15 According to Lock 1996 these modals
function as the “speaker’s judgment of the likelihood of the information in the clauses being true” p.194. It also range from the
high, mid to low level of certainty they express Lock, 1996. Aside from its’ function
to show likelihood, modals function as hedging practically help students anticipating possible negative effects of being proven wrong. Hidayati, Muhammad, Dallyono,
2008. Thus rather than claiming X is Y, most if not all students used X maycouldmightshould, etc be Y. It is good to see that most of the students have made
use of modal to escape from crisis being proven wrong. I said most because although modal auxiliary verbs appear in all of the students writing, some students still missed
to hedge some of their statements.
1.3 Modal Lexical Verb
Table 4. Distribution of Approximators of Modal Lexical Verb
Modal Lexical Verb Total Occurrence
Think 37
Believe 18
Assume 10
Seem 5
Suggest 3
Tend 3
Argue 3
Appear 2
Claim 2
I believe the existence of modal lexical verbs play crucial role in the reliability of students’ proposition. It is because when stating a proposition, it is important to make
use of these tentative language was merely a suggestion or claim of someone. Oxford
16 Advanced Learners’ Dictionary 2007, p.1582 defines tentative as “not definite or
certain because you may want to change it later”. The modal lexical verbs in the students writing are including words such as believe, think, assume, seem, appear,
suggest, tend, argue, and claim. Students used this lexical items to introduce others’
opinions, both which supports and against their argument. The most used lexical verbs in the students writing is think.
Examples: Student 15
:
“…, some people who choose NEST because they believe that they
are best role- model,…”
Student 17: “…, that they seem to ignore the fact that NNESTs’ pronunciation
is actually influenced by their accent such as a mix of Javanese- English.”
Similar to approximators and modal auxiliary verbs, although it appears in all of the students writing, I still find some students neglected these modal lexical verbs and made
some of their propositions sound too over-confident.
1.4 Introductory Phrase
Table 5. Distribution of Approximators of Introductory Phrase
Introductory Phrase Total Occurrence
I believe 11
I think 9
My- viewpoint of viewopinionargument
9 I argue
1
Introductory phrases similar to modal lexical verbs functions to “express
writer’s personal doubts” Salager-Mayer 1997 but this one has a more direct involvement. These
“include first person pronouns so as to show speakers’ stance that
