The Ineffectiveness of Overt Input on the Problematic Grammatical Features of Tense Usage and Verb Conjugation for Native Arabic Speaking Learners of English for Academic Purposes (EAP)

Gareth Morgan

Abstract


ThisstudyexaminestheeffectivenessoftheprovisionofspecificinputontheuseofverbconjugationandtensestopreparatorystudentsatImamAbdulrahmanBinFaisalUniversity,Dammam,SaudiArabia.Thisisawell-documentedgrammaticalissuefornativeArabicspeakers, and was undertaken due to this factor, as well as the students under instruction having made numerous errors in their initial written work. Consequently, it was focussed on in the classroom, with the students’ post-input formal writing compared with the production of students fromanotherclass,atthesamelevel,who,incontrast,hadnotreceivedspecificinputonthisgrammatical feature. The results conclude that such overt input has no discernible effect, due to the errors produced by both groups being extremely similar with reference to both quantity andcause,withverbconjugationandmissingverbsfeaturingprominentlyforbothgroups,particularly the inability to use third person ‘s’. As a result, despite language acquisition being a gradual process, I will desist from focusing on this grammatical feature due to the lack of effect of the input, but, will continue to germane errors when providing feedback on student writing in order to provide a less explicit and time consuming focus on this issue, while attempting to improve grammatical accuracy.

Keywords


Aspect, Tense, Verb Conjugation, Verb Patterns, Accuracy

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References


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DOI: https://doi.org/10.7575/aiac.alls.v.9n.4p.193

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