Discourse as a Disambiguating Tool in the Teaching of Modals to EFL Students 1.

Abstract

This paper shows that the traditional approach to the teaching of modals in the EFL classroom employs a double classifying criterion (grammatical and semantic) which does not cover the actual usage of modals in real discourse production and causes problems in the learning process. It contends that modal values such as obligation, permission, certainty, etc. are not only functions of their semantic content but also exponents of their pragmatic illocutionary force which can only be appreciated when authentic utterances are considered. Through the analysis of experimental data, the article demonstrates that the sentential context that usually accompanies the discussion and presentation of modals is insufficient to reach a sufficiently stable interpretation of their meaning even by native speakers of English, and proposes the study of modals in a fully developed discourse environment as a way to disambiguate their semantic indeterminacy and to favour a more natural and fluent learning process.