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We have collected more than 4000 sentences from a learner corpus, containing the text of the writing Test of Chinese as a Foreign Language (TOCFL). There are more than 3000 sentences which are the correct usage of Mandarin modal verb Hui. In this study, apart from “Abilitive”, we categorized the usage of Hui into other three main categories based on the occurring situations, including “Conditional and Causal”, “Speculative and Commissive”, and “Habitual and Generic”. In the TOCFL learner corpus, there are more than 900 errors of Hui, and 591 errors belong to the omission of Hui. About 65% of the errors is the missing error type. Except for the advanced learners, the most common type of errors for the beginner learners, the intermediate learners, and the upper intermediate learners is the missing error, which is 60% among all the error types. The result has shown that 60% of the missing errors of beginner learners are “Speculative and Commissive” type. Both “Conditional and Causal” and “Speculative and Commissive” types of errors are about 40% for intermediate learners. About 70% of the errors of upper intermediate learners are “Conditional and Causal”. We attempted to describe the pedagogic grammar in the occurring situations above. Based on the frequency of the errors in different situations, we sorted out the most difficult to the easiest usages of Hui. The most difficult usage of Hui is the “Subjunctive”, followed by “Causal “, “Conditional”, “Speculative”, “Commissive”, “Future-plan”, “Habitual and Generic”, and “Abilitive”. We suggested to incorporate the instructions of above usages of Hui within the related lessons of the recently published textbook, A Course in Contemporary Chinese, so the learners can raise their awareness of when to employ Hui in different situations.
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