english modal verbs

[ukalmanaf]

Hi there
My name is umi and am working on my PhD thesis which is on modal verbs. Modals have been said to be a difficult grammatical item to teach and to understand for an ESL learner. According to the syllabus given by the ministry of education in my country, malaysia, these are the modals taught at the low level to the highest level. The modals are may, must,have to, could, should, will, might and need to.It's not in any particular order but taught according to the function. My question is whether there should be any particular order that modal verbs should be taught especially to ESL learners so that they will understand and be able to use this grammatical item in their written work as well as spoken. And also whether modal verbs should be introduced in pairs as in can/could, will/would, shall/should and so on. The Malaysian ESL learners do have difficulties in using the modal verbs in their written work. Errors were found syntactically and semantically and I'm interested to examine where the errors lie and how to go about rectifying the errors and making sure that Malaysian ESL learners are able to use it. Thank you.

Umi