A Comparative Study of Modalities in Iranian and Malaysian High School English Textbooks

A speaker’s view towards a specific matter such as ‘doubt’, ’obligation’, etc., is expressed through different ways; one of these ways is through using modal auxiliary verbs as well as their verb phrase structures. This study is to compare the presentation of nine central modal auxiliaries and their related verb phrase structures in pedagogical English textbooks of Iran and Malaysia. For this purpose, all three grades of lower secondary level English textbooks in Iran and Malaysia were used. Also, the British National Corpus was used in order to compare the use of such verbs in English textbooks with their use in the Standard English. The results indicated that there were similarities in the frequency distribution of these verbs between pedagogical textbooks of Iran and Malaysia. But, such verbs are generally more frequent in Malaysian textbooks in comparison with the Iranian ones. In addition, there were some differences regarding their frequency distribution between the textbooks and the Standard English in BNC. The results could have some implications for effective material development in future.