Abstract:
Health workers deliver care to sick people who are afflicted with pain due to
deteriorating conditions. Hence, health professionals cannot downplay the effect of
using English language structures that directly affect moods, emotions and conditions
of patients. This study, based on the theory of integrative emotional communication,
aims at investigating modality use by health trainees at College of Health and Well-
Being, Kintampo, (CoHWK) and potential implications on patients. A qualitative
approach was employed with corpus and cross-sectional study designs to examine 120
CoHWK students; and structured interview to study 30 patients at Kintampo Municipal
Hospital who were selected using simple random and purposive sampling techniques.
Data was analysed using thematic approach. Response rate was 100%. It was uncovered
that modal verb use among the students’ needs improvement as a majority, 67 (55.8%)
of the students used modal verbs only 11-20 times in their examination scripts. The
least used modal verbs were: shall, 9 (0.6%) and ought to, 10 (0.7%). Should was the
favourite for females and will, the favourite for males. Many errors, 89 (5.9%) were
detected; some of the students misapplied will (50.6%) and would (30.3%). It was
concluded that wrong modal verb use could have negative effects on the moods and
conditions of patients as many, 18 (60%) of the patients indicated that the
misapplication of must exacerbated by loud tones indicated command which offended
them. It is recommended that the Academic Affairs Office of CoHWK should broaden
the curriculum for teaching Communication Skills to include a comprehensive topic on
modal verbs.
Description:
A thesis in the Department of Applied Linguistics,
Faculty of Foreign Languages Education, submitted to the
School of Graduate Studies in partial fulfilment
of the requirements for the award of the degree of
Master of Philosophy
(Teaching English as a Second Language)
in the University of Education, Winneba
MARCH, 2024