<p>The two modal auxiliaries can and could are investigated in this essay. Focus is on the correspondence between descriptions in grammar books and real-life data. </p><p>First four English learner grammar books aimed for Swedish high-schools were analyzed. The uses and translations of can and could found in the grammar books were then compared to real-life examples from an English-Swedish parallel corpus. </p><p>It was found that three of the grammar books categorize the uses of can and could according to ability, possibility and permission in quite general terms and these uses correlated to the majority of the corpus examples. The forth book did not mention the possibility use and stated very specific uses of the modal auxiliaries. This grammar book did not correspond to the corpus data to the same extent as the other three grammars.</p><p>It could be concluded that the assumptions made about use correlated to a greater extent with the corpus than the assumptions made about translations.</p>

The two modal auxiliaries can and could are investigated in this essay. Focus is on the correspondence between descriptions in grammar books and real-life data. First four English learner grammar books aimed for Swedish high-schools were analyzed. The uses and translations of can and could found in the grammar books were then compared to real-life examples from an English-Swedish parallel corpus. It was found that three of the grammar books categorize the uses of can and could according to ability, possibility and permission in quite general terms and these uses correlated to the majority of the corpus examples. The forth book did not mention the possibility use and stated very specific uses of the modal auxiliaries. This grammar book did not correspond to the corpus data to the same extent as the other three grammars. It could be concluded that the assumptions made about use correlated to a greater extent with the corpus than the assumptions made about translations.