet-incompetent native speakers as well as of non-native speakers. According to Biber et al. (1998), the essays written by native-speaker elementary students have more “on-line” (p. 185) characteristics, implying that the student writings show an oral tendency. The researchers also show that the developmental trend from the third to the sixth grades is towards the use of a more literate, i.e., “informational and carefully edited styles” (p. 189). Therefore, differentiating between the spoken and the written registers and knowing how to use language appropriately for each register appear to be not an easy task and take time to master for learners not only of second/foreign language but of the first language.

The restricted range of lexical verbs used to express epistemic modality and the employment of spoken characteristics in written genres both evidence the immaturity of the Korean students in the use of epistemic devices in English writing.

4. Semantic Categories

The difference between the NNS and the NS corpus is explored here in terms of the

distribution of the epistemic devices across semantic categories. Table 7 provides the result of categorizing all the individual devices used in both corpora according to five different semantic categories: certainty, probability, possibility, usuality, and approximation.4

4 Always and never were categorized into both categories of certainty and usuality, which resulted in

the increased total frequency of epistemic devices in Table 7.

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TABLE 7 Distribution of Epistemic Devices across Semantic Categories

NNS NS Semantic category Raw frequency Percentage Raw frequency Percentage Certainty 1609 55% 3567 46%

Probability 435 15% 2586 34% Possibility 323 11% 877 11% Usuality 435 15% 563 7%

Approximation 109 4% 113 2% TOTAL 2911 100% 7707 100%

FIGURE 2 Distribution of Epistemic Devices across Semantic Categories

Table 7 indicates that the NNS and the NS writers diverge in the degree of certainty and

tentativeness that they express in their writing. As is shown in Figure 2, the nonnative speakers use about 10% more devices (55%) than the native speakers (46%) from the category of certainty, whereas the native speakers make about 20% more use of devices of epistemic probability (34% vs. 15%). It confirms the finding of the previous studies that L2 learners tend to write in a more assertive tone with stronger epistemic commitment, compared with native speakers.

In the studies of L2 writing, cross-cultural rhetoric has often been mentioned as a factor that is responsible for some of the characteristics of nonnative writing. Many studies have found that languages differ in the degree of certainty with which writers make assertions. For example, German and Czech writers tend to be more direct than English writers (Bloor & Bloor, 1991; Clyne, 1987) while writings in Finns, Japanese, Malays, and Chinese appear to be more indirect (Ahmad, 1995; Bloch & Chi, 1995; Harder, 1984;

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Hinds, 1983; Mauranen, 1993). Korean appears to belong to the latter group of languages. Several researchers (Yeon Hee Choi, 1988a, 1988b; Eggington, 1987; Jong-Seok Ock, 1991, 1994; Hye-Sook Wang, 2000) have noted that Koreans are indirect in expressing personal opinions, and giving one’s opinions directly is considered as a face-threatening act. Students from different language/culture backgrounds may thus have divergent notions about what type of writing is suitable in terms of rhetoric. When they write in L2, the different notions in their native language and L2 may conflict with each other (Connor, 1996; Sötter, 1988), and as the result NNS writers might appear either overly direct and impolite, or too indirect, tentative and insecure to the eyes of native speaker readers (Hyland & Milton, 1997).

The results of the current study regarding Korean college students’ use of epistemic devices across semantic categories may be compared with those of the previous studies that examined English learners with other native language backgrounds. Allison (1995) and Hyland and Milton (1997) report similar findings with Hong Kong learners. That is, Hong Kong learners, like Korean learners, used more direct and unqualified language than native speakers. This finding might not meet the natural expectation from the above-mentioned cross-cultural rhetoric because these learners are typically considered indirect in their L1 writing. L2 writing must therefore be influenced by diverse factors, one of which is probably proficiency: that is, the learners’ insufficient knowledge of L2 (Allison, 1995) may be one explanation for the seemingly counter-intuitive finding. In addition, it may partially result from “‘sociopragmatic’ violations resulting from an imperfect awareness of appropriate language use” (Hyland & Milton, 1997, p. 193). In other words, the learners may perceive that English native speakers communicate much more directly than they do, and as the result they try to be more direct and assertive in writing in English than they would normally be in writing in their native language. What they may believe to be a culturally and rhetorically appropriate language use in the target language actually results in an inappropriate degree of directness. In contrast to the studies discussed above, McEnery and Kifle (2002) report that Eritrean learners of English use less direct language than native speakers and employ a considerable number of epistemic devices from the possibility category. The researchers attribute this rather unexpected result to the teaching materials that were used with this group of learners, which emphasize tentative and weak epistemic modality devices.

Besides cross-cultural rhetoric, on the other hand, there might be a related but slightly different aspect of cultural difference. In the western cultures open and public discussions are natural and encouraged. In Korea, however, especially in the traditional Korean society, there have been less such opportunities; accordingly, Korean speakers/writers might be less sensitive to the potential responses from the audience/readers. That is, in the western cultures audience/readers may be more willing and ready to provide feedback to the

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speaker’s/writer’s arguments than in the Korean culture, and speakers/writers tend to make less strong assertions in order to avoid the possible disagreements or challenges and the personal liability for the assertions. In addition to the immaturity both as writers and as L2 users, the cultural difference of this sort might be contributing to the current finding that Korean learners make stronger statements than the native speakers. One of the recurrent findings from learner corpus studies is that the learners’ native language has a greater influence on various aspects of learner language than had previously been assumed (Nesselhauf, 2004). This study suggests that one form that this native language influence can take might be the rhetorical interference or cultural transfer.

5. Misuses and Different Patterns of Use

This final subsection presents some of the misuses of the epistemic devices by the NNS

students and the different patterns of use between the NNS and the NS writers. Some patterns of the same epistemic devices were only used by the NS writers, and not by the NNS writers. For example, in the case of the lexical verb argue, be argued that…and argue against/for were not found in the NNS corpus; in the case of expect, there were no such patterns as expect + Noun + to~, be expected to~, and be expected that…in the NNS corpus, unlike in the NS corpus. It is possible that the NNS students may understand these patterns (e.g., the passive construction) receptively, but cannot produce them in their output. In any case, it appears that the NNS students are not capable of making use of the full range of patterns of certain epistemic devices.

Sometimes the difference between the NS and the NNS corpus lies in the co-occurrence patterns of the epistemic devices. For example, the adverb probably tends to be preceded by a modal verb in the NS corpus: more than half of the total instances (36 out of 65) accompany a modal verb, and in 25 such cases the modal verb is would. In contrast, only one out of a total of nine tokens of probably in the NNS corpus co-occurs with a modal verb (will). The native speakers’ tendency to use probably in conjunction with a modal verb appears to be unique to this particular adverb, since other adverbs with a similar meaning, such as maybe and perhaps, are not usually used with modal verbs (only 2 out of 93 in the case of perhaps, and zero out of 38 in the case of maybe). These three adverbs – probably, perhaps, and maybe – are compared in Table 8 in terms of their relative frequency in four different corpora: the two corpora used in the present study plus Brown and Santa Barbara Corpus of Spoken American English (SBCSAE). Brown is a one-million word corpus of American written English, and SBCSAE is a 423,723 word corpus of informal conversations.


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TABLE 8 Relative Frequency of Perhaps, Probably, and Maybe

Adverb Frequency (per 100,000 words) NNS NS Brown SBCSAE

Perhaps 2 35 31 1 Probably 9 25 26 41 Maybe 54 14 13 43

First note that the frequencies of the three adverbs in the NS corpus and Brown (i.e., the

written corpus) are very similar. Note also that in both of the corpora the relative frequencies decrease in the order of perhaps, probably, and maybe. In the NNS corpus, however, this pattern is reversed: that is, maybe is used most frequently, and perhaps, least often. Interestingly, this mirrors the frequency order of these adverbs in the conversational spoken corpus (SBCSAE). It may thus constitute another piece of evidence that the nonnative speakers tend to transfer spoken linguistic features to writing.

Another difference between the two groups in the use of probably is that one third of the entire tokens in the NNS corpus (i.e., 3 out of 9) are positioned sentence-initially whereas there is not even a single such instance (out of 65) in the NS corpus. The nonnative speakers’ preference for sentence-initial position is also observed with other adverbs. Of course, for example, occurs in 40 cases in total in the NNS corpus, and the majority (30 cases) are found in sentence-initial position, with the rest (10 tokens) being equally divided between the sentence-medial and sentence-final position. In comparison, the native speakers place of course in sentence-medial position most often (32 out of 54) and sentence-initial position, the next (22 out of 54). They never place it sentence-finally. The nonnative speakers’ choice of the position of adverbs within a sentence appears to be influenced by the spoken register, in which adverbs frequently occupy the sentence-initial position.

Some exclusive patterns of use by the nonnative students were obvious misuses. Below (a) shows some lines extracted from the concordance output of sure in the NNS corpus. Lines 10 to 12 illustrate the pattern “I’m/was (not) sure + Noun,” and from 13 to 16, “It is/It’s (not) sure that…,” both of which are unique (and incorrect) patterns only observed in the NNS corpus.

(a): NNS 10 e to change my view. Now, I’m almost sure my view. First, most of all, I wa

11 meone continuously passed me. I wasn’t sure the reason. I guess, he was used t

12 The cafe “Au Deit Cafe?” (I’m not sure the exact name because it’s french)

13 erson agreed to them. Because it is not sure that the man can decide himself kil

14 nt to have happy married life. It is sure that I will give a fight with my hu

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15 lem to family that cannot ignore. It is sure that one’s life is more valuable th

16 en’s university has advantages and it’s sure that there are also disadvantages.

On the other hand, one pattern was employed only by the native speakers (i.e., be sure

to + Verb): (b): NS 32 in the tale, he is without hope, and is sure never to see Cunonde again.

33 heory could apply here because there is sure to be tension between judges and th

34 e disappointed since some employers are sure to value their skills and abilities

35 an unnecessary loss of life, which is sure to pull compassion out of most read

Similarly, the following concordance lines of possibility display two distinctive patterns

noticed in the NNS corpus (have no possibility of and possibility to + Verb), which were found neither in the NS corpus nor in Brown:

(c): NNS 7 ge waste of money to patient who has no possibility of improvement. In addition,

8 tificially killing patients who have no possibility of survival’. So now I am go

9 pending money on the patient who has no possibility of living will be suffering.

10 mising opinion. To a patient who has no possibility of living, rather than givin

11 nue it more than 6 months I will find a possibility to correct my problem.

12 d experience aftereffects of abortion. Possibility to be sterile may be high, a

13 patient who is in the last stage and no possibility to live can give the financi

14 diseases like lung cancer. It adds the possibility to bear a freak of nature.

15 usness. He just breath and he have thin possibility to revive. If euthanasia is

In contrast, the three lines in (d), which are taken from the NS corpus, illustrate one

pattern (possibility for) that was not found in the NNS corpus: (d): NS 17 appears to be derived from the two-fold possibility for joining the party: was i

18 ons. If they get divorced, what are the possibilities for remarriage, or will th

19 his was not very popular because of the possibility for abuse. The second provis

The NS and the NNS corpus also differ in that possibility frequently occurs with various

pre-modifiers in the former, but not very often in the latter. These pre-modifiers include distinct, enormous, every, first, fruitful, further, great(er), objective, different, other, remote,


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same, slightest, sober, strong, terrible, thrilling, various, zero, and ordinal/cardinal numbers. The small set of pre-modifiers that the NNS students use with possibility contains many, some, no, and other. Compared with those found in the NS corpus, the variety of the pre-modifiers is exceedingly limited.

V. CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS This study examined how Korean college students express epistemic modality in their

English writings on the basis of comparison between the NNS corpus and the NS corpus. The findings of the current study can be summarized as the following. The Korean learners of English rely on a quite narrow range of epistemic devices. Compared with the native speakers, the learners overuse certain epistemic devices (think, always, maybe, opinion, etc.) whereas they underuse others (would, may, believe, seem, argue, assume, claim, appear, suppose, perhaps, obviously, necessarily, possibly, idea, fact, belief, likely, etc.). The learners make a less balanced use than the native speakers of the epistemic devices in terms of the grammatical class of the devices. They also misuse or use the same epistemic items differently from the native speakers (e.g., probably, sure, possibility, argue, expect, etc.). The learners tend to transfer spoken features to writing and show stronger commitments to statements than the native speaker writers. These characteristics may be attributed to the cultural and rhetorical differences between Korean and English as well as to the limited L2 competence of the Korean learners of English.

From a pedagogical perspective, learners not only should be able to actively use various types of epistemic devices within each semantic category but to be made aware of and effectively express the full range of epistemic meanings (e.g., different degrees of certainty and doubt). It may be hard for learners to “acquire this aspect of pragmatic competence without first consciously noticing it” (Hyland & Milton, 1997, p. 200). Mere exposure to English text and reading may thus not be sufficient for the learners to attain the native-like proficiency in the area of epistemic modality, and instruction seems necessary. As Norris and Ortega (2000) conclude from a comprehensive review of previous studies on L2 instruction, “focused instructional treatments of whatever sort far surpass non- or minimally focused exposure to the L2” (p. 463). Whether it is better to provide explicit or implicit instruction is unclear yet; any type of instruction, however, should help learners notice the function of epistemic modality and diverse devices realizing the concept. One type of exercise may consist of having learners remove certain epistemic devices from a text or rewrite the text by replacing the given epistemic devices with other ones (for example, change certainty forms with hedges) (Hyland & Milton, 1997). The focus of such exercise would be placed on making learners be aware of the

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results on the general tone of the text of such removal or replacement of epistemic devices and thereby learn the concept of epistemic modality. The instruction should also help learners recognize distinctions between the formal written and the spoken registers and move beyond the limited range of epistemic devices that is typical of spoken register, while focusing on those devices that are underused by the learners. Activities practicing uses of lexical alternatives (e.g., providing alternatives to think) may be devised and implemented for this purpose (Hinkel, 2003). Appropriate instructional materials for the type of exercises/activities described above can be developed on the basis of this study.

In the case of misuses and different patterns of use, the learner corpus can itself be used in teaching/learning activities by employing the methodology of Data-Driven Learning (Johns, 1991).5 Since Granger and Tribble (1998) first suggested this method, several researchers have attempted to apply this idea (Flowerdue, 2001; Horváth, 2001; Milton & Hyland, 1999; Ragan, 2001; Seidlhofer, 2000). The most basic way of doing it is to search certain error-prone items in the native speaker corpus and the learner corpus using concordancing programs6 and then compare the concordance lines from each so that the students can find out the differences in language use between the native speakers and the nonnative speakers. The teacher can let the students discover how the two corpora differ in the use of the same linguistic item and help them move towards more native-like language use. This type of negative evidence is very effective especially when provided to the advanced-level learners and for the forms that have been or are being fossilized (Granger, 1996). Having the learners find the errors or discover the differences between the learner and native-speaker language by themselves can cultivate the learner independence and train the learners to become sensitive to such differences. Furthermore, learners are motivated by identifying and analyzing the errors this way (Fan et al., 1999, cited in Nesselhauf, 2004).

The present study only looked at the writings of the intermediate-level learners and thus it was impossible to see whether there is a developmental sequence in the use of epistemic modality. It would be necessary in the future to collect writings from different levels of learners and compare the use of epistemic modality across proficiency levels. The results of such studies will serve as important references for deciding the order in which the epistemic features are to be taught.

5 DDL was originally developed to be used with native-speaker corpora. For examples and/or

discussions of the use of DDL in language classroom, see Aston (2000), Cook (1998), Donley & Reppen (2001), Fox (1998), Johns (1991, 1994, 1997), Owen (1996), Tribble & Jones (1997), Widdowson (2000), Willis (1998), etc.

6 Alternatively, the teacher can provide the students with the print-out of the concordance output.


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APPENDIX

Epistemic Devices and their Frequencies

NNS corpus NS corpus

Device Raw frequency per 100,000 words Raw frequency per 100,000 words

will 249 254 806 305 would 72 73 971 368 may 59 60 270 102 might 20 20 73 28 must 19 19 39 15 should 7 7 41 16 can’t 0 0 1 0 think 543 554 322 122 know 212 216 263 100 feel 157 160 320 121 hope 60 61 36 14 believe 53 54 313 119 consider 44 45 145 55 seem 38 39 231 88 expect 23 23 51 19 argue 14 14 116 44 imagine 8 8 9 3 suggest 8 8 43 16 tend 8 8 43 16 claim 4 4 69 26 guess 4 4 10 4 assume 2 2 39 15 doubt 2 2 2 1 indicate 2 2 8 3 propose 2 2 14 5


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NNS corpus NNS corpus

Device Raw frequency per 100,000 words Raw frequency per 100,000 words

suppose 2 2 43 16 appear 1 1 52 20 estimate 0 0 2 1 predict 0 0 8 3 presume 0 0 2 1 speculate 0 0 0 0 sometimes 120 122 38 14 always 110 112 133 50 usually 67 68 52 20 never 59 60 135 51 almost 56 57 58 22 maybe 53 54 38 14 about 46 47 41 16 often 46 47 122 46 of course 40 41 54 20 actually 35 36 77 29 in X’s opinion 24 24 13 5 generally 19 19 24 9 in fact 12 12 79 30 naturally 12 12 15 6 clearly 10 10 56 21 probably 9 9 65 25 frequently 7 7 9 3 around 6 6 6 2 surely 5 5 12 5 certainly 4 4 32 12 in general 4 4 8 3 definitely 2 2 19 7 indeed 2 2 46 17 obviously 2 2 35 13 perhaps 2 2 93 35 necessarily 1 1 22 8 approximately 1 1 8 3 normally 1 1 8 3 relatively 1 1 14 5 not always 1 1 10 4 commonly 1 1 6 2 apparently 0 0 8 3 doubtless 0 0 0 0 essentially 0 0 7 3 in reality 0 0 12 5

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NNS corpus NS corpus Device Raw frequency per 100,000 words Device Raw frequency

in theory 0 0 8 3 inevitably 0 0 10 4 plainly 0 0 1 0 possibly 0 0 31 12 presumably 0 0 1 0 undoubtedly 0 0 7 3 (very) likely 0 0 15 6 evidently 0 0 3 1 largely 0 0 11 4 rarely 0 0 7 3 a certain extent 0 0 16 6 opinion 82 84 85 32 chance 53 54 63 24 idea 32 33 272 103 view 26 27 147 56 fact 26 27 185 70 possibility 18 18 19 7 hope 17 17 41 16 danger 9 9 26 10 doubt 9 9 13 5 belief 7 7 116 44 tendency 5 5 16 6 theory 3 3 0 0 claim 1 1 87 33 explanation 1 1 11 4 assumption 0 0 13 5 certainty 0 0 4 2 estimate 0 0 1 0 evidence 0 0 89 34 possible 22 22 112 42 sure 21 21 39 15 clear 10 10 54 20 inevitable 6 6 15 6 certain 5 5 6 2 likely 4 4 33 13 obvious 4 4 37 14 unlikely 1 1 9 3 apparent 0 0 17 6 evident 0 0 14 5 plain 0 0 4 2 probable 0 0 4 2


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Applicable levels: college Key words: epistemic modality, writing, corpus

Sun-Young Oh Dept. of English Language Education Seoul National University San 56-1, Shinlim-dong, Kwanak-gu Seoul 151-748, Korea Email: [email protected] Received in February, 2007 Reviewed in March, 2007 Revised version received in May, 2007

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