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Helping Students Make Appropriate English Verb Tense-Aspect Choices
Helping Students Make Appropriate English Verb Tense-Aspect Choices
Helping Students Make Appropriate English Verb Tense-Aspect Choices
Grammatical Rules and the English b. general, timeless truths, such as physical laws or customs
The earth revolves around the sun.
Tense-Aspect System c. states
One of the difficult grammatical areas for ESL/EFL It is cloudy.
students to master is the English verb tense-aspect system. d. subordinate clauses of time or condition when the main
Paradoxically, this area is not usually perceived as being clause contains a future-time verb
especially difficult to teach. The reason for this is that When she comes, we’ll find out.
many grammatical rules exist that capture the structural e. events or actions in the present, such as in sporting events
facts concerning the various tense-aspect combinations and The goal counts!
the semantic facts related to what meanings these combina- f. speech acts in the present
tions convey. I nominate Chris.
For instance, in terms of describing the structures g. conversational historical present (in narration)
involved in the system, it is well known that English has “So he enters the room and crosses over to the other
two tense forms, present and past. It is equally well known side without looking at anyone.”
that English speakers make use of a wide variety of other h. events scheduled in the future
structures to indicate futurity (e.g., modals, phrasal modals, My flight departs at 9 a.m. tomorrow.
simple present, present progressive), but that the modal
will is usually assigned to fill the role of the simple future. With this list, we can begin to understand why ESL/
To these, the aspectual markers of perfect and progressive EFL students struggle to learn verb tense-aspect in English.
are added, giving us 12 verb tense-aspect combinations It is not really a simple present, is it? Furthermore, the
(Table 1). When it comes to semantics, it gets more semantics of the verb often constrain the form that is used.
complex. Although it would be beyond the scope of this For instance, it is well known that students overextend the
article to deal comprehensively with the meanings of these present progressive and use it where the simple present
12 forms, for the purpose of illustration, the following is a would be preferred (e.g., *I am knowing that).1 To counter
synthesis of the meanings to which the simple present tense this, teachers are well advised when introducing a new
has been applied (based on Celce-Murcia & Larsen- tense-aspect combination to contrast it with one that is
Freeman, 1999): already known.
For instance, to minimize the problem with the
a. habitual actions in the present overextension of the -ing to stative verbs, it may be helpful
I read the New York Times every Sunday.
went saved
PAST worked
don’t know
need
NOW
will start
PRESENT will be
FUTURE
Note: Students, represented by verb boxes, arrange themselves on the time line according to their sentence from the discourse-hopping
paragraph sample. The “Now” circle represents a clock with the current time.
Figure 2. Students regrouped on the Bull framework time line to illustrate the cohesiveness of the tense-aspect
sentences in the discouse-freezing paragraph sample.
PAST
don’t know
have worked need
have saved
have been to starts
NOW
is
PRESENT
FUTURE
breakfast and had brushed his teeth. He caught the train and the fact that the tense-aspect combinations work together
got to school at 7:25 and had to wait half an hour for class. to contribute to the cohesion of discourse.
(Haccius, 2002, n.p.) It is crucial to understand that the long-term challenge
that students face in choosing appropriate verb tenses has
Although these texts still need editing, they demonstrate to do with learning when to use one tense versus another.
the cohesion of the tense-aspect system when organized This challenge can be partially addressed by helping
along a time axis. students see that their orientation will determine their
initial choice of tense-aspect and constrain their subsequent
Conclusion choices. Working with this insight gives us a way of
assisting students to meet the challenge.
In sum, the English verb tense-aspect system is not easy to
learn. For one thing, the tense-aspect system of one
language does not neatly align itself with another. For Note
instance, unlike many other languages, there is no true 1
The asterisk (*) is a linguistic convention that indicates
future tense in English. Prototypically, the modal will or ungrammaticality.
the phrasal modal be going to serve this purpose, but other
modals such as may, could, and might, not to mention the References
simple present and present progressive, are also appropri-
Celce-Murcia, M., & Larsen-Freeman, D. (1999). The grammar
ated to fill this gap among the formal markers of tense in book: An ESL/EFL teacher’s course (2nd ed.). Boston: Heinle
English. & Heinle.
For another thing, English verb tenses are often taught Chrysler. (1998, August). [Magazine advertisement]. National
in a piecemeal fashion, and important opportunities to Geographic, 129.
contrast them within an overall system are missed. It is Haccius, M. (2002). The use of frameworks in the teaching of tense
important for students to see that each tense-aspect combi- [Independent Professional Project]. Unpublished master’s
nation fits as part of an overall system. thesis [in progress], School for International Training,
Finally, the point that we have emphasized in this Brattleboro, VT.
article, English verb tenses have too often been taught at Houts Smith, L. (1993). An investigation of the Bull framework:
the level of individual sentences. This approach obscures