This study analyzes the frequency and meanings of the modal auxiliary verbs used in Korean high school Practical English II textbooks, compared with COCA corpora(Corpus of Contemporary America English). The aim of present study is to discuss modal auxiliary verbs used in Korean textbook. For comparisons, corpora from selected 5 high school textbooks and COCA corpora with spoken category were all compared. By using COCA corpora, it give more than thousands of sentences to make dependable results.
The findings showed the frequency and meanings of the modal auxiliary verbs(can, will, may, must and shall) and analyze the comparisons with textbook and COCA. 'can' has the highest score and 'shall' turned up 7 times only.(can 〉 will 〉 may 〉 must 〉 shall) Each modal verb convey the meaning of 'permission', 'obligation', 'ability' etc). Most of textbook used 'can' for the meaning of 'ability', but COCA used for 'possibility'. In accordance with corpora from textbook, 'shall' is not used at all. However, the meanings of modal auxiliary verbs used in COCA corpora were various.
This study will give advantages to English learners and instructors who are interested in learning or teaching modal auxiliary verbs.