Present And Past Tensesdocx

=== Present and past tenses ===

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

1. The purpose of the paper

2. The importance and up-to-dateness of the topic

CHAPTER 1. A GENERAL VIEWPOINT ON TENSE AND ASPECT

1.1. Category of tense

1.1.1. The meaning of time

1.1.2. The notion of timeline

1.1.3. The meaning of tense and time-tense relationship

1.2. Category of aspect

1.2.1. The meaning of aspect

1.2.2 .Grammatical aspect

1.2.3. Lexical aspect

1.2.4. Grammatical-lexical aspect interaction

1.3. Adverbs of time as markers for tenses

CHAPTER 2. PRESENT AND PAST TENSES

2.1. English present tenses

2.1.1. The present simple tense

2.1.2. The present progressive tense

2.1.3. The present perfect tense

2.1.4. The present perfect progressive tense

2.2. English past tenses

2.2.1. The past simple tense

2.2.2. The past progressive tense

2.2.3. The past perfect tense

2.2.4. The past perfect progressive tense

2.3. The Present Perfect tense contrasted with the Past Simple tense and their corresponding tenses in Romanian

2.3.1. The Present Perfect tense contrasted to the Past Simple tense

2.3.2. Romanian tenses corresponding to Present Perfect and Past Simple tense

CHAPTER 3. ECLECTIC APPROACH AND COMMUNICATIVE APPROACH IN TEACHING PAST SIMPLE AND PRESENT PERFECT SIMPLE

Research design

3.1. Hypotheses

3.2.. The purpose of the research

3.3. The objectives of the research

3.4. The design of the research project

3.5. The student participants

3.6. The two teaching methods applied in teaching past simple and present perfect simple

tense

3.6.1. The PPP method

3.6.2. The TBI method

3.7. Place and period

3.7.1. Place

3.7.2. Period

3.8. Stages of the research

3.8.1. Initial stage

3.8.2. Experimental stage

3.8.3. Final stage

3.8.4. Post-final stage

3.9. Instruments of the research

3.10. Methodology of the research

3.10.1. Implementing the PPP method

3.10.1.1. The past simple tense

3.10.1.2. The present perfect simple tense

3.10.2. Implementing the TBI method

3.10.2.1. The past simple tense

3.10.2.2. The present perfect simple tense

CHAPTER 4. DESCRIPTION OF THE RESULTS

Descriptive statistics

4.1. Results of the initial stage

4.1.1. Control group

4.1.2. Experimental group

4.2. Results of the experimental stage

4.2.1. Control group

4.2.2. Experimental group

4.3. Results of the final stage

4.3.1. Control group

4.3.2. Experimental group

4.4. Results of the post-final stage

4.4.1. Control group

4.4.2. Experimental group

CHAPTER 5. DATA ANALYSIS

Inferential statistics

5.1. The comparison between control group and experimental group at pre-test

5.2. The comparison between control group and experimental group at post-test

5.3. The comparison between control group and experimental group at re-test

CONCLUSIONS

INTRODUCTION

1.The purpose of the paper

The English language is studied in Romanian schools from early ages. Being an English teacher at gymnasium I was motivated enough to choose present and past tenses to be investigated as these tenses are the most studied in students’ textbooks. Lately English has benefited of great attention and acquired a new role. Being closely connected with the development of the society has made researchers to devise new ways of teaching; new approaches, new methods and so on.

But, there is another side of the picture and namely once a new approach or method appears, a great deal of controversy among researchers emerges too; some of them supporting it, others rejecting it. To be more exactly today there is a great deal of controversy among researchers concerning tenses acquisition; the supporters of eclectic approach plead for PPP method, on the contrary the advocators for communicative approaches plead for TBI method promoting fast acquisition.

So another reason for choosing present and past tenses is that of exploring the teaching process using the two methods with the purpose to find out which is more efficient in the acquisition of tenses by the students, and more suitable to lead to good linguistic habits. I restricted the area of present and past tenses to past simple tense and present perfect simple tense because this is a zone where students encounter great difficulties, contributing this way to the researches which try to elucidate the causes of this problem of confusion between the two tenses. To explore the teaching- learning process in such an area is a real challenge.

Making a synthesis of the knowledge about present and past tenses, this paper follows the scientific line of the actual norms about English grammar. It is based on the studies of famous researchers, revealing not only the same points of view but also their different opinions about present and past tenses, trying to support one or another or coming with my own opinion.

2. The importance and up-to-dateness of the topic

The study of English language in Romanian schools is an old and long process but yet a new one, thus English being present in the student’s life in an active way. But English being an international language is also present in people’s lives in a passive way. English being spread all around the world is the passport of communication between people who belong to different cultures. But how can people understand with each other if they can’t speak correctly from grammatical point of view?! And how can people speak grammatically correct if they can’t understand verbal tenses?! And this is because the verb is the core of a sentence; a sentence without verb is a dead one; it doesn’t transmit anything.

But, this is not the only important thing in this equation of communication; verb in a sentence can dance taking shape of different tenses if we know how to handle it in order to be understood by the other people in the process of communication; otherwise it can lead to misunderstanding. So, tenses are very important in the process of communication; they are the key of understanding between people; therefore a correct use of tenses leads to a harmonious language. In other words a wrong emission of a tense leads to a bad reception of a sentence and this paper deals with these aspects.

The paper is divided in five chapters; the first two chapters deal with a theoretical approach of present and past tenses and the next three chapters deal with methodological –experimental approach in teaching present and past tenses. The first chapter of the paper gives general viewpoint of tense and aspect and the second gives detailed theoretical information about present and past tenses synthetizing the already existing knowledge about present and past tense and debating controversy among researchers, and in the end makes a comparison between English present perfect and past tense and Romanian present and past tenses.

The first chapter of the methodological experimental approach is in fact the experiment that attempts to investigate tenses acquisition by the two groups of students using two teaching methods, intended to be finished in four stages. The second and the third chapter presents and respectively analyses the results of the experiment. The paper ends with conclusions.

CHAPTER 1

A GENERAL VIEWPOINT ON TENSE AND ASPECT

1.1. Category of tense

1.1.1.The meaning of time

The notion of time in languages is universal and is widely understood as the clock measures it. But the domain of time is more complex than that; it in fact underlies the distinction between temporal and atemporal relationships. In other words everything that human beings experience is related to time and everything human beings do is measured in temporal units (seconds, minutes, hours, days, etc.). But, there is another side of the picture because there are times when human beings experience time in different ways and thus we can talk about subjective experience of time.

It often happens to us to feel time as if it is proceeding more quickly than usual. For example when we are together with some friends and we feel great together, time feels to fly. In this case we can speak about temporal compression. Or, on the contrary, we speak about temporal protraction when we sometimes experience time as if it is proceeding more slowly than usual; this happens for example to us when we are in unpleasant situations and we want time to pass on quickly but it seems to stand still.

It doesn’t matter if we experience time as proceeding more quickly or slowly than usual, it certainly goes on and never goes back; this means that time is irreversible. Being irreversible it’s by definition unidirectional. Man cannot experience time reversibly or bidirectionally at the same time. But we can speak about prospective or retrospective direction in which an event is viewed at a given perspective point.

To better understand this let us consider the following examples:

1. George finished his homework before he went out. and

2. Before he went out, George finished his homework.

George finished his homework = event A

he went out = event B

What we intend to underline in the examples above is not about the order of events, but it’s about the direction from which the two events are viewed.

In the first example it’s a prospective direction; we see the event –sequence from the perspective of the event A; so the given perspective point is located at the level of event A and we look forward. If we have a look at the second example, we can notice that the given perspective point is located at the level of event B and the viewing direction is backwards (retrospective direction); this doesn’t mean that we can experience time backwards. Man can only have an experience of time as the clock measures it; forwards (unidirectional).

Either it is represented as cyclical or on a straight line, time is perceived as being directed into the future (forwards) and, in everything we do we focus on forthcoming future time and everything we did becomes history; we cannot reverse the time to make any change.

1.1.2.The notion of timeline

In order to locate the events in a chronological order, linguists talk about space-time relation. Klein Wolfgang (“Time in language”, 1994, p: 1) says: “Time and space are the basic categories of our experience and our cognition, and without efficient communication about them, no well-coordinated collective action, hence no human society, would be possible.” This time-space relation is conventionally known as the axis of orientation or timeline; and it is represented by a straight line unbounded at both ends going to infinity.

But how can we order the events on it?

Let us imagine a man walking down a road; that man at a certain time (now) is in a certain point (here); but as he keeps going down the road, he gets to another point and another time and subsequently “now and here” becomes “then and there” and another “now and here” appears

● ● ● timeline

then now

Fig.1. A dynamic person

These bolded points on the timeline represent individual’s location in time.

Or, we can imagine a static individual at a certain moment(now) who may either look backwards retracing events(then) or he may project his thoughts into the future(then).

Past Future

Present

● ● ● ● ● ● ● timeline

Fig.2. A static person

From these examples we can draw the conclusion that it doesn’t matter if the individual is moving or is static the present moment “now” establishes the axis of present and once it is established it inevitably undergoes metamorphosis because it passes from the present sphere into the sphere of past and creates the past axis and another present moment appears from which an individual may look forwards projecting his thoughts into the future and a future axis emerges.

In other words from the present point we may either return to the past or head toward future and subsequently we have the axis of present, the axis of past and the axis of future.

So, to give an answer to the question above we make the assertion that events are located on the timeline in temporal relation to each other and this can be done either simultaneously or sequentially to the present moment( the eternal changing “now”).

1.1.3.The meaning of tense and time-tense relationship

In order to give the meaning of tenses grammarians make use of space-time analogy. The concept of tense is widely accepted as being the grammatical category of the verb that refers to the order of events in time as they are perceived by the speaker at the moment of speaking(as belonging to present, past or future). Consequently, tense being a grammaticalized category that requires morphological marking we draw the conclusion that there are only two tenses in English- present and past- because they derive from morphological word-formation of the base verb.

But verb forms (inflections for tenses) are not always in a direct relationship with time; because there are situations when verb forms don’t accurately reflect the time of the situation. For example, there are situations when present verbs refer to the future ( eg. Mary is visiting Johnny tomorrow.) or when past verbs are not only used to talk about the past, but also with future value( He wanted me let him know as soon as I arrived home.).

Bernard Comrie( “Aspect”,1976, p:2) says that: “Tense locates the time of the situation relative to the situation of the utterance.”

But what does time of the situation mean? And what does the situation of the utterance refer to?

For a description of English tenses grammarians generally use the following concepts: event time( E )- is the time of which an event takes place; reference time( R )- is the time of which a situation is evaluated and speech time( S )- is the time at which a utterance is made.

Coming back to Comrie’s definition we may conclude that a situation described in the present is located temporally as simultaneous with the moment of speaking; one described in the past is located prior to the moment of speaking, and one described in the future is located subsequent to the moment of speaking. But the problem is how these are perceived by the speaker to be located as simultaneous or sequential. To illustrate this let us consider the following situations.

For example, let’s imagine a sports comment when the sport commentator comments what he sees, and it’s taken as being simultaneous with the moment of speaking although the situation which is being commented on is somehow commented with a temporal retardation between the moment when the situation is perceived and the moment when the speech act is formulated. The explanation is that being a situation that comes close to performative speech act is regarded as being simultaneous.

It is not the case with sending-receiving a message when one can use the time of message receiving and the other can use the time of message sending as a temporal landmark, and the events are placed sequentially.

Thus, we may draw the conclusion that the meaning of each tense can be represented by three time points, namely E, R and S. If two or three of these points coincide or are all different placed on the timeline remains to be studied in chapter 2.

1.2. Category of aspect

1.2.1.The meaning of aspect

Grammarians give different definitions concerning the category of aspect each of them emphasizing a different detail.

For example according to Alan Cruse( “A Glossary of Semantic and Pragmatics”, 2006, p: 17 ) aspect “ concerns the way events unfold through time, but unlike tense is not basically concerned with when the events happen.”

Randolph Quirk( “A Comprehensive Grammar of English language”, 1985, p:188) gives the following definition: “The term aspect refers to a grammatical category which reflects the way in which the verb action is regarded or experienced with respect to time,”, this point of view being similar to Geoffrey Leech.

Bernard Comrie( “Aspect”, 1976, p:3) gives a general definition of aspect “aspects are different ways of viewing the internal temporal constituency of a situation.”

From all these formulations concerning the aspect we can feel a subjective point of view that each of them has on the notion of aspect; for example, while R. Quirk mentions that aspect is a grammaticalized form of time reference, B. Comrie refers to the internal temporal structure. B. Comrie states that tense is concerned with situation-external time and aspect is concerned with situation-internal time. In other words, according to B. Comrie’s definition-and not only- we must set aspect apart from tense; tense is a deictic category whereas aspect is not deictic. Tense relates the reference time of a situation to the time of utterance(which is usually a deictic centre) and aspect relates the time of reference to the event time(R and E); and this makes ,in some cases, the difference between temporal relation of tense and aspect.

In order to illustrate what it has been said above and to see a clear difference let us compare the following representations of the following situations:

1.Mick was writing when his mother arrived.

2.a. She painted a beautiful landscape. 2b. She was painting.

From the first example we obviously see that the time of Mick’s writing the letter is connected with the time of his mother arrival; both being in the past.

In a similar way, in the second example, as regard tense both are the same- the past; because they both locate situations in the past. The difference between them (as in the first example) is one of aspect expressed by the verbal form of the past painted as opposed to was painting. While in 2a. the situation is presented as a complete whole( as if viewed externally-perfective), the situation in 2b. is presented as ongoing and incomplete(as it viewed internally- imperfective).

In order to avoid the misleading of the meaning of aspect, on a scientific level, it needs to be distinguished both formally and semantically because, and moreover, in the description of the verb aspect a number of so-called event-types are distinguished according to the way the event unfolds through time.

In other words, aspect is a dimension of meaning relating to events and is associated with verbs and verbal meanings and therefore a clear distinction has to be made between grammatical and lexical aspect , and this can be seen in the following sub-chapters.

1.2.2.Grammatical aspect

Grammarians divide aspect into the perfective and the imperfective aspect. The perfective aspect generally presents an event as a complete unit with no relevant internal structure. As opposed, the imperfective aspect takes an inside view of an ongoing event, so that its internal structure can be relevant and doesn’t carry any commitment regarding completeness.

In English the distinction between them is often signalled by the opposition non-progessive – progressive. Another aspectual contrast is perfect – non-perfect ( do not confuse perfect with perfectivity).

Simple aspect refers to events that are viewed as complete wholes and stands in contrast to progressive aspect that indicates a dynamic action in the process of happening.

The basic meaning of perfect is prior and expresses a relation between two time-points. So, either it’s about present or past, perfect means prior; prior to present or prior to past; thus we have present perfect and pluperfect.

The progressive and perfect aspect may combine, and I’ll illustrate bellow a classification marked for present or past tenses.

Present Simple read/reads

watch/watches

Progressive am/is/are reading

am/is/are watching

Perfect have/has read

have/has watched

Perfect Progressive have/has been reading

have/has been watching

Past Simple read

watched

Progressive was/were reading

was/were watching

Perfect had read

had watched

Perfect Progressive had been reading

had been watching

The present simple is identical with the short infinitive form, except for the third person singular which adds –s/-es to the verb.

The present progressive form (the present continuous) combines a form of the auxiliary be in the present with the present participle of the main verb.

The present perfect is formed with the present of auxiliary have and the past participle of the main verb.

The present perfect progressive is a combination between present perfect of the auxiliary be and the indefinite participle of the main verb.

The past simple is formed by adding –ed to the verb for regular verbs, or by using its past form listed in tables for irregular verbs.

The past progressive form ( the past continuous) combines a form of the auxiliary be in the past with the indefinite participle of the main verb.

The past perfect is formed with the help of auxiliary have in the past (had) followed by the past participle of the main verb.

The past perfect progressive form is made with the past perfect au the auxiliary be and the present participle of the main verb.

In order to see a clear difference between regular and irregular verbs above-mentioned let us compare the following tables:

We may conclude that what signals a progressive form is –ing ending, and what signals a perfect form is the auxiliary have.

1.2.3.Lexical aspect of the verbs

The lexical aspect of the verbs refers to the temporal characteristics of verbs marking durativity, telicity and stativity –and not only- of the situation. Thus, according to their inherent lexical meaning verbs can be divided into four categories: states, activities, accomplishments and achievements.

States, activities and accomplishments are constructed as durative ( as happening over a period of time), and achievements are constructed as punctual(as happening in an instant).

States represent the limiting case of an event and have no inherent beginning or end, and involve no change.

Jane lives in Bucharest. Here, for example is depicted a stable situation that is assumed to last more or less, and this doesn’t involve any change; she lives in Bucharest because her house is in Bucharest.

Stative verbs do not occur in the progressive aspect, and if this does happen they either change considerably their meanings, or are viewed as temporary states; as it can be seen in the following sub-chapter.

They are often classified into the following subcategories:

verbs of senses (denoting physical perception): see, notice, hear, taste, smell

verbs of emotion ( denoting feelings and emotions): like, dislike, love, hate, desire, detest, forgive, want, wish

verbs of thinking (denoting a state of mind): think, believe, consider, understand, know, forget

verbs of relation(denoting a relationship or expressing a state of being): be, matter, concern, resemble

verbs of possession: have, own, owe, belong, possess

Activities like states have no inherent beginning or end, but unlike them activities involve change.

He was singing. In this example the verb sing describes an activity having no terminal point; we don’t know how long the situation lasted.

Accomplishments are constructed as having a definite point of completion and involve change.

He was singing a song. Here the situation is completely different from the example above; we have a definite point of completion ( the terminal point is with the last verse of the song).

Achievements involve a change from one state to another and have a definite end point.

In the example: The wounded soldiers died, there is no duration; this happens as an instant and there is a terminal point.

1.2.4. Grammatical – lexical aspect interaction

A. The progressive and lexical aspect interaction

The progressive aspect has by definition a dynamic character and usually involves a change of state.. For this reason not all types of verbal situations admit the progressive; it is the case of stative verbs that are in general incompatible with the progressive aspect.

However, as it was said in the previous subchapter, when a stative verb is used with the progressive the situation is viewed as a temporary state or has another implication of meaning. Here are some example to illustrate this:

He is a polite man. (permanent quality) He is being rude today.( temporary behaviour)

I have a beautiful house. (possess) I’m having lunch with a friend.( eat)

I think there’s someone in the house. (believe) I’m thinking of selling my car. (plan)

Silence, please! I am thinking. (temporary)

The progressive aspect used with durative activity verbs (that have no purpose; no end-point) shows the process as seen in progress.

Lamps were glowing in the dark.

Snow is falling gently on the ground.

The progressive aspect is also used with accomplishment verbs to focus our attention on the progress of the situation before the ending point.

She was drinking a glass of milk.

Her husband is making a chair.

When the progressive aspect is used with achievement verbs, it gives the meaning of iteration.

The teacher was nodding in agreement with his answers.

Someone is kicking the next door.

B. The perfect and lexical aspect interaction

Starting from the definition of perfect and depending on lexical aspect of the verbs, the perfect aspect acquires different values.

Thus, when perfect aspect is used with accomplishment and achievement verbs, it acquires the value of resultative perfect:

I have/had read the book. (as the result of my reading is that I know what the book is about; of course it can be applied in the past too)

John has broken the window.

When perfect aspect is used with activities verbs, it describes a prior experience- the perfect of experience:

I have swum before.

He had travelled by plane by then. (he has/had the experience of swimming/travelling by air)

The perfect used with stative verbs signals a state lasting up to present or past:

Their parents have/had lived in London.

1.3. Adverbs of time as markers for tenses

If we think at tense as the correspondence between grammatical form and time, we surprisingly may conclude –from some examples- that is not the case in all situations. In other words it is not a direct relation between grammatical form and time and the lack of the adverbials in these situations may create ambiguity in understanding the real meaning of the action captured in the sentence. Therefore in order to avoid misunderstanding, it is advisable to use adverbials. To better argue this let us consider:

-what happens if we have the following sentence -Glasgow plays at Anfield stadium.

-and what happens if we have the same sentence followed by the adverbs of time

Glasgow plays at Anfield stadium every year. and Glasgow plays at Anfield stadium tomorrow.

At the first sight , in the first example we don’t know for sure if the action is repeated or is planned and we have to think twice, to look deeply into the internal structure of the sentence to see the real meaning of the present tense ; but with the second and the third example the ambiguity vanishes because in these cases it is the adverb of time which tells us when the action takes place – repeatedly (every year) , respectively in the future ( tomorrow). As the main function of tense is to indicate the time, the situation is very clear when we have markers of time but, although these markers are not obligatory , yet they are very important to be used.

All English tenses have specific time adverbials. But, there is not only the time adverbial or phrase that indicates a relation of one time to another but also a time clause that may interfere with the main clause. The specific adverbs of time give the exact or almost the exact time when the action takes place and help a lot in identifying the tense. Thus adverbials may have reference either to the present point-now- for present tenses or to some points or periods in the past for past tenses. These adverbs of time are specialized with each tense but there are also exceptions.

Firstly, there are those adverbs that may be used with present tense only , secondly there are those that may be used through the period of time to which they refer and include the present moment, then there are those used with past tense only, and finally those adverbials that indicate either present or past according to the time at which the utterance is made and therefore they may be used with present or past forms of the verbs.

For the present simple tense the specialized adverbs of time are always, usually, often, sometimes, rarely, every morning/afternoon/day/…, on Mondays/Fridays…, weekly/monthly/.. two times a day and with the present continuous tense we have now, right now, in this (very) moment, at the present time.

Both adverbs of the present simple and present continuous tense are related or better said include the present moment while the adverbs of the present perfect make a connection between the present-now- and other time before now on the time axis.

Adverbs associated with the present perfect tense are ever, never, yet, already, so far, up to now, recently, just, lately, since, for. As concerning the exceptions above mentioned some examples can be noted down:

-never I have never seen a beautiful woman like this. (present perfect tense)

I never tidy my room. (present simple tense)

“ And their sun does never shine

And their fields are bleak and bare, …”

(William Blake, “Holy Thursday”)

-just I have just seen an interesting film. (present perfect tense)

I just saw a film. (past simple tense)

Another point of view concerning the adverbs is , on the one hand that there are combinations between them and, on the other hand the adverbs before and after by definition point to the anteriority and posteriority. For example:

My mother collapsed a few minutes ago. and My mother had collapsed few minutes before the earthquake.

In some cases the adverb just now functions like a moment ago. But a moment/minute ago and other adverbs such as a week/month… ago, a long time ago, last evening/ year/month…, yesterday, in 1976… are associated with past tense only.

Finally, the last type of adverbials includes those adverbials that indicate either present or past: this morning/ week/summer/July… . These adverbs used with the present perfect tense indicate that the period referred to is not over , but with the past tense indicate that the period is over or almost over. For example this week is present if it is the beginning of the week, but this week is past if it is the end of the week( or it’s over –it is the case with summer or July or other similar adverbs).

Although there is a certain word-order in a sentence and the adverbs have a certain place in a sentence according to their type , they are movable within a sentence and they may occupy different positions , depending if the main focus is on the adverb or not.

Mike sometimes goes to his office by bus.

Sometimes I think I would like to live somewhere else, somewhere like Finland or Sweden.

Poor girl, she gets very depressed sometimes.

I feel really exhausted today.

Today we are watching a friendly tennis match.

CHAPTER 2

PRESENT AND PAST TENSES

As it was said in the previous chapter by tense we understand the relation between the form of the verb and the concept of time ( present, past or future) and sometimes it’s not a simple one-to-one relationship.

Grammarians admit that English language has only two tenses, these being present and past tenses. Present and, of course past tenses can form combinations with the aspects.

If we think strictly in terms of present time , the situation is very simple for classifying tenses , and this is the case with the past time too (belonging to present or to past).

But what happens with those special situations when we have present –past connected?

Can we set the present perfect tense on the present timeline if we think strictly of present time as the eternal changing now ? Or do we have to place it on the past timeline, this having connection with the past, so-called then moment? And how do we choose between the use of the present or past tense?

This chapter is intended to answer the questions above mentioned and not only.

2.1. English present tenses

2.1.1. The present simple tense

The present simple tense may be used with different meanings; thus they are called basic meanings when they imply present time, and secondary meanings when they imply past or future time. If we think twice this tense is neither simple nor present because of the meanings it may have. This tense is often used without reference to time in sentences similar to these:

Inuit people rub their noses when they meet each other. Or Panda lives in China.

thus being widely known as unmarked with adverbials.

A.Basic meanings of the present simple tense

The basic meaning of the present tense is to locate situations at the present moment. The situations described by the present simple usually include the present but do not say whether they can be applied in the past or they continue beyond the present moment. These implications can be derived from our ability to extract the subtle meaning encoded in the context. In fact there are rare cases –in the present simple tense- when situations occupy a single point in time , and these are the types of the instantaneous present ( when there is a simultaneity of E, R and S).

The basic uses of the present simple tense can be applied to refer to events, present habits and states as follow.

The Instantaneous Present

As mentioned above these types of events coincide with speech time and are perceived as taking place as a whole in the moment of speaking, although they hold a longer period of time then the moment of speaking. It is the case with sport commentaries, exclamations introduced by here and there, explanations, demonstrations and can be represented on the timeline as follow:

E, R, S timeline

And now, Messi keeps the ball, Messi throws the ball to Pedro, Pedro kicks to Alonso , Alonso kicks back to Messi and scores one more goal.

Here comes the Easter bunny! There goes the shinning sun!

When you make a compact disk you put the disk into computer, select the source and choose the folders and drag them on the disk.

Now I put the sausage on the plate and grate them with cheese .

The Habitual Present

The habitual use of the present simple tense refers to repeated events or actions that apply to past, present and maybe future. This iterativity can be represented diagrammatically in the following way:

E E E E,R,S timeline

Consultants from all over the world meet twice a year in a host country to discuss about what’s in and what’s out of fashion.

John’s mother is interested in fashion; she watches fashion TV programmes every evening.

They usually drink at this inn.

“ When my love swears that she is made of truth

I do believe her, though I know she lies,…”

( William Shakespeare, “Sonnets”- CXXXVIII)

The Generic Present

It is also called The State Present and refers to permanent states , and the time reference extends from the past to the future including present of course. The statements of this tense are so-called “timeless statements” because these types of statements apply to all times including speech time. General truths, proverbs and sayings also fall into this category.

It could be represented on the timeline in this way:

E S,R ,E E timeline

The enormous Statue of Liberty stands in New York harbour.

Light travels faster than sound.

A stitch in time saves nine.

Beauty without wisdom is like a flower in the mud.

B.Secondary meanings of the present simple tense

It is also known the fact that the present simple tense has secondary meanings including past and future time. Thus the present simple tense can be used to refer to the past or to the future as follow in the examples below.

Present simple tense with past values.

The present simple tense is usually used to refer to past events when the author of a narration wants to tell the story not in the past, but in the present in order to describe the events vividly and thus involving the reader. This type of present is also called historic present.

One day a lamb comes to the river to drink some water. A big wolf sees the lamb and says: “ The water in the river is my water. How dare you drink my water?”…

The present simple tense is also used with verbs of communication (tell, say) and perception ( hear, see,..) to draw attention to the present effect of a past communicative process underlying the validity of the reported information; the validity is not implied with the past.

They tell me you have won the contest.

I hear she is recovering in hospital.

Present simple tense with future values

The present simple tense is also used to refer to the future when the situation is fixed by a schedule or is marked by a high degree of certainty. Most common verbs with this value are movement verbs such as: go, come, leave, return…

The plane leaves London at 10 o’clock. Clarissa returns with 10 o’clock plane.

Tomorrow is a special day; it is Ann’s birthday.

Another future value of the present simple tense is in subordinated clause of time (introduced by when, after, before, as soon as) and condition (introduced by if, unless, provided, in case).

As soon as the lights turn off, silence will fall in the town.

I’ll go to the theatre with them if you don’t mind.

2.1.2. The present progressive tense

The present progressive tense , also known as present continuous tense is used to express a dynamic action in the process of happening (now moment) viewed from the inside. The present continuous tense by definition means durativity and it’s used with dynamic verbs.

He is singing carols now.

I have the feeling that something very strange is going on.

Listen! Matthew and his friends are playing the guitar.

The present progressive tense is also used with durative verbs to express a limited action that may not be in progress in the moment of speaking. Elizabeth is teaching at university this year.

The durative phase of the present process may be brought into our attention before its end point by using the accomplishment verbs. Doctor, doctor, please come with me! My grandfather is dying.

When the present progressive tense is used with stative verbs it implies a temporal situation or it’s used to refer to somebody’s behaviour at the moment.

I am thinking to spend my holiday somewhere far away from my home, in another country for example, to find out from other people about their culture.

You are looking very beautiful tonight.

Mike is an educated boy and I don’t know why he is being extremely rude today.

The present progressive tense is sometimes used metaphorically to denote a repeated action – in the moment of speaking or at least closely connected to the moment of speaking- in which case a nuance of reproach or irritation can be seen.

Why are you slamming the door?

My neighbour is always sneezing loudly when he meets me.

As a secondary meaning of the present progressive tense is its use to refer to planned future actions but unlike the present simple tense, these actions are planned by us or at least we have personal control upon them.

Tomorrow I am visiting Moscow and I am going to see Bolshoi Ballet performing Swam Lake.

In the sentence above we also have a special form of the present progressive for near future reference namely “ be going to”.

2.1.3. The present perfect simple tense

Bernard Comrie gives a general definition of the perfect as “ the continuing relevance of a previous situation.”( “Aspect”, 1976, p:56)

Starting from the assertion that perfect means “prior” and taking into consideration that it’s about present, we may conclude that present perfect refers to relation between two time points- present and past- and thus the present perfect partakes both the present and the past.

Depending on the relation between E,R and S and the different ways of viewing the internal structure the present perfect simple tense can convey different meanings.

Perfect of result

One of the meanings the present perfect simple tense may convey is that of the result (or relevance) of a past situation; this means that the result (or effect) of a past situation can be seen at the present time.

-Oh, my darling, you hair is wet and look at your chin!

-Yes, I have washed my hair but I haven’t shaved .

In the sentence with the present perfect simple tense R includes S and E is close to R; where the result of his washing his hair ( E) is the fact that his hair is wet (R) in this moment (S).

In the following sentence : I have already seen the film. I can tell you what you want to know about it. -it’s a similar situation with the sentence above although E is not necessarily close to R; thus the relevance of the fact that I have seen the film is that I know what happens in the film at the speech time.

A clearer example of a present relevance of a past situation which is not necessarily connected with “near” or “distant” reference but with present relevance only is the following: Many people have been injured during the manifestations. In this example R detaches from S and goes closer to E , and the effect of the situation here may be their permanent wounds .

Perfect of recent past

Another example of the meaning the present perfect simple tense may convey is that of the recent past. We found out from the examples of the perfect of result that present relevance doesn’t necessarily imply recentness. Thus recentness, in other words immediate past, requires only temporal closeness. Requiring temporal closeness to the moment of speaking implies that R includes S and is close to E. Most common “recent past” time references are associated with just, recently.

Sarah has recently given a speech at the conference.

“ – Have you heard?

-Heard what? said Harthouse , shooting his horse, and inwardly favouring Mr. Bounderby with no good wishes.

– Then you haven’t heard!

– I have heard you, and so has this brute. I haven’t heard nothing else.”

(Charles Dickens, “Hard Times”)

Another examples of temporal closeness are sentences similar to this: Have you seen Morris this morning?

The problem with these types of sentences is very simple; the period refer to ( this morning) is not over and can be applied to other similar time references.

Perfect of experience

Another interpretation of the function of the present perfect simple tense is that of experience. This refers to the fact that a person has at least one or more experiences of a certain event either in the lifetime up to the present time or in the recent time. It is also called “indefinite perfect” and this is because R is movable on the timeline; it is either closer to E or to S.

I have travelled by plane many times. Patty has lived in Kingston, and she has lived in London and now she lives in New York.

In this type of present perfect , first – time experience is also included.

It’s the first time I’ve been here. I have never had a wonderful evening like this.

At a judo class: – I have had a memorable training.

-Thank you!

– You welcome, my dear trainer. But it wasn’t this; this one has been boring.

Perfect of persistence

The perfect of persistent situation is the characteristic use of the present perfect simple tense. It describes a situation that started in the past and either stops at the speech time or persists in the present. It is the stative verb that usually signals the persistence of the situation; but it is also used with activity verbs.

I’ve lived in Bucharest all my life; but now certain circumstances oblige me move away.

I haven’t seen my cousin since she got married. I have known Peter for four years.

We’ve smoked enough.

As “for” introduces a period of time up to the present moment, a duration in other words, it may be said that is somehow retrospective; while “since’ inserts the beginning of the event and it’s so-called prospective.

In some cases the present perfect simple tense is used in subordinate clauses of time instead of the future perfect to convey the idea of anteriority , and it is often used with adverbials such as: after, as soon as, before, once, until, when.

I’ll let you know once I’ve found out. As soon as my father has bought me a Christmas-tree, I’ll adorn it.

2.1.4.The present perfect progressive tense

When the present perfect combines with the progressive aspect the result is the present perfect progressive tense that refers to the continuous nature of a situation that began in the past and is still in progress in the moment of speaking, or maybe finished but its effect /result is still continuing. The present perfect progressive tense focuses the attention on the continuity of the activity.

I have been drinking coffee since 2 o’clock. My sister has been working for a jeans company for many years. Sorry, I’m late. Have you been waiting for long? I’ve been crying for the last five minutes.

The present perfect progressive tense is also used to express a repeated action in which a nuance of reproach, irritation, irony can be present from the subjective interpretation of the situation.

I’ve been calling you for the past ten minutes. Where have you been?

They have been sneezing since you came.

They have been building this hospital for years.

2.2. English past tenses

2.2.1.The past simple tense

Generally speaking the past simple tense locates situations at a definite time in the past; clearly separated from the moment of speaking and having no connection with the present time. It can be represented on the timeline as below:

E,R S timeline

The past simple tense may be identified by definite time reference or it is sometimes used without explicit time markers. The most common type of past reference is either through past time adverbials in the same sentence or it may just be implied by another context (usually a temporal clause).

Mary was born in 1928. He visited his parents last week. When I was a child, I lived in the country-side.

Sometimes there is no explicit time markers and the definite time in the past is carried by the context outside the language.

William Blake wrote many visionary poems. (We all know that W. Blake died a long time ago and the period when he wrote poems belongs to the past)

Did the milkman bring milk? Did you receive my post-card? In these examples the explanation for using the past simple tense is the following: it is a known fact that the milkman calls at a given time in the day,; and the speaker in his own mind is thinking at that definite time, and respectively the time when he sent the postcard.

A.Basic uses of the past simple tense

One of the basic use of the past simple tense is to refer to completed actions or events in the past. These events may occupy a point in time or a longer extend. The moment in which the event took place may also be –or may not be- expressed explicitly as we can see in the examples mentioned below :

I met him two days ago.

When he was very young, his mother died from fever.

My cousin spent all her childhood in Canada.

Betty spoke to a singer from Eurovision contest.

The past simple tense is usually used to express a series of events occurring in a sequence –usually in their chronological order- often as a part of a narration. Narratives are usually told in their chronological order since events happen in one order and, even if they are not necessarily followed by explicit past time adverbials, they are sometimes used with other transitional terms in order to relate the events to each other and to give coherence. The succession of the events is often signalled –among others- by the use of temporal adverbials such as “then” or other similar to it. Sometimes temporal conjunctions such as “when” or “as” may signal succession or/and simultaneity of the events. All these situations are illustrated below.

He entered the hall, knocked at a door and apologized for being late.

“ The wind brought the sounds of the church clock to the window. They listened, and it struck three. Stephen looked at her, saw how pale she was, noted the disorder of her hair, and the red marks of fingers on her forehead, and felt assured that his senses of sight and hearing had been awake. She held the cup in her hand even now.”

(Ch. Dickens, “Hard Times”)

“ He thought he saw the curtain move. He looked again, and he was sure it moved. He saw a hand come forth and grope about a little. Then the curtain moved more perceptibly, and the woman in the bed put it back, and sat up.”

(Ch. Dickens, “Hard Times”)

The examples above are all series of events and only in the last one we can notice the presence of then.

“ I travel’d thro’ a Land of Men,

A land of Men & Women too,

And heard & saw such dreadful things

As cold Earth wanderers never knew.”

( William Blake, “The Mental Traveller”)

In this stanza the events experienced by the author are perceived as being simultaneous; thus the author heard and saw things- untouchable for an ordinary man – when he travelled (in his mind as the title suggests).

It was a terrible storm last night. The wind blew down some trees , broke the windows of a house and broke off the electricity. Although , most frequently, a sequence in a narrative is interpreted as having the events in the order the verbs indicate, it is not the case with the example above ; here we don’t know for sure whether this is the logic order of events, we don’t know which of the events took place first as we may change their place and nothing happens with the sequential interpretation as the focus here is not necessarily on the order of events but on the events themselves that took place. But:

It was a terrible storm last night. The wind blew down some trees, broke the windows of a house, then it broke off the electricity. Here the situation is completely different; it is “then” that signals the last thing that happened during the night because focus here is not only on the events but also on their order.

I had the great pleasure of meeting your parents when they had a chat with my neighbour few weeks ago. I introduced myself when I greeted them. Although the events italicized in the example above apparently seem to happen in the same time , there is a temporal retardation between them ; as it is clearly that I greeted them first and then I introduced myself; here there is a certain order –logic order if we want – of the events that can be deduced from context.

But with the following example “when” signals the simultaneity of the events.

His face went pale when he read the postmark of the letter. Here “when” marks the simultaneity of the two events; the involuntary change in colour of his face happened exactly in the moment when he saw the signature from the letter.

Another special case of simultaneity is in the following example although some may take is as successive :

“ As Ichabod rode along, the Horseman rode beside him. When Ichabod rode quickly, the Horseman rode quickly. When Ichabod rode slowly, the Horseman rode slowly.”

(Washington Irving, “The legend of Sleepy Hollow”)

Here both “as “ and “when” mark the simultaneity. It is true that one of them started first to do one thing or another (one caused another) but the temporal retardation between them is insignificant and, there are periods when they did the same thing (they rode quickly or slowly) and therefore they must be understood as simultaneous.

Another basic use of the past simple tense is to denote a repeated action in the past and with verbs denoting a permanent characteristic.

Jane visited the museum regularly.

“ She always went on the sea at Margate, not out o’ sight of land, but she had no patience with women who were afraid of water.”

( Virginia Woolf, “Mrs. Dalloway”)

“ They had always this queer power of communicating without words.”

( Virginia Woolf, “ Mrs. Dalloway”)

B.Secondary uses of the past simple tense

The past simple tense does not always have a past meaning. It is also used to talk about present or future, or to point to a pluperfect.

The past simple tense is used with present value in order to express a polite request with verbs such as wonder, want, wish, like, intend, etc.

I wondered if you could lend me your dictionary. In this sentence and others similar to it, the past simple tense signals a distance between the speaker and the listener and makes the request more polite, and thus it lets room for the person being asked a favour to refuse it. Instead , the use of present tense in this situation makes the request less polite , we can say almost brusque and demanding, and thus it would be difficult for the listener to refuse without impoliteness.

The past simple tense is also used with present value in reported speech if the verb in the main clause is in the past.

“ He said he talked to Jesus all the time.”

( J.D. Salinger, “ The Catcher in the Rye”)

He told me he was in hospital.

The past simple tense has future value in temporal clauses if the verb in the main clause is in the past.

He wanted me to give a party as soon as I passed my exams.

The past simple tense also points to a pluperfect when it is used with “before” and “after” (and sometimes “when”) , but this pluperfect is apparently a pluperfect.

1.After I saw him, he saw me. 2. He saw me before I saw him.

Both in sentence 1 and in sentence 2 we can notice rather a succession of events in the past than a remote past. Between the two actions (both in sentence 1 and in sentence2) there isn’t a significant temporal gap, so we can’t see a remoteness between them ; it is rather a succession of the two past actions (one after the other).

2.2.2. The past progressive tense

The past progressive tense also known as the past continuous tense refers to events in progress around a particular time in the past; highlighting the temporary nature of the events.

In other words the past progressive tense emphasizes the event as being in progress (yet unfinished)at the time referred to. The past moment can be expressed by a time adverbial, a clause with a verb in the past, or it may just be implied (to provide background information on the main storyline). Sometimes, but not always “while” marks parallel actions in progress.

They were walking through the forest last night.

A young man was writing notes on a piece of paper when he heard a noise.

“ A few minutes later, Ichabod saw Katrina with Brom Bones. They were talking and laughing quietly.”

( W. Irving, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”)

“ The man was a spy, and he was hiding from American soldiers.”

While my father was watching TV, I was reading a book.

“ While I was walking, I passed these two guys that were unloading this big Christmas tree off a truck.’

(J.D. Salinger, “ The Catcher in the Rye”)

The past progressive tense is also used to express a repeated action in the past causing annoyance.

“ Interrupted again! She was always interrupting.”

( V. Woolf. “ Mrs. Dalloway”)

My aunt was always turning up without warning.

Another use of the past progressive tense is to denote a future action planned at a moment in the past.

I left home at 8 o’clock and I was meeting my boyfriend at 9 o’clock.

2.2.3.The past perfect simple tense

The past perfect simple also known as pluperfect is used to locate a situation prior to a reference point in the past. Some grammarians named this tense as “past-in-the-past”, others as “earlier-in-the-past”; but considering that perfect means prior, it would be more adequate –in my opinion- to refer to it as earlier-in-the-past. On the timeline it could have a diagrammatic representation like this:

timeline

E R S

By 9 o’clock yesterday, my sister had already left the country.

When Michael arrived to the cinema, the film had already started.

I had read the book before I saw the film.

“ I went to a Garden of Love,

And saw what I never had seen:

A Chapel was built in the mist,

Where I used to play on the green.”

(W. Blake, “ The Garden of Love”)

In all the examples above we’ll notice that if we place them on the timeline, we have the italicized events (E) placed prior to R ( yesterday at 9, Michael’s arrival, and so on).

In other words the speaker places himself on the past axis (in the sense that he looks to a point in the past) and goes back to make clear that an event is prior to another event or moment in the past; so he talks about the past (R) and wants to talk about an earlier past (E) . Thus, there are similarities with the past simple tense in the sense that both tenses create a retrospective axis of orientation, the axis of past, and there is a temporal gap between R and S; but with the past perfect simple the speaker goes earlier in the past than R (and this makes the difference between them). Because of these similarities with the past simple tense , the past perfect tense is often used –by mistake- instead of the past simple tense, especially when used with “as soon as, after, once, when, etc.”; these are usually used with the past simple tense to talk about actions or events that happened one after the other- typical for the past simple tense. To understand better, let us compare the following situations

1 a. As soon as the bus stopped, the passengers got out.

1 b. As soon as the bus had stopped, the passengers got out. (?)

2 a. After the driver checked the car, he started the engine.

2 b. After the driver had checked the car, he started the engine. (?)

In sentences 1b and 2b the use of past perfect is unusual because if we place the events on the timeline we can observe that we aren’t going back from the time we are talking about, but we are moving forwards from one event to another; so there isn’t a temporal gap between E and R as shown on the timeline above . Thus, the time the bus stopped is the time when passengers got out although there is a temporal retardation between them, it is insignificant and its existence is important to order the events; here it’s about two actions that happened one after the other and the use of the past simple tense ( as in sentences 1a and 1b) is adequate .

But this doesn’t mean that the past perfect simple tense can never be used with these time conjunctions. On the contrary there are situations when we can use the past perfect simple tense ( with “as soon as, after, when “, etc.) to emphasize that an action is independent of the other, in other words there is a temporal gap between E and R ( their time does not coincide ).

3. As soon as she had finished her project, she went to Finland .

4. She didn’t felt herself the same person after her father had died.

In sentence 3 we can notice that the time at which she finished her project is not the time (or around the time) when she went to Finland ; there is a temporal gap between them , and here is not to order the events in the past but to remote them ( one from another ) in the past. Similarly in sentence 4, we can say that the time when she felt about herself to be another person isn’t immediately after her father’s death.

The past perfect simple tense also has similarities with the present perfect simple tense in the sense that they both may be used with the same temporal references such as already, just, ever, since, for, etc., but the difference is that these temporal references point to any past time connected to the past for the pluperfect ( unlike the present perfect when these temporal references point to any past time connected with the present) and acquires the same values as the present perfect simple (also mentioned in 1.2.4.2.)

I first spoke to him last month. I had never met him before. but I have never met him before. In the first example the pluperfect points to a previous period until that time in the past when I first spoke to him, namely last month; while in the second example the period referred to is that of a past time up to the present moment.

When her aunt returned to the city that she had left fifteen years before , everything was completely different. Once again in this sentence the use of before gives a retrospective view from a past moment counting back.

At the age of 45 she decided to move away from Romania to another European country. She had lived in Romania since she was 30.

He had lived in Greece since 1987 when I met him.

They had known each other for four years when they got married.

The past perfect simple tense is also used in reported speech to replace the past simple tense or present perfect tense when the reporting verb is in the past.

“ Peter hurt himself in a car accident.” She told me that Peter had hurt himself in a car accident.

“ Where have you been?” She wanted to know where he had been.

2.2.4.The past perfect progressive tense

The past perfect progressive tense also known as the past perfect continuous tense expresses the same temporal reference as the past perfect simple tense and like other progressive forms draws attention to the duration of the event and indicates that the duration is limited. In other words it’s used to provide a retrospective view from a past point emphasizing the progression of the event. It is represented on the timeline like this:

timeline

E R S

We were tired because we had been walking through the forest since nightfall.

At that time they had been living in the country-side for two months.

It is important to be noted down that the past perfect progressive tense has similarities with the present perfect progressive tense in the same way as the pluperfect has with the present perfect simple ( mentioned in 2.2.3.) and the same difference may be applied in this case. However it is also important to be mentioned that if we want to talk about a longer lasting situation, the simple form is preferred

The past perfect progressive tense is also used in reported speech to back-shift the present perfect progressive and past progressive tense.

“ I have been skating all day.” She said she had been skating all day.

“ She was thinking of selling her old car.” He told us that she had been thinking of selling her old car.

2.3.The present perfect tense contrasted with the past simple tense and their corresponding tenses in Romanian

2.3.1.The Present Perfect tense contrasted to the Past Simple tense

The similarities between present perfect and past simple tense determine students to make confusion between them. If we think strictly in term of time both present perfect and past simple places the events prior to the moment of speaking on the timeline. In other words they both give a retrospective view on the events; but with the present perfect is not so much about the time.

The past simple creates a retrospective axis of orientation, the past axis, having no connection to the present; it is viewed as separated from the present. The present perfect is a subtle retrospective aspect instead; on the timeline it is placed prior to the moment of speaking ( as the past simple is) but it has connections with the present; it views the action as either occurring in a time-frame leading up to the speech time ( or around the moment of speaking) , or implies a current relevance. As we can see there are major differences between them and these may be considered as being in the placement of the event on the timeline and subsequently in the nature of event.

To take them step by step we may say firstly that the opposition between past simple and present perfect is identified/non-identified time. To say this in another way, we may assert that although both tenses place the actions or events prior to the moment of speaking on the axis of orientation; the past simple refers to identified time in the past while the present perfect refers to unidentified time in the past. To refer to identified time in the past means that the event is located at a specific time in the past ( the past simple is deictic) even though it is not expressed explicitly; the speaker thinks about a certain time or moment in the past only.

Opposite to this is the present perfect; referring to an unidentified time in the past means that the event isn’t located at a specific time (non-deictic)- although in the past- but relates to present (within the extended now); so that the speaker thinks about past and present connected. For example sentences like 1 and 2 below may create confusion among students:

1. Sarah joined to the Youth League. I spoke to Sophia.

2. Sarah has joined to the Youth League. I have spoken to Sophia.

Some students might ask what accounts for the differences between them. Although the use of tenses is not always accepted without time reference, even so, from the first sentence we draw the conclusion that the event took place with a certain occasion or at a definite moment in the past while in the second sentence we may conclude that the event took place within the extended now and the speaker wants to refer to the anteriority of the event rather than to the actual time at which the event took place. With the examples as above or other similar to them would be difficult for some foreign language learners to feel the real meaning of the sentences and the differences between them. Therefore the use of time adjuncts would help students determine easily whether to use the past simple or the present perfect as they know that the use of specific past time adverbials ( yesterday, last week/month…, two/three…hours /weeks… ago, last May, in 1999, at Christmas, at 6 o’clock, etc.) makes the past tense obligatory, and the use of indefinite time adjuncts (recently, lately, already, yet, just, etc.) implies the use of present perfect. Thus sentences like these:

1.Sarah joined to the Youth League last week. I spoke to Sophia two hours ago.

2.Sarah has just joined to the Youth League. I have just spoken to Sophia.

would better argue identified-unidentified opposition for the students.

Sometimes, even if there isn’t any specific past time adverbial present, to mention the place where the action happened would help students in identifying tenses. Thus in sentence like this I spoke to Sophia at the Conference; the student would set in his mind the time when the Conference held and he would know that time was unique (in a similar way we may have Sarah joined to the Youth League at their meeting ).

Or, there are situations when the use of the past simple or present perfect is implied by the context as follow:

1.a What time did you visit Ralph? b. Have you visited Ralph?

2.a. What time did you finish your homework? b. Have you finished your homework?

3.a.When did they arrive? b. Have they arrived?

In sentences like 1a, 2a and 3a the definite time is implied by the adverbs; because adverbs like these require a specific time when the events happened. However the adverb “when” can accompany the present perfect tense in subordinate clause of time with future reference ( future perfect) and it doesn’t implied a specified time: I’ll send you a copy when I have finished it.

Another example of the opposition between the two tenses is the remoteness of the event -with a frame time which extends up to now implied by the contexts. This can be seen in the following examples:

1.a.Whitney Houston released many albums. b. Enrique Iglesias has released many albums.

The difference between the two sentences is that the singer in the first sentence is dead; so her life spam is over while the singer in the second sentence is still alive; and this opposition requires the use of past simple and respectively present perfect .But even if Whitney Houston is dead we can say that : Millions of people have listened to W. Houston’s songs . ( There are certainly many people from all over the world.) In the opposition above the two values compared are those of neutral past and perfect of persistence. An apparently similar example is the following: Jonathan worked as a teacher all his life./ Jonathan has worked as a teacher all his life. I said apparently because with the first sentence it doesn’t necessarily mean that Jonathan’s life spam is over; it may also imply that Jonathan is retired . It is not the case with the second sentence that implies that Jonathan has changed his job but he may return to his old job anytime. However we can draw the conclusion that if the time frame is over, we use past simple tense; otherwise we use present perfect tense. Some time adjuncts accompany the present perfect tense to refer to a period of time that is still open at the speech time, but they can also be used with the past simple tense in which case the period of time is considered as being closed. Let us argue with the following examples:

1.a. Did you see Lauren today? b. Have you seen Lauren today?

2.a. Temperatures dropped dramatically this winter. b. Temperatures have dropped dramatically this winter.

3.a. The sale of the tickets for Scorpions’ concert increased in March. b. The sale of the tickets for Scorpions’ concert has increased in March.

In sentences 1a, 2a the speaker places himself at the end of the day, winter ; so today, this winter are considered as finished. It is not the case in sentences 1b, 2b when the speaker is probably placed at the beginning or middle of the period in each case, so there is enough time that things go on; the period is open in other words. The situation is similar in sentences 3a and 3b to those described above , but besides this we may find ourselves in the impossibility to buy tickets ( if there isn’t any ticket left) even at the middle or why not at the beginning of the period ; in that case the period is considered as being closed as there aren’t any tickets.

Another difference between past simple tense and present perfect is that the event is disconnected from the moment of speaking in the case of past simple while the event has current relevance in the case of present perfect. By current relevance we understand that the event referred to is connected to the moment of speaking in that either it has a relevance or result in the present or it is still important to the speech time; so our attention is shifted from event itself to its consequences. In terms of current relevance one important question arises: how can we decide what is relevant and what is not relevant? To answer the question we may consider the following example to clarify what relevance does imply: Maria has bought a new car. This sentence and others similar to it should determine students think twice ; they should look for the real meaning of the sentence and for the circumstances in which it is uttered. So,( because there are two possibilities) the students may ask themselves what accounts for this sentence to be taken as having current relevance. If this Maria’s new car is displayed at the moment of speaking, so that we can see it ; it is clearly a relevant situation. Or it may have implication like this: Maria has bought a new car. She won’t go by bus from now on; in which case the effect of the fact that she has bought a new car is that she will go by car to and fro and not by bus . Otherwise ,-if neither is implied-, there is no relevance; it just points to the anteriority of the event – the perfect of recent past- and we found out from chapter 2.1.3. that recent past does not necessarily imply current relevance . The same action can be reported by the past if it happened with a certain occasion : Maria bought a new car from the car factory. In this case the speaker reports the sentence in the past because he thinks at that time when she was at the car factory.

2.3.2.Romanian tenses corresponding to present perfect and past simple tense

Like English tense, Romanian tense represents the moment when the action takes place . If we place the “now” moment on the timeline representing Prezent, we can either move from this point backwards to Trecut or forwards to Viitor. Prezent, Trecut and Viitor are Romanian basic tenses corresponding to Present, Past and Future. But besides these, there are nuances of these tenses. Because Romanian tenses corresponding to present perfect and past tense are timpuri trecute( past tenses), I’ll insist in this sub-chapter on these tenses. Perfect compus, perfect simplu, imperfect and mai mult ca perfect are Romanian past tenses. Mai mult ca perfectul is the corresponding tense to past perfect in English so, the equivalent tenses in Romanian for past simple and present perfect in English are perfect compus, perfect simplu, imperfect and present in case of present perfect with “for” and “since”. The origin of Romanian language is Latin , and “perfect” in Romanian comes from Latin “perfectus” and means finished, completed. So, by definition perfect compus and perfect simplu express finished actions while imperfect expresses unfinished actions.

Perfect compus

Perfect compus is used to express an action that happened and finished in the past; it is perceived as a remote tense. On the timeline is behind the present and is usually accompanied by “ieri”(yesterday), “ieri seara/de dimineata…”(yesterday evening/morning…), “saptamana trecuta”(last week),” luna tercuta”(last month), “anul tercut”(last year), “Joia trecuta”(last Thursday), “acum doua/trei…zile/saptamani…”( two/three… days/weeks…ago) , “in 1999” (in 1999), etc.

Perfect compus Prezent

timeline

Am terminat proiectul ieri. ( I finished the project yesterday.)

A anuntat-o, dar n-a venit la conferinta. ( He informed her, but she didn’t come at the conference.)

So, the distinctive mark for perfect compus is the auxiliary “have” ( “am, ai, a, am, ati, au) which is usually put in front of the main verb, but perfectul compus may appear in inverted form contrasted with English past simple : Terminat-am proiectul ieri.

In its form it resembles with present perfect in English as they both have the auxiliary “have” and participle of the main verb; but in its meaning it corresponds both to past simple and present perfect in English.

Nu l-am vazut de cand a parasit orasul. I haven’t seen him since he left the town.

Am spalat masina.(E curata.) I have washed my car.

In Romanian sentence we have perfect compus , but the corresponding tenses for it are present perfect and past simple in English.

This tense has almost the same meaning with English past simple and it is mainly used in narratives:

“S-a dus singura sa mi-l aduca. A venit, mi-a pus paharul pe masa. Dupa aceea a soptit:… .”

(Mihail Sadoveanu, “Creanga de Aur”)

“She left herself to bring it to me. She came back, put the glass on the table for me. After that she whispered:… .”

“Cind Maria si-a scos broboada, s-a descatusat din strinsoare un nimb de aur care era parul, si-am avut inca un indemn sa cred ca pogorise din ceruri.”

(Radu Tudoran, “Casa Domnului Alcibiade”)

“When Maria took off her headkerchief , it unfettered from pressure a golden halo which was her hair, and I had one more impulse to think that she had gone down from Heavens.”

“ Acum citeva zile m-am intilnit cu fiul cel mare al lui Lica. I-am spus ca planul cel mare al lui Szentessy a fost al uniu singur om. Nu m-a crezut.”

(Francisc Munteanu, “A venit un Om”)

“ Two days ago I met Lica’s eldest son. I told him that Szentessy’s greatest plan had been of a single man. He didn’t believe me.”

In literature the perfect compus is used in dialogue in order to evoke the conversation in a better way:

-Draga mea, tu ai avut incredere in mine si m-ai ajutat, de aceea cand m-ai chemat au am venit.

-My dear, you trusted in me and helped me, that is why I came when you asked me to.

Other values of the perfect compus

Yet, the problem arises because perfect compus in the Romanian language can acquire other values, especially in spoken language. It can be used with adverbials that generally indicate present actions but the context more than the adverbials requires the use of past tense.

Acuma, chiar c-am plecat. (I really left now.)

-Nu mai vorbi! (- Stop talking!

-Am tacut, am tacut. –I stopped, I stopped.)

Sometimes the perfect compus in Romanian can accept adverbials specific to future actions such as “deseara”, “ dupa amiaza” in order to express the speaker’s certitude regarding an action which has been planned in advance thus acquiring a future nuance: Dupa amiaza am si plecat. This action is considered so well-planned that the speaker considers that nothing can prevent it from happening. This makes the speaker to consider it as completed even if in reality it hasn’t taken place. In this case the time is provided by the adverbial and not by the form of the verb. This specific characteristic of the perfect compus in Romanian language corresponds to present continuous (future value) in English language; there isn’t any past correspondent for this characteristic in English. I am leaving in the afternoon. – this sentence emphasizes that the action is planned in advance.

Perfect simplu

It is used to express an action that happened and finished in the past and it is perceived as closer to the moment of speaking. In a way, of that of meaning it corresponds to present perfect in English, and on the timeline it is one step behind the present.

Perfect compus Prezent

Timeline

Perfect simplu

Perfectul simplu is used in speaking by people from some districts of the country( South-West) to express a past action that finished before the moment of speaking or the time span extends during the current day( as it was said above it corresponds to present perfect in English).

Vorbii cu Maria I have spoken to Mary.

Il intalnii pe Romeo azi. I have met Romeo today

Ma trezii devreme azi . and never Ma trezii devreme ieri.

The perfect simplu was replaced by the perfect compus by people from the rest of the country. In written language it is used by writers from all over the country to express a finished past action not a recent past action. In this case, it is used with adverbials specific to perfect compus; “a doua zi”, “pe urma”, “apoi”, “deodata”, ‘ tarziu”, etc.

“ A doua zi, hotarit sa ajunga la un rezultat, porni spre casa lui Cringas. “

(Francisc Munteanu, “A Venit un Om”)

The past simple tense renders perfectly this action in English.

“ The next day, determined to come to an end, he walked to Cringas’ house.”

Perfect simplu is used as a tense of narratives and there is no correspondent in English for perfect simplu except past simple tense which can successfully be used , and the effect is as strong in English as it is in Romanian.

“Cind ajunse in dreptul portitei de lemn, deschise cu piciorul, fara sa scoata mina din buzunar. Urca scarile cerdacului, tropaind tare sa-l auda cei din casa. Spre mirarea lui, nu-i iesi nimeni in intimpinare. Intra in bucatarie, dar nici aici nu era nimeni. Iesi iar in cerdac, si atunci, … .”

( Francisc Munteanu, “ A Venit un Om”)

“ When he arrived in front of the wooden gate, he opened it with his foot, without taking hand out from his pocket. He climbed the stairs of veranda, tramping loudly to be heard by people in the house. To his surprise, nobody welcomed him. He came in into the kitchen, but there was no one there. He went out to veranda , and then… .”

“ Prea sfintitul episcop saluta pe moarta si ramase la capataiul ei, cu ochii pe jumatate inchisi, soptind o rugaciune pentru sufletul care trecea la judecata. Breb se opri in partea cealalta, la picioare, ca sa poata privi drept pe zeita adormita.”

( Mihail Sadoveanu, “Creanga de Aur”)

“ The Holy Bishop said good-bye to the dead woman and stood to her head, with half shut eyes, whispering a prayer for the soul that was going to Judgement Day. Breb stopped at the other side, at her feet, so he could look straight to sleeping goddess .”

The perfect simplu is frequently used to introduce in the narrative a character’s retort or to begin a dialogue .

“ Goldis se infurie.

-Unde-i cheia?

-De unde sa stiu eu? raspunse cu glas moale grajdarul.”

……………………………………………………………………………

“ – Prostii, -dadu Varzaru din mina,….

-Ce prostii? se rasti un taran scund si indesat, cu mustatile negre.”

( Francisc Munteanu, “ A Venit un Om”)

“ Goldish got angry.

-Where’s the key?

-How should I know? answered softly the stable man.”

……………………………………………………………………….

“- Nonsense, – Varzaru shook his hand, …

-What nonsense? shouted a fat and short villager with black moustache.”

Imperfect

It is generally used to express a durative action in the past. It is generally used –but not always- with adverbs such as: “ ieri pe vremea asta”, “ lunea tercuta la ora 6 seara”, din cand in cand”, etc. or it’s followed by a clause with a past verb. The English correspondent of imperfect is past progressive tense which accurately renders an action in full progress.

Imperfect Prezent

timeline

Ieri la ora 2 ma plimbam prin park. At 2 o’clock yesterday I was walking in the park.

Intr-o Sambata dupa amiaza ma plimbam prin parc cand am auzit o pocnituri, “

One Saturday afternoon I was walking in the park when I heard a bump.

Imperefect is used to express repetitive actions in the past whenever it meets in context an adverb denoting repetition. The emphasis is not on the duration of the action as it usually happens with imperfect, but on the action itself which happens more than once in a given interval in the past, thus corresponding to past simple in English.

De la o vreme purta doar pantaloni negri si bluza rosie. For a while she wore only black trousers and red blouse.

Iarnea mergea la munte , iar vara mergea la mare. He went in the mountain in the winter but in the summer time he went at the seaside.

The imperfect is sometimes used in children’s language when they play different games thus passing from reality to fiction, having a present value.

Eu eram mama si tu erai tata. I was the mother and you were the father.

Imperfect can acquire a perfect value and it’s used in lyrical ballads.

“Mesterii grabea, “ The craftsmen worked hardly,

Sfarile-ntindea, Stretched ropes tightly,

Locu masura, Measured out the place,

Santuri largi sapa, Dug out deep base,

Si mereu lucra, They always worked out,

Zidul ridica,..” And raised walls about…”

(Vasile Alecsandri, “ Mesterul Manole”)

CHAPTER 3

ECLECTIC APPROACH AND COMMUNICATIVE APPROACH IN TEACHING PAST SIMPLE AND PRESENT PERFECT SIMPLE

This research attempts to discover whether foreign language learners are able to attain communicative competences in English by using two different methods of teaching grammar and to what extent. The focus in this research is on teaching past simple and present perfect simple based on the principles of an eclectic approach an communicative approach, the aim being to investigate the effectiveness of Presentation-Practice-Production and Task-Based- Instruction methods of grammar teaching to facilitate the acquisition of the two tenses; an area in which students experience difficulties. On the whole this paper tries to find out which one of the two methods is more suitable for teaching tenses with the purpose to contribute to the development of educational practice.

In the recent years a long debate has developed among researchers over which approach in language teaching-learning process would be more effective and efficient . The problem still exists as some of them advocate for communicative approach and others for post-communicative approach, each of them with their pros and cons.

Those who advocate for communicative approach assert that the effectiveness in grammar teaching can be attain by involving students in communicative activities that stimulate learners to communicate the meaning in real-life situation, where the focus is on function of the language, paying no or little attention to the form arguing that the acquisition of a foreign language can be acquired as in mother tongue by using it. So, the main concern is with fluency that subsequently leads to accuracy.

TBI( Task-Based-Instruction) is such a method that involves students in a task with the main focus on meaning and then on form.

On the contrary, those who advocate for post-communicative approach, so-called –eclectic approach, realized that there are elements that complete each other; paying attention to both form and meaning. Thus, the concern is both accuracy and fluency, so they return to traditional but not in that way. Here, they combine traditional (focus on form) with modern (focus on meaning) in order to come to an end with good results.

So, a new PPP (Presentation-Practice-Production) method emerged from old PPP method in which the focus is a balance between form, meaning and use; the grammar is no longer taught explicitly and in isolation, but implicitly and in meaningful contexts.

Research design

This chapter deals with the research design as well as with the organising and implementing the research. It starts with a hypothesis and continues with the purpose and the objectives of the research. Then the design of the research project is outlined beginning with the sampler of the subjects and contend, followed by the place and period in which the research takes place.

And finally, the stages of the research where the data are collected and the methodology of the research when the two teaching methods are implemented are the last parts of this chapter.

3.1. Hypothesis

Starting from Diane Larsen Freeman’s theory according to which grammatical structures have three dimensions- form, meaning and use- and where she gives a definition for grammaring as a “fifth skill” ( beyond reading, listening, speaking and writing) by which she means “ the ability to use grammatical structures accurately, meaningfully and appropriately ( Teaching Grammar: From Grammar to Grammaring, p.143) , I attempt to the following hypothesis of this paper presented below.

Students may be efficient users of tenses and subsequently of language if they are aware of the three- dimensional structure of the verb.

From the main hypothesis above mentioned can be deduced the following specific hypothesis: it is supposed that students aware of the three-dimension structure of the verb acquire the two English tenses more effectively.

3.2. The purpose of the research

The purpose of the research is to investigate the effectiveness of PPP method and TBI method in teaching tenses in order to facilitate the acquisition of the two tenses.

The two methods are applied to the two tenses with the purpose to find out which is more efficient, more suitable in the process of teaching and to contribute to the development of educational practice.

3.3. The objectives of the research

The objectives of the research are listed below ;

-to explore teaching-learning process using two different methods;

– to investigate the extent to which the implementation of the two teaching methods can facilitate students’ acquisition of the two tenses;

-to monitor the progress of students in the acquisition of the two tenses during the classroom process;

– to assess the impact of the two teaching methods on the students in understanding and use of the two tenses after the teaching phase;

– to assess students’ performance with each group over time

3.4. The design of the research project

This research attempts to investigate teaching-learning process of the past simple and present perfect simple using two different methods applied to Romanian learners of Rogova School from Mehedinti district. In addition, it investigates the extent to which the implementation of the two teaching methods can facilitate the acquisition of past simple and present perfect simple tense.

As an important component of the study is subsequently the students’ performance over time leading us to the extent at which they can become competent users of the language.

First of all the sampler of the subjects is chosen and then there are implemented two different methods in teaching past simple and present perfect simple tense. Here in order to find out whether the hypothesis of this paper can be maintained or rejected a case study is carried within the two groups. In order to test the hypothesis a false hypothesis is formulated according to which the acquisition of tenses inevitably takes place during the process of communication. So, a treatment with the TBI method is applied to the experimental group in order to see the effects while the control group is let unaltered in the sense of that they are the reference point of measurement.

A range of data is collected during the entire fieldwork and then they are presented and analysed for each stage of the research.

The groups are tested on four occasions as follow in initial stage ( pre-test), during the experimental stage conducted in the middle of the teaching process (test), after teaching process ( post-test) and long time after the teaching process (re-test) .

The analysis of these data from chapter 4 allows us to conclude if the hypothesis of the research is palpable.

In other words in the section that follows the sampler of the subjects, two teaching methods ( in short) applied to the two tenses and the instruments of the investigations of each stage are described, being followed by the implementation of the two methods with each group.

3.5. The student participants

The students who participated in the research are all Romanian. All the students study at Rogova School from Mehedinti district. They were selected as classes naturally formed prior to the research; so they are class-samplers.

The experimental group consisted of 14 students; 11 girls and 3 boys with the age between 13-14 years old, and they were taught by the TBI method.

The control group consisted of 16 students; 7 girls and 9 boys with the age between 12 to 13 and they were taught by the PPP method.

Prior to the research they had accumulated three years of studying English ( at least); so they share a similar level of the overall English proficiency . Each group has English lessons twice a week.

3.6. The two teaching methods

Each class-group was taught separately in two sessions per week, each session lasting 50 minutes. The sampler of the content resumes at past simple and present perfect simple tense , each content being taught by using the PPP and TBI method that are described in short below.

I restricted the range of tenses at these two because I could see, from my experience, that in this area students encounter great difficulties. I also chose these two teaching methods because, as it was said at the beginning of this chapter, researchers and teachers of course have alternated between favouring one method or another over time and they still do so.

3.6.1. Presentation-Practice-Production ( PPP) method

As its name suggests a PPP method implies three stages: presentation, practice and production. At the first sight one may say that it is about the old PPP method but it is not the case with this one, although that old method is still taught that way in many parts of the world today. In the recent years a so-called post-communicative era has emerged and its advocators , researchers or teachers, pretend that a balanced combination between accuracy and fluency leads to an eclectic approach and this is more effective than any other method.

In other words an actual PPP method appeals to traditional combined with modern teaching. In a traditional PPP model the focus was primarily on form and students were asked to repeat a number of drills (repetitive exercises) not very creative and the focus was on accuracy. In an actual PPP model it’s not a grammar in isolation lesson (explicitly); this model does not decontextualize grammar; here language is based on a structure used to convey meaning which performs functions, thus there is a balance between accuracy and fluency.

So, the teacher must provide students with a variety of activities in such a way that they should be aware of the three-dimension of the grammatical structure form, meaning and use at each stage of the lesson, so a focus on form is combined with communicative activities.

The stages of the lesson are describes as follow:

1.Presentation.

At this stage I introduce the new language in a meaningful context. Here, there is an unlimited source for providing context: texts, visuals, dialogue or situations from inside or outside world. No matter what type of context I’ll choose I must provide the students with an interesting context in order to attract them.

The context should also be generative to provide the background for a lot of language use. It is at this stage when teacher checks that students have understood what has been presented.

In other words at this stage the tenses are introduced implicitly and the teacher’s concern at this stage is both with form , meaning and use.

2.Practice

At the practice stage activities fall somewhere between non-communicative and communicative. At this stage I’ll involve students in less-controlled activities so that having them prepared for the next stage of the lesson. These activities shouldn’t be mechanical drills (as in traditional) , they should be meaningful.

At this stage students try to use tenses in meaningful context; the focus being both on form and meaning. It is at this stage when I may help the student to guide them slightly and when the error correction takes place.

3. Production

Production stage gives students opportunities to use tenses in communicative activities . Communicative activities in fact reflect the real language use and there are a variety of enjoyable and challenging activities. These activities reflect students’ ability to manage the language in different situations as being in real life. The focus here is not only the fluency but also on accuracy ( as I keep in mind their mistakes, make them clear about them after they finished the activity); however the main focus is on fluency.

It is very important to have the students aware with form, meaning and use of the tenses because an incorrect use of form can lead to misunderstanding.

The idea of organizing a PPP lesson is , as this can be seen from the stages of the lesson, that the students learn the language in order to use it.

3.6.2. Task-Based-Instruction (TBI) method

The communicative language teaching starts, as it name suggests, from the theory of language as communication. So, CLT emphasizes on a task-based-instruction in which task stimulates the learners to communicate the meaning (as in real life situations) that generates the language.

The advocators of TBI method starts from the idea that students use language in order to acquire it, which is contrary to the idea supported by advocators of PPP method . Thus, this method involves students in such activities that provoke them to communicate focusing on fluency and only in the end pays little attention to form (accuracy).

We can say that a task-based-instruction is an alternative to communicate involving students in activities that primarily focus on meaning and then on form, depending how well is their outcome. In TBI method the entire lesson is based around a main task that the students have to complete it involving them in production of the language. This does not mean that it excludes accuracy, but accuracy comes in the last part of the lesson. We may say that it switches the practice-production stages in a PPP method.

Task based instruction tends to favour language use over the form , so the language form is incorporated during communication. In other words students learn forms through communication, fluency being an important dimension of communication acquired through a task. To say this in other words, in terms of activities involved tasks are organizational principles of the lesson at each stage everything being achieved through communication.

A Task- Based- Instruction method has the following stages around which the whole lesson is organized:

1.Pre-task

At this stage the teacher introduces the topic and provides students with clear information that gives them an idea about what they are going to do in the new lesson. This can be done in many ways such as predicting, brainstorming or to let them hear or read about people doing something on the theme of the lesson or just simply engaging them in a conversation about the new topic.

The aim of this stage is to prepare the students for the next stage. It is at this stage when I help them with useful phrases and the activities of this stage can also be done in mini-tasks being an engaging stage and meaning focused with no pressure on students to produce any new language form; so the language resulting from the task.

2.Task-cycle: task-plan-report

At the level of task in this stage the main focus is on fluency and fluency only, in other words on function. So here I set the task giving them clear instruction about what they have to do and it is advisable to be done in pairs or groups so that I have them all involved in a more challenging way. It is also important to give them enough time to prepare so they can’t feel the pressure of time.

At the plan phase students prepare what they are going to say or write. Here I monitor the students and give them support because some of the students can be shy or they don’t fell like speaking when they are involved in oral production; and this kind of students must be encouraged with guidance and enough time to prepare; as the main focus being fluency they may want to do the best for the audience in the next phase.

At the report phase students report back to the class their oral or written reports. It is at this phase when I give them feedback on the strengths of the reports and not only, after I have taken notes with their mistakes occurred while they reporting.

3.Language focus

This phase enables students to focus on the language they used to complete the task, so the aim of this stage is the accuracy(form). At this stage teacher may either select examples (that involve tenses) from the performed task asking students to comment on them or she may give students some grammar exercises to do to consolidate tenses. This stage is generally kept short.

In a TBI lesson it is neither the text nor the grammar the students study, but the task they have to complete , the task that involves students in producing a meaningful context in which they automatically use the new grammar item-tenses in our case.

3.7. Place and period

3.7.1. Place

The research takes place at Rogova School. Rogova School is a gymnasium school in a rural area in the South-West of Mehedinti district which is also situated in the South-west of Romania. It is not a big school; it has 158 pupils in all from which 58 students are in the secondary form.

3.7.2. Period

The period over which the research extends is for 7 weeks. The period of the research is divided into stages described in the following subchapter. In the table below the period of the research is described in short as follow.

3.8.Stages of the research

The research is divided into four stages and finished in 7 weeks. Each stage of the research is described as follows.

3.8.1. Initial stage

This is the first stage of the research in which a pre-test (placement test) is distributed to all participants. Although I know my students very well and I could have started my research without testing them , the students were tested in order to make myself sure once again that the two groups are on the same ground. I chose this alternative because it’s a known fact that people often forget things in time.

From the results of the test I can also find out the students’ condition about grammatical competence and knowledge. The time allotted for this test is about fifty minutes. The test is given at the beginning, before the experiment and consists of both objective and subjective testing techniques.

3.8.2. Experimental stage

During this second stage of the research The Past Simple and The Present Perfect Simple tense are taught to the students. Each lesson has fifty minutes. I’ll teach the two tenses using two different methods; with the experimental group I’ll adopt a Task-Based-Instruction method while with the control group I’ll adopt a Presentation-Practice-Production method using different teaching materials with each group.

The main objective of this stage is to explore the teaching process with the two groups using two different methods and to observe the acquisition of the two tenses with the two different groups and to monitor their progress in the acquisition of tenses.

In the middle of the experimental stage a test is given to the two groups. It is a small-scale test to check the short-term learning looking back over the recent teaching material; namely at the end of teaching the past simple tense; so it’s focused on the acquisition of the recent work and highlights the progress( if there is any) in students’ acquisition of the past simple tense. The time allotted for this test is for fifty minutes and the testing techniques are both objective and subjective.

3.8.3. Final stage

At the end of the teaching process the two groups are tested again. This test can be called –in a way- a large scale-test because it looks back over the teaching materials for more than a week; in other words at the end of the experiment, at the end of teaching including both the Past Simple and The Present perfect Simple tense .

It is in a way a “how much and how well” test, identifying the students’ strengths and weakness and students’ progress. The time allotted is for fifty minutes and once again objective and subjective items are used.

3.8.4. Post-final stage

This is the last stage of the research in which a re-test is conducted with the two groups after a longer period after finishing the teaching process.

It is intended to assess the students’ performance with each group over time. In other words the re-test is intended to assess the long-term progress of the students. The same types of items are used in this re-test and the time allotted is exactly the same used through the entire research.

3.9. Instruments of the research

The instruments of data collection used in this research are pretest, test, posttest and retest; each of them being included in different stages of the research and finally data on students’ use of English tenses are analysed and compared.

The content of each test includes the following items:

1)discrete- point (dual-choice);

2)integrative (modified-cloze);

3)writing

1)Discrete-point relies on isolated sentences and accept only one correct answer and are scored on the right/wrong basis.

The discrete-point items involve dual-choice exercises in sentences in sets of ten, and each set requires choice between two variants. In each sentence two variants are provided and only one is correct and they have to decide on the correct form of the verb and to underline it. It is not a form in isolation as they are not asked to conjugate a certain verb; it is a form in isolated sentences. However being in isolated sentences this type of discrete-point items are used to assess problems of form namely.

The four sets of discrete-point items are provided in full in Appendix C .

2)Integrative items go beyond sentence level and assess several aspects of the learning process at the same time. The task to be performed requires the perception of the learner of the entire text instead of isolated sentences. The integrative item here is modified cloze technique having a strong focus on the correct use of tenses in a meaningful context.

Each set of cloze task consists of ten gap filling items with the appropriate verb and tense. I may either give clue-verbs to the students or let them to generate a verb. I chose to give them clues instead of letting them to generate a verb in order to be more objective in their scoring; as some of them might choose a synonym for example that doesn’t suit exactly in the blank and this would create difficulties in being objective about their answer.

I did so because I set my criteria primarily on grammar not on vocabulary highlighting the students’ strengths in using tenses rather than students’ weaknesses in manipulating vocabulary. Thus the results can be then analysed and compared closer to reality. The four sets of integrative items- modified-cloze items- are provided in Appendix D.

3)Writing tasks are by definition subjective tasks intended to evaluate language flow in the process of communication; in writing in this research.

This type of task is also intended to assess the accuracy of the output (text), thus the inaccuracies mustn’t prevent the message from being meaningfully conveyed. With the choice of this type of task I tried to modernize the traditional subjective testing ; I don’t ask students just write about something, instead I ask them to write about something providing them a situation where the students can identify themselves in that situation or pretending that they are someone else because this way they can come closer to real world thus activating their lives experiences or stirring their imagination and interest.

This type of task is designed to test their ability to express themselves, so that each of them could either focus on his own experience or use his imagination, having the opportunity to provide their grammatical knowledge in their own contexts.

The topics for each test are developed in such a way they should be broadly comparable in the degree of difficulty.

The four topics are provided in full in Appendix E.

All these versions are put together and assigned to the two groups with four occasions. They are intended to identify-among others- the student’s needs in using tenses involved in the teaching process giving me some ideas about how much they know about the form, meaning and use of the two tenses and how well they can use them because we all know from our practise that many students tend to make confusion between these two tenses, testing both their short-term and long-term acquisition.

The tests are structured so that they should prove both students’ grammatical competences and communicative competences. I chose to test the form, meaning and use of the two tenses (recognize, practise and produce) because I consider equally important for them to express themselves correctly. Form is very important because a bad form of tense can lead to confusion, but it is not the only thing that matters in this triangle because a form in isolation leads to nowhere.

3.10. Methodology of the research

3.10.1.Implementing the PPP method

3.10.1.1. The Past Simple Tense

Presentation

I begin teaching the past simple tense with the control group by telling them a short (invented) story about something that happened to me yesterday. The best way to teach grammar inductively is to introduce the new language item in the form of a text illustrating in the same time both the form and use of the new grammatical structure, and on the basis of the models provided by the context they are expected to formulate their own rules.

I thought it would be a good idea to mix regular and irregular verbs to make the context more challenging, and in the same time I give them a list of irregular verbs with all three forms. To avoid the boredom of the repetition of the affirmative form I also used interrogative and negative forms in the same text. Students are already familiar with the idea of auxiliary verbs used in the interrogative and negative form from the first tense that had been taught to them and namely the present simple tense. The persons used in the text are also different so that they can realize that the form of the verb doesn’t change according to the person or number.

Besides the structural form the provided context makes clear from the beginning and throughout the text the use of the past simple tense ; so all the examples that make up the text show that the events began and ended in the past. From time to time I also use time expressions in the context to make its meaning clearer for them.

So, I begin my lesson by telling a story to my students then I give the students handouts with the text and I ask them to read the text in turns.

The main concern in this introductory stage is both with form and meaning of the new language. Then I ask my students some concept questions to ensure that they have understood the meaning of the past simple tense. In other words these questions may clarify the function. I use a set of Q and A including Yes/No answers, but I also find that Wh-questions are more efficient to check students’ understanding.

Here are some examples of concept questions used during this presentation stage:

1) Are the actions presented in the text happening now? ( No)

2) When did the actions presented in the text happen? ( Yesterday)

3) Are the actions finished? (Yes)

4) Do they last for a long time? (No)

5) Are the actions connected with the present? (No)

6) When did that person enter my house? (Yesterday)

7) When did I go to the police? (Yesterday)

With this question I draw a timeline on the blackboard placing the ‘ now” moment on it and ask them to pay attention to the underlined verbs from their handouts and to place them on the timeline in order to draw a rule for using the past simple tense. I let the students to express the rule alone and I eventually correct them if necessary.

Then I ask them to look at the affirmative form of the verbs in the text once again and to give their infinitive forms using the list of irregular verbs where necessary. Here the focus is with form. I ask them to compare the infinitive and past forms both for regular and irregular verbs and to formulate a rule for the past affirmative form. They notice that the common ending for regular verbs is “-ed” and that irregular verbs use the second form from the list. Then I shift their attention to the negative and interrogative examples from the text asking them to write them down and to discuss the rule for these forms.

During this presentation stage the participants involved are both students and teacher and they interact equally.

The main skills involved in this stage are reading and speaking as teacher interacts with students on the basis of what they read, but focus on these skills will lead to writing of course. Teaching materials created for this stage are intended to focus on structural form, use and meaning conveyed by the new grammatical item, and they are provided in Appendix A.

Practice

Once I have presented them the new language item and checked their understanding I move on to the next stage of the lesson, the focus here being primarily on form. In this stage students make their first attempt to use the past simple tense in a meaningful context. In order to make the activity less controlled I provided them with a meaningful context, so having them in the same time prepared for the next stage; the communicative stage as the communication takes place in a context, not in isolation.

So, I give my students handouts and they have to complete the blanks with the past simple forms of the verbs in brackets. They are also asked to work individually. In order to make myself sure that they have understood what they have to do I ask one of them to give an example by doing the first item. While they are working, I walk around the class to check if they use the past simple tense correctly. The students work on their own until the time allotted for this activity is over. After they finished the activity they have to take turns to tell to the class their answers, and the others paying attention and checking themselves. I also choose some of the students that didn’t manage with the exercise-as I could see from the monitoring stage- and ask them to go to the blackboard to write the whole sentence signalling that there is a mistake and trying to make him to self-correct. When the student can’t self-correct, I eventually ask help from class to correct and explain. Signalling the appearance of the mistake and trying to make them self-correct encourage them to think twice and it is more involving than just giving them the correct form and more than that, as they discovered by themselves the rules in the presentation stage they are expected to be able to self-correct in practice stage.

As they have to read in order to fill in the gaps, we can say that the main skills involved in this activity are reading and writing.

This type of exercise is intended for students’ use of the past tense forms in a meaningful context. The content of this exercise is selected and adapted from a text taken from “Snapshot workbook” , the story is called “ The long-distance runner” and can be found in Appendix A.

The following exercise in this stage is meant to practice question forms, so the focus is on accuracy once again, but this time being in the form of a dialogue. The dialogue that they have to make up using a two-columns grid prepares them and in the same time makes them confident for the next stage of the lesson.

So, I distribute them handouts and invite them to work in pairs to make up a dialogue using the information from the grid. I give them the instruction and in order to ensure that they have understood what they have to do I ask a volunteer to explain once again to the rest of the class. The first example is also done for them. When the time allotted for this activity is over they have to act out the dialogue. The same error correction technique is used as in the first activity from this practice stage.

The grid is also provided in Appendix A.

Production

Production stage is the communicative stage and the main focus is fluency, students having the opportunity to use the past simple tense in this communicative activity. The activity planned for this stage is student-centred. I organize the students in groups of four to work together on the same task and I give them handouts with the instructions but I also explain them what they have to do in this activity. They have to use their imagination to do the best with a certain given situation- situation that involves them in using past simple tense- interacting with each other until the time is up. I also let them know that they are going to enter a competition for a role-play, pretending that they are someone else and that the winner will be declared that group that is the most creative and makes fewer mistakes. Then they have to choose two members from their group to represent them acting out the dialogue in front of their classmates.

While they are working together I walk around the classroom and help them if they need. The main purpose of monitoring them is to identify problems they encounter; surely they need some vocabulary items; as they know they compete with each other and their desire is to be the winner, they will try to be the best.

While they are performing in turns in front of the class, I note down the mistakes they make and we discuss them when their performance is over.

3.10.1.2. The present perfect simple tense

Presentation

The objective of this stage is to make the students aware of the form, meaning and use of the present perfect simple tense and, as in the case of the past simple tense I chose to teach the present perfect simple tense inductively; not stating from the beginning the form, meaning and use of the present perfect simple tense and then giving them examples to illustrate them; but giving them examples and then asking students to form the rules.

The focus at this stage is with form, meaning and use and the examples of the present perfect simple tense are introduced to the students through a listening activity. The context is also demonstrated by pictures from their textbook.

At the beginning of the presentation stage I led the class telling them that I am going to play a cassette for them presenting a short dialogue. In the same time I give them lists of irregular verbs and handouts with tapescript. The lists of irregular verbs are given to them because the dialogue contains both regular and irregular verbs; however they have some ideas about irregular verbs from the past simple tense and they also know the verb “to have”. The handouts with the tapescript have the present perfect simple tense structure underlined. So I asked them to listen to the conversation( between Mrs. Rickerby and her robot) paying attention to the underlined structure. Then I asked one of them to tell me the sentences that had the present perfect simple tense underlined on their handouts while I was writing them on the blackboard. Once we have the sentences isolated from the dialogue and as I want to convey them the form of the present perfect tense, I ask them to pay attention to the affirmative sentences and to compare the forms that appear in the underlined structure of the present perfect simple tense – using the list of irregular verbs where necessary- with the main form of the verb and try to formulate the rule for the affirmative form. They will notice that this tense makes use of the third form of the main verb and the auxiliary “have”. Then I shift their attention to the interrogative sentences written on the blackboard and, as they have the idea of inversion in the interrogative sentences, it is easy for them to guess the rule for interrogative form. Because there aren’t negative sentences in the conversation- except for a short answer- I give them an example of negative sentence connected with that short answer and I ask them again to extract the rule for the negative form.

Once we have established the form of the present perfect simple tense , we move on to the next step of this stage in which in order to convey the meaning and use I draw on the blackboard a timeline placing the moment of reference on it. I continue by asking them some concept questions to ensure that they have understood the function of the present perfect simple tense moving on the timeline according to the questions. I use a set of Q and A including Yes/No answers, but I also use Wh- questions as many times as I can in order to involve them more in giving answers.

Here are some examples of concept questions used during this stage:

1)Is Tim feeding the cat now? (No)

2)Has Tim fed the cat? (Yes)

3)When did Tim feed the cat according to “now” moment ? (Before)

4) When did he do this exactly? ( We don’t know)

5)Is the cat hungry? (No)

6) But how do you know that the cat doesn’t need food? (Because we can see that the bowl is empty…. And the cat is cleaning its mouth)

7)So, is the fact that Tim has fed the cat connected with the present? (Yes)

These are some examples of course and I eventually help them with other questions when the answers aren’t the expected ones. The same procedure is followed with the negative sentences-insisting to look at the pictures from their books- , so at the end of the activity it will be clear for them that the results of those past actions can be seen in the present; in other words that the two different points on the timeline are connected.

Then I asked them to feel free to give a definition for using the present perfect simple tense , I let them to express the definition alone and I eventually helped them where necessary .

During this presentation stage the participants involved are both students and teacher and they interact equally. The main skills involved in this stage are listening and speaking as I interact with them on the basis of what they hear, but writing is also involved as a result of the two main skills.

Teaching materials used in this stage are intended to focus on form, meaning and use of the present perfect simple tense, they are adapted from “World Class” students’ book and are provided in appendix A.

Practice

As soon as we clarified the form, meaning and use and I checked their understanding in the presentation stage, we moved on to the next stage of the lesson- practice stage- with the main focus on accuracy. Understanding the present perfect simple tense does not mean learning it, therefore they need some practice. In this stage of the lesson the students are asked to do some exercises in which the present perfect simple tense appears.

In order to make this stage of the lesson less-controlled, in order to prepare them for the next stage and to make them have self-confidence, I provide them with exercises in meaningful sentences because a practice in isolation of the present perfect simple tense may become boring and the students may lose their interest once they grasp the form.

So, I give the students handouts in which they have to build up sentences using the given words for each sentence .

I also ask them to work individually. In order to make myself sure that they know what they have to do I provide them an example on their sheets of paper.

The students worked on their own until the time allotted for this activity was up. After they finished the activity they are asked one by one to tell to the class their answers, the others paying attention and checking themselves.

When the mistake appears I ask the student to go to the blackboard and write the sentence. Then I signal that there is a mistake and I try to make him to self-correct. When the student isn’t able to self-correct I ask help from the class to correct and eventually to explain.

I chose to write the wrong sentence on the blackboard and then to correct in, and not just discuss the mistake because some students are visual and it is better for this type of students to see not just hear.

The main skill involved in this activity is writing, but it is based on reading.

This type of exercise is intended for the use of present perfect simple tense in meaningful context by students, to give them enough practice in a less-controlled way.

The content of the exercise is selected from “English Grammar” book exercise, Polirom and is provided in Appendix A.

The following step in this stage is meant to practice interrogative and negative forms, so the same focus on accuracy is intended in this activity. This comes in the form of a dialogue based on the pictures provided by their textbook.

So, I distribute the students handouts with instructions but I also tell them that they have to work in pairs to ask as many questions as they can using the pictures provided by the book, so that they give negative long answers about what Tim has not done yet. To make sure that they know what they have to do I give them an example on their sheets of paper.

I also set a time limit and the students work together until the time allotted for this activity is over. I monitor this activity and I help them because some of them need some vocabulary items. When the time is over they have to take turns to act out the dialogue; expecting the class intervention when mistakes appear.

Production

Production stage is the communicative stage and the main focus is fluency, students having the opportunity to use the present perfect simple tense in sentences of their own. I organized the students in groups of four to work together on the same task and I gave them handouts with the instructions but I also explained them what they had to do in this activity. They had to use their imagination in a certain given situation; situation that involved them in using present perfect simple tense- interacting with each other until the time was up.

This activity was a mime game. Each group had to decide upon four activities and then each member of each group came in turns to the front and mimed the result of the activity and the other groups had to call out the activity using the present perfect simple tense. The other groups interacted with the student who mimed the activity asking questions until they guessed. The first group to call out the correct answer won a point. They were not allowed to repeat the activity, thus losing a point; so they had to be inventive to replace the activity.

While they were working together I walked around the classroom and helped them if they needed. The main purpose of monitoring them was to identify the problems they encountered.

While they were performing in turns in front of the class, I noted down the mistakes they made and we discussed them when their performance was over.

3.10.2. Implementing the TBI method

3.10.2.1. The past simple tense

Pre-task

As the main focus of a TBI lesson is on function not on form. I begin my teaching with the Experimental Group with an introduction to the theme, a warm-up activity. In the first stage in order to engage my students in a conversation about past events (conversation in which I used past simple tense as many as I could), to stir their interest and to attract them I began my lesson asking them if they had read “ Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” by Lewis Carroll. As some of them did I remembered them a famous line from the book that Alice said: “I can’t go back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.” I keep asking questions around this line with the purpose to be kept in yesterday and finally concluding that we can’t go back in time physically but we can remember “that” time. At this stage I worked with the whole class being a spontaneous interaction between teacher and students.

Then I announced them that we were going to read a text and I invited them to predict the content of the text. In order to make them predict the content of the text in this second stage of the pre-task I showed them some pictures with some key-words from the text using a short Power Point Presentation and they had to choose a photo and associate it with the key-words. After they predicted the content I gave them hand-outs containing a word-cloud created out from the text and not only, and they had to write down the words they thought would appear in the text, and in the same time I provided them with a list of irregular verbs because the irregular verbs from the word cloud were in the past. Then they took turns in reading the text to see how many words from their lists appeared in the text.

This activity was done in order to see what they expected to read about, it gave me an idea about how their expectations matched with the text; in other words I knew exactly how many of them had an appropriate framework about the content of the text.

At this stage students worked individually and my intervention occurred when I gave them the instructions.

In the last stage of the pre-task I asked them to work in pairs to complete the last task. They had to read the text in order to answer some questions and then to order the events as they appeared in the text.

When the time allotted for this task was over they were invited in turns to tell their answers to the class.

This activity allowed me to know that they were on the right way to the main task which was in fact primarily focused on the function of the language because it had an achievable outcome- to talk about past events- and they grasped the function.

The text and pictures used in this pre-task are adapted from “Access” brochure, Express Publishing and are provided in the Appendix B. The activities used in this pre-task are devised around the text and are also provided in the appendix mentioned above.

Task

This main task or task cycle has the focus on fluency; it is intended on students’ ability to perform the task without any explicit instruction on grammar rules. The task itself in fact focuses on relating past events forcing students to use the past simple tense. In this lesson the main task allows students to create their own story while having a model on which to work introduced in the pre-task phase.

Working together, reflecting on the task itself as well as on the meaning of the text in the pre-task and making connections between the main task and the meaning conveyed by the text and moreover, as they did other mini-tasks in the pre-task phase having the purpose to prepare them for the main task being intended on past events; all these should guide the students to notice the specific grammar items used in the text and they should use them in their story. However, the main focus at this phase is on function.

So at the task level I organised the students in groups and I gave them hand outs with the instructions and guidelines to help them in planning their story but I also explained them the task. I announced them that they decided to enter a story competition and the title of the competition is “What an experience!”. I explained them that they had to work together using their imagination to invent a story – or it might have real parts- about a life changing experience they had as if they had passed together through the same experience, each of them having a role. First I announced them that they had to set the scene thinking of an interesting beginning so that the public should be dragged into the story.

I suggested them to make notes first using the guidelines to gather enough information and then to focus on the most important things and to develop them. I also suggested them to use detailed description in relating the events to make their story sound real. I also let them know that as they passed together through the same unusual experience each of them should take part in presenting their story to the class, each having a part to relate.

At the planning stage students worked together following the instructions to make up their story and to prepare their presentation. It is at this stage when they choose which part of the story is assigned to whom. At this phase they also practiced their presentation in order to help the other members of the group to check their English. While they were working together, I monitored them and eventually helped them with some vocabulary items. They worked together until the time allotted for this task was over and they had to move on to the next stage –reporting.

At the reporting stage each group came in front of the class in turns to tell their story. Each member of the group has a role in their story, as it is supposed they faced the events each of them had turns to present his part as follow: one of them began the story and then every student continued with his part so that there was a logical order of events. While they were performing in front of their classmates, I wrote down the mistakes and we discussed them together at the end of the activity.

Language focus

At this stage of the lesson the concern is with form of the past simple tense and the time allotted for this stage should be kept short in a TBI lesson. So I gave students hand-outs containing grids for each form (affirmative, interrogative, negative), each grid having a set of four sentences and each sentence having the verb taken out from the context, but given next to the grid. The students had to choose the right verb for each space and to put it in the past simple tense. They worked individually to fill in the grids until the time allotted for this activity was up. Then they took turns to tell to the class and when the mistakes appeared, they were signalled and corrected.

3.10.2.2. The present perfect simple tense

Pre-task

The pre-task stage focused on introducing students to the theme. It is not about the content or grammar, but about one of the function of the present perfect simple tense; in other words present results of past actions as in the case of control group. To say this in other words it was neither the text chosen for students to deal with nor the grammar items, but the mini-tasks that were required to be accomplished manipulating students to use grammar items taking shape of communication. So, the pre-task began with an introduction of present results of past actions and this was done through a technique of stimulating students through games.

In order to motivate them and begin the lesson in a more pleasant and challenging way , I provoked them to play a “Why (not) ?” game as a warm-up activity. I divided the class into two groups of seven and each group had to choose a leader who came in front of the class and from a pile of notes having “why(not) ?” questions on them they had to take turns in picking one and asking the others. The answers for each question were written on a wall poster in a random order and the two groups had to give the right answer. The faster group in giving the answer received a point. This game motivated them as they knew they entered a competition and each of them wanted to give the first correct answer.

At this stage of the pre-task they worked as groups and I guided them only with the instructions about the game.

Then they were announced about the topic (a typical conversation between mother and daughter about things that they have done) and were given a dialogue that was cut up and presented in a random order and the students had to work in pairs to place the sentences in the correct order and the result was a dialogue conveying the meaning of present results of past actions. After that they took turns in reading the dialogue. This mini-task gave them a chance to practice pronunciation as well as ensured them that their dialogue was in the correct order as the whole dialogue was written on a wall poster covered with a big sheet of paper and revealed when they were ready in order to see how many pairs reconstructed it correctly. In the beginning of this mini-task I also provided them with a list of the irregular verbs with all three forms. I organized them in pairs and not in groups so that I came closer to reality of their level of understanding in such a way at the end of the activity I knew exactly how many of them had an appropriate framework about the content of the dialogue. But understanding the content of the dialogue doesn’t mean that they are totally aware of what is intended to be presented.

So in order to ensure myself that they properly understood the function of the present perfect simple tense and to guide them on the right way to the main task , I asked them to keep the pairs already formed to work together on the same dialogue. In the last stage of the pre-task I asked them to remember the game from the beginning of the lesson and I challenged them to make up similar “why’ questions for some prompts taken out from the dialogue. It was when I knew exactly how many of them noticed the present results of the past actions as “why” questions implied analogy with the game coming up with questions for the prompts connected with the dialogue. Despite of giving them clear instructions and suggesting them “why something is now” I had the surprise to have some of them so ”creative” that they made up questions out from prompts not from dialogue. For example, for the prompt “I have cooked hamburgers.” those who didn’t grasp the function came with the following question: “Why have you cooked hamburgers?” – question made up out from prompt- instead of “Why can she smell onion?” – question made up out from dialogue. So, that’s why the last stage of the pre-task ensured me how many of them grasped the function of the present perfect simple tense. As they read aloud their questions qualifying them as right or wrong and correcting the wrong ones enabled those who didn’t manage with the questions to better understand the difference.

All the mini-tasks of the pre-task had the purpose to prepare my students for the main task.

Task

Just like in the case of the past simple tense this main task has the focus on fluency being intended to size student’s ability to perform the task without any explicit grammar rules. I thought it would be a good idea to cut the task at the planning stage in parts because the present perfect simple tense is often a complicated on for students, avoiding this way student’s failure in achieving the task or at least they should make few mistakes. This way students would gain confidence in their ability to communicate despite some difficulties. Having a model –introduced in the pre-task phase- on which to work the students were asked to develop a conversation in a certain situation; a conversation between husband and wife was chosen that forced students to use the present perfect simple tense focused on present results of past actions requiring interaction between them. Then they moved on at the second stage to use phrases of their choice developing a role play intended to be practiced in front of the class. So, creating and presenting a role play shouldn’t be a difficult one after introducing the theme and working on it in mini-tasks in the pre-task phase, phase that conveyed the clear meaning of the present perfect simple tense with the purpose to prepare them for this task. Moreover being presented in the form of a dialogue, it should give them clear evidence on forms too and they should use them correctly, as they are simple sentences not complicated ones. Anyway, it was not the form that interested us.

So, at the task level I formed the pairs and gave them handouts with the instructions but I also explained them the task. I explained then that they had to assign roles of husband and wife to devise a dialogue between them about what she has(not) managed to do as they were planning to go on a trip and she has had different things to do before they leave. I also announced them that the task was cut in two parts and they have to work on them separately, in the sense of that at the end of each part they had to tell to the rest of the class their answers. First of all at the planning stage they worked together to sort in two columns things belonging to the two pictures.

At this stage they also talked to each other to decide upon things that wife managed to do or not and to put them into two lists. Then they took turns to tell to the class and to check their notes. That way I ensured about their ability to cope with the task and about their successful outcome as well. Because there were only two students working on the task some of them needed more help.

Then I asked them to move to the next stage and devise a conversation between husband and wife. At this stage they had to agree upon their roles. When the pairs finished their task , they practiced the dialogue in silence before their presentation in front of the class to gain more confidence in themselves. They worked together until the time allotted for this task was over and they were asked to move on to the next phase, namely reporting. It was at this stage when I monitored them and eventually help them.

At the reporting stage each pair is asked to present the role-play in front of the class. While they were performing their roles in front of their classmates, I noted down the mistakes each pair made. At the end of the activity I presented them the mistakes and I asked them to discuss them if not alone, together.

Language focus

At this stage of the lesson the focus is on form of the present perfect simple tense. The students were given worksheets on which they had to work individually. The worksheets contained an exercise and the students had completed the blanks with the right form of the present perfect simple tense.

When the time allotted for this activity was over they took turns to tell to the class. Whenever the mistakes appeared they were signalled and corrected. In the error correction the first attempt was self-correction and only after that they corrected each other.

CHAPTER 4

DESCRIPTION OF THE RESULTS

Descriptive statistics

Descriptive statistics presents and describes numerical data. Thus, the number of students (N), mean (M), standard deviation (Std. Deviation/SD) and the coefficient of variability (V factor) were used to present the results. Standard deviation is the most useful index of variability of the data, and the coefficient of variability is used to set the degree of homogeneity of a sample.

4.1 Results of the initial stage

In the initial stage of the research a pre-test was run to the two groups. The pretest was run with the purpose to find out both the students’ condition about their grammatical competence (past simple tense and present perfect simple tense in our case), and the homogeneity of the two groups.

4.1.1. Control group

Table 1 illustrates data from the initial stage for the control group.

Table 1. The descriptive statistics for the control group at pre test

Table 1 shows that the students ‘ mean at the pretest was 6.50 and the degree of spread from it was 1.446. The degree of homogeneity of the control group was about 22.24%. According to statistics a percentage between 15% – 30% of coefficient of variability shows that the group is still homogenous. Thus our percentage indicates that the control group was rather homogenous.

4.1.2.Experimental group

Table 2 illustrates data from the initial stage for the experimental group.

Table 2. The descriptive statistics for the experimental group at pre test

Table 2 shows that the mean for the experimental group at pretest was about 6.36 with a degree of spread from it of 1.328. The coefficient of variability being between the limits that statistics allows us for a sample to be homogenous we could conclude that the experimental group was homogenous too.

4.2. Results of the experimental stage

In the middle of the experimental stage a test was applied to the two groups. The test aimed at short-term learning process because the teaching phase was not over, so it was focused on the acquisition of tenses during the teaching phase with the two groups. In other words the results of the test would tell us if there was any change concerning the acquisition of tenses.

4.2.1. Control group

Table 3 displays data from the experimental stage for the control group.

Table3. The descriptive statistics of the results during the teaching phase with the control group

Table 3 displays the mean and standard deviation of the control group. As it can be seen all the students were present and the control group’s mean was 7.03. Standard deviation of the mean shows us that the degree of spread from mean was 1.280 with the control group.

4.2.2. Experimental group

Table 4 presents data from the experimental stage for the experimental group.

Table 4. The descriptive statistics of the results during the teaching phase with the experimental group

With the regard to Table 4 we can see that all the students in the experimental group were present when the test was carried out. Experimental group’s mean at that moment was 6.39 and standard deviation of the mean was 1.453

4.3. Results of the final stage

At the end of the experiment all the students of the two groups participated at post-test. The post-test was administrated to all the students of the two groups in order to find out the differences in acquisition of the two tenses (past simple and present perfect simple tense) by the two different groups using two different teaching methods (PPP and TBI). In other words the post- test had the purpose to find out if there was any significant difference between the means of the two independent samples. It was at that stage when we tested our hypothesis and we could see if there was any progress.

4.3.1. Control group

Table 5 displays data from the final stage for the control group.

Table 5. The descriptive statistics for the control group at post-test

The table 5 shows us that all the students in the control group took part at the post-test. As we can see their mean after the teaching process, at post-test, was 7.75 with a standard deviation from it of 1.391

4.3.2. Experimental group

Table 6 presents data from the final stage for the experimental group.

Table 6. The descriptive statistics for the experimental group at post-test

Table 6 indicates that at the moment of the post-test all the students took part . The mean of the experimental group at post-test was 6.50 and the standard deviation from the mean was 1.581.

4.4. Results of the post-final stage

At post final stage a re-test was conducted with the two groups. It was intended to observe the performance of the two groups over, long after the teaching process was over. In other words it was intended to observe the progress in the acquisition of the two tenses by the two groups over time.

4.4.1. Control group

Table 7 shows data from the post-final stage for the control group.

Table 7. The descriptive statistics for the control group at re-test

With the regard to table 7 we can observe that the mean at re-test for the control group was 7.82 with a standard deviation from it of 1.393. We also remark that all the students in the control group participated at re-test.

4.4.2. Experimental group

Table 8 illustrates data from the post-final stage for the experimental group.

Table 8. The descriptive statistics for the experimental group at re-test

As table 8 illustrates at the re-test the experimental group’s mean was 6.57 and the standard deviation from it was 1.556. We can also see that all the students from the experimental group participated at re-test at that time.

CHAPTER 5

DATA ANALYSIS

Inferential statistics

Inferential statistics compares and interprets the data displayed by the descriptive statistics in order to use them to draw conclusions. It is used to test the hypothesis, in our case whether the students aware of the three dimensional structure of the verb acquire tenses more efficiently than those who are not aware of the three dimensional structure of the verb. The inferential statistics in our case made use of independent t-test in order to test the significant difference between the means of the two independent samples.

5.1. The comparison between control group and experimental group at

pre-test

To compare whether the students in the two groups were on the same ground concerning their level of knowledge, so their mastery in using the past simple tense and the present perfect simple tense an independent t-test was run at pre-test.

Theoretically either t is calculated step-by-step or with the computer help through a special programme t- calculated , according to statistics, results from a statistic formula that takes into account the difference of the means of the two independent samples and the standard deviation of the sampling distribution of the samples’ mean difference – standard error in other words. After choosing the level of significance (p- value) and setting the degree of freedom (df) t calculated is compared to t table (statistic t) in order to see if there is any significant difference between the means of the two samples.

Table 1 displays the result of the t-test between the control group and experimental group at pre-test.

Table 1. Results of t-test analysis for comparing the means of the two groups at pre- test

Table 1 indicates that both control group and experimental group were rather homogenous at pre-test because the coefficient of variability ( 22.24% for control group and respectively 20.88% for experimental group) corresponded to percentage between 15% – 30% accepted by statistics for the groups to be homogenous.

Meanwhile the result of the independent t test for mean showed that there wasn’t any significant difference between the means of the two groups at pre-test because the value of calculated t(28) was lower than the value of statistic t (28) at a level of significance of 0.05.

Thus, the fact that the control group and experimental group were homogenous and that there wasn’t any significant difference between the means of the two independent samples at pre-test demonstrated that both the control group and experimental group had the same starting point at pre-test. In other words both the control group and experimental group were on the same ground and shared the same level of knowledge concerning their ability to handle the past simple and the present perfect simple tense.

Fig.1. Control group versus experimental group before the experiment

5.2. The comparison between control group and experimental group at

post-test

After analysing homogeneity and level of knowledge about past simple and present perfect simple tense of the students in the two groups, I conducted to the hypothesis testing. The hypothesis in this research states that students aware of the three dimensional structure of the verb acquire tenses more efficiently than those who are not. Anyway the hypothesis ( Ha) must be changed to the null hypothesis (H0) before the hypothesis is accepted or rejected because a t- test is applied in the null hypothesis. So our null hypothesis states that tenses are acquired anyway by the students during the process of communication. In other words both students from the control group and those in experimental group acquire tenses equally.

Statistically if the value of t- calculated is higher than the value of t-table it means that there is a significant difference, thus the null hypothesis is rejected and consequently the main hypothesis is accepted. And vice versa if the value of t-table is higher than the value of t-calculated the null hypothesis is accepted and the alternative ( main) hypothesis is rejected. In other words this means that there is no significant difference or it doesn’t produce any change.

In order to test the hypothesis a t- test was run. Table 2 illustrates the result of the t-test between the control group and experimental group at post-test.

Table 2. Results of t- test analysis for comparing the means of the two groups at post test

Table 2 illustrates that the result of independent t test was 2.306 at post-test. Comparing the value of t calculated with the value of t-table at 28 degree of freedom and at a level of significance of 0.05 it is clear that the value of t calculated is higher than the value of t table. This means that we reject the null hypothesis and accept the alternative hypothesis. Inspecting deeply the data of the problem if we look carefully in a statistic table we can see that the value of t calculated at 28 degree of freedom can be taken even at 0.025 probability.

reject the null accept the null reject the null

-t table 0 t table

-1.701 + 1.701

Fig.2. t-distribution on Gaussian Bell Curve

As it can be seen fig.2 illustrates that t-calculated falls in the rejection area of the null hypothesis. This means that if the null hypothesis is rejected, the alternative hypothesis is accepted. So it can be concluded that the students who were aware of the three-dimensional structure of the verb acquired the two tenses more efficiently than those who were not. In other words the students who were taught using the PPP method understood the past simple and present perfect simple tense better than those who were taught using TBI method.

Fig.3. Control Group versus experimental group after the experiment

5.3. The comparison between control group and experimental group at re-test

At about four weeks after the hypothesis testing, a retest was run to all students. It was intended to observe the acquisition of the past simple and present perfect simple tense by the control group and experimental group over time. To have a better look of the students’ condition over time concerning their acquisition of tenses figure 4 illustrates student’s performance over time.

Fig.4. Students’ performances over time

As figure 4 illustrates both control and experimental group had the same starting point before the experiment but they reached different points in time.

At a closer look we can see that the control group detached visibly by the experimental group. Anyway a progress can be seen even in the teaching phase with the students in the control group, students who didn’t stop, on the contrary their results increased even more reaching a significant level of difference with those in the experimental group.

In the same time it can also be seen a slightly increase with the experimental group too, but it wasn’t significant. That control group performed better than the experimental group over time was due to the methods applied to them.

So we can conclude that the students who were aware of the three-dimensional structure of the verb used tenses more efficiently.

CONCLUSIONS

This study investigated the implementing of PPP and TBI methods in teaching tenses with two classes with the purpose to find out the efficiency in tenses acquisition by the students. The tenses were limited to past simple and present perfect simple tense , this being an area where students encounter great difficulties.

The results of the post-test showed that the students who were taught using the PPP method performed better than those who were taught using the TBI method.

Before the experiment all the student were tested in order to find out if they shared the same level of knowledge and at the same time if their homogeneity was the same; thus the results at post-test were considered valid and reliable. The results at pre-test showed that the two groups had the same starting point.

However during the teaching phase an improvement was noticed with the control group, their monitoring being done with the help of a test applied during the experiment.

At the end of the experiment the students were tested again in order to see the effects each method had had on them , and at the same time testing hypothesis. The result of the independent t-test showed a significant difference between the means of the control group and experimental group in the favour of the control group. This means that the PPP method had a positive effect.

Thus we can say that the PPP method is more efficient than TBI method in teaching tenses. Maybe the TBI method would work better with native speakers of English or with students capable of high performance. At normal classes, as in our case, the students who were aware of the three dimensional structure, in fact inseparable, of the verb benefited of a better acquisition of the past simple and present perfect simple tense and made progress, progress that was seen over time.

But, this study was applied only to two classes therefore is limited. On the other hand it is a known fact that in teaching- learning relationship many factors contribute such as teaching methods, learning styles , class size, therefore would be a challenge for other researchers to conduct further investigation expanding the research area to large classes and why not to other tenses.

As a conclusion present and past tenses are vitally important in the process of communication therefore they deserve further investigation.