A contrastive study of tense and aspect in English and Japanese: Pedagogical implications

This study is a contrastive analysis of tense and aspect in English and Japanese. The systems of tense and aspect in the two languages are formally described, then contrasted.;The comparison indicates that English has more syntactic forms of tense and aspect than Japanese. In the latter, lexical items play an important role in distinguishing a situation from another. Consequently, two or more different English forms are translated into the single Japanese form. The investigation examines also the relationship between the areas of contrast and the tense and aspect errors made by the learners of English whose L;The findings seem to indicate that (a) the tense and aspect errors made by Japanese students learning English are related to differences between the tense and aspect systems of English and Japanese. (b) The most noticeable errors are in the area of the perfect aspect and in the future related area. (c) In these areas, the simple tense (either present or past) is misused.;The study recommends that the most significant differences and potential difficulties be taken into consideration in preparing teaching materials or lessons related to tense and aspect.