INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND COMMUNICATION STUDIES (IJELCS )
E-ISSN 2545-5702
P-ISSN 2695-2157
VOL. 8 NO. 1 2023
DOI: https://doi.org/10.56201/ijelcs.v8.no1.2023.pg27.36
Wrong Usage of English Tenses in Student’s Essays: The Nigerian
Experience
Chiedu, Rosemary Ebele
Abstract
The paper examines wrong usage of English tenses in sentences contained in students’ essays.
English as a language has distinct and peculiar rules governing its usage and the rules guiding
the correct use of tenses is one of them. The theory adopted for this study is Error Analysis by Pit
Corder and it is adopted because it has been observed over the years that learners and users of a
second or foreign language, most often than not, transfer the grammatical and semantic features
of their first language (mother tongue) to the language that is being learnt. During the study, it
was discovered after a careful data analysis of students’ essays that English tenses are most of the
time wrongly used by students. One of the recommendations given is that students should be
encouraged and made to familiarize themselves with the distinctive English tense system so that
they can easily identify their inadequacies in English tense usage and aim at improving on them
to enhance their level of proficiency in English language usage generally.
References:
Anefnaf, Z. (2017) English Learning: Linguistic Flaws. Unpublished B. A. Thesis, Faculty of Arts
and Humanities, Sidi Mohammed Benabdelah University, Morocco
Bamgbose, A. & Thomas, A. (1995) New Englishes: A West African Perspective. On Codifying
Nigerian English Research. British Council
Beare, K. (1996) English as Second Language. New York, USA
Collins, L. (2017) L1 Differences and L2 Similarities: Teaching Verb Tenses in English. ELT
Journal, 61(4), p295-303
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