Abstract
Due to the variety and complexity of verb tenses in English, English as a Second Language (ESL) / English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners often experience difficulty in mastering English verb tense system. This corpus-based study was conducted to ascertain the most frequently used verb tenses by English native speakers (NSs), specifically in their academic writing in a history course. As this study aimed to examine the naturally-occurring language produced by NSs, specifically in their academic writing, an original corpus of 101,713 words was assembled. The corpus consisted of 130 research papers written by 65 students. The corpus was analyzed, targeting certain linguistic items: the twelve verb tenses, modals, perfect modals, and imperatives. These targets were highlighted using a code-coloring method. Then, the items were calculated using Microsoft Excel. Excel calculations revealed the number of occurrences of each of the verb tenses, modals, perfect modals, and imperatives that was utilized in the corpus. The results revealed that the simple past tense was predominant, followed by the simple present tenses. Modals came third, as they occurred more frequently than any of the other verb tenses. The remaining targets had percentages ranging between 1.62% and zero. These findings could contribute in developing the methodology of teaching verb tenses to ESL/EFL learners in a way that reinforces their comprehension of the most important and most common items. In addition, this information is very important for materials designers and curriculum professionals.
Notes
If this is your thesis or dissertation, and want to learn how to access it or for more information about readership statistics, contact us at STARS@ucf.edu
Graduation Date
2017
Semester
Fall
Advisor
Folse, Keith
Degree
Master of Arts (M.A.)
College
College of Arts and Humanities
Department
Modern Languages
Degree Program
Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages
Format
application/pdf
Identifier
CFE0007293
URL
http://purl.fcla.edu/fcla/etd/CFE0007293
Language
English
Release Date
June 2018
Length of Campus-only Access
None
Access Status
Masters Thesis (Open Access)
STARS Citation
Qahtani, Bushra, "The Frequency of the Twelve Verb Tenses in History Papers Written by University Native Writers" (2017). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 6097.
https://stars.library.ucf.edu/etd/6097