Tense errors in English committed by FET high school learners in the Lower Umfolozi Circuit: their implications for communicative competence
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Date
2021
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Publisher
University of Zululand
Abstract
The study was set to establish if the explicit teaching of English grammar could improve the tense competence of the high school learners (FET-PHASE) of the Lower Umfolozi Circuit. The aim was premised on the knowledge that there is interlink between the English tense competence and the English communicative competence as a whole. That is, the status of the learners’ English tense competence was vital for the learners’ acquisition and application of English language generally. Moreover, the study viewed tense as the heart of many errors committed by the members of the population and so it had a potential, if handled correctly, of providing a relevant solution. According to Rahman and Ali (2015), citing Bardovi-Harding (2000), English tense is one of the two major parts of grammar in the teaching of language and subsequently constitutes a major part in the language teaching syllabus. By adopting the One-group Pre-test Post-test Design, the study managed to, firstly, establish the English tense competence level of the learners before the insertion of the teaching manipulation (the dependable variable). Secondly, the said design enabled the study to experiment the explicit teaching approach on the population whose results verified the remarkable effectiveness of the approach. That is, the respondents’ performance levels in the pre-test and the post-test respectively were not the same. The respondents’ performance results of the post-test surpassed their performance results of the pre-test although both tests assessed the same respondents on the same subject, tense. Since, the performance results of each test represented the level of tense competence that the respondents had at the time of the writing of the corresponding test, the results proved that the respondents’ tense competence level at the time of the writing of the post-test was higher than what it had been at the time of the writing of the pre-test. Therefore, the study results did not only show improvement in the learners’ tense competence, but also evidenced the relevance and effectiveness of the explicit teaching of grammar approach to the high schools of the Lower Umfolozi Circuit. This was so because the higher tense competence shown by the respondents in the post-test, logically, came as a result of the explicit teaching intervention that was conducted by the researcher in-between the two tests. Subsequent to the above mentioned findings of the study, the study made a number of recommendations. With the implementation of the recommendations, the high school learners of the Lower Umfolozi Circuit would have an improved English tense competence would impact positively on their application of the English language in general.
Description
A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Art in the department of English at the University of Zululand, South Africa, 2021.
Keywords
English, tense errors, High school learners, explicit teaching