Chinese Learners' Acquisition Of Two English Tenses And The Effects Of Temporal Expressions On The Use Of The Two Tenses

This paper examines two empirical studies, one is to investigate Chinese learners'acquisition of the simple past and present perfect in English interlanguage; the other is to investigate the effects of temporal expressions on the judgment and use of the two tenses. Both of the tests take the forms of blank filling and translation from Chinese into English for the purpose of examining Chinese learners'judgment and recognition of the two tenses and the actual use in reality respectively. The participants are of different proficiency levels to check whether the proficiency levels have an influence on the use of the tenses as well. The results of the two tests point out that Chinese learners tend to misuse the simple past and present perfect in English, and the existence, position and transparency of temporal adverbials in a sentence all have a great effect on the choices of the tenses. Besides, groups of higher levels do not present too much advantage when using tenses as a result of their advanced English levels,and students'English language proficiency differences can find more direct expressions in their vocabulary size and the variety of sentence structures. The study also points out Chinese learners'lower consciousness of tense and aspect in English and the inconsistency in tense agreement, which shows the general ignorance or inadequate attention to the teaching and learning of English tenses on the part of both teachers and students. In addition, Chinese, the native language, also affects the choice of the tenses in English. As to the teaching of tense and aspect in the future, efforts should constantly be made to learn and enrich tense knowledge in the process of using them in reality.