Reusing Comprehensive Charts of Tense Forms to Teach EFL Students in a University of Science and Technology

Abstract

This study investigated 228 English as foreign language freshmen at a university of science and technology in
southern Taiwan to explore the participants’ knowledge of English tense forms by recognizing 12 tense forms and
translating Chinese sentences into English with specific tense forms. The results showed that the participants who
were taught with the Comprehensive Charts of 24 Tense Forms outperformed their counterparts in the control group
in recognizing the tense patterns and translating the present perfect continuous tense (at a significant level, p＜.05).
However, the translation of the other two tense sentences did not reach the statistically significant level. The results
of this study supported the researcher’s speculation in the previous study, Using Comprehensive Charts of Tense
Forms to Teach EFL College Students, that the mastery of tense forms was closely related to the subjects’ English
proficiency level and the non-written context. The instruction with the Comprehensive Charts particularly worked for
students of the advanced level. A questionnaire designed to explore the participants’ preference of tense form
teaching with the Comprehensive Charts indicated that 65.1 percent of the subjects preferred the focus on formS
teaching (Doughty & Williams, 1998) and 64.7 percent of them deemed it was the most effective. This present study
suggested storing the grammatical knowledge of tense forms in learners’ memory for future retrieval based on the
“Instance Theory.” An Instructional Mode: Using the Comprehensive Charts for Teaching the Tense Forms was also
appended.