A Comparative Study Of Tense Use In The Results Section Of Empirical Reports Between L1-and L2-English Users

Due to the inconsistent tense use in the Results section of some L2-English Chinese learners’ doctoral dissertations in applied linguistics, tense use in the Results section of L1-English authors’ articles in the same field from several international key periodicals were parallelly probed into. It was found that simple past tense was mainly used by L1-English authors and simple present tense was mainly used by L2-English authors. Based on this comparative observation, the present study aims to find out whether there were significant differences between the tense use by L1-and L2-English authors when reporting results of empirical studies and how L1-and L2-English readers thought of the tense use in these two sample groups. Finally, possible reasons behind the differences of these L1-and L2-English users’ decisions in tense selection were explored based on the comparison of their tense concepts.The empirical study, which consists of two studies and a synthetic discussion, was conducted primarily with qualitative methods. Three focuses in Results section were picked out:research procedures generating results, location of results and report of results for the two studies. The first is a library study, which began with a Chi-square comparison of tense use of the three focuses in the Results section of the ten sampled L1-English periodical articles and the other ten sampled L2-English doctoral dissertations. It was followed by e-mail interviews with the authors on the differences in tense use observed in the previous comparative study, from which, what they were thinking of when selecting tense was found out. The second is a field study, which aimed to investigate how the L1-and L2-English participants think of their tense selection for a group of questionnaire items, which was also followed by an e-mail interview. The questionnaire was designed based on the findings of the first study and included two focuses, i.e., research procedures for generating results and report of results. Report of results was divided into results description and results analysis to get more information about the participants’ thoughts.Results show that in Study One, there were significant differences in the tense use by L1-and L2-English authors on two focuses, namely, research procedures for generating results and report of results. Moreover, both in Study One and Study Two, for the tense use in reporting research procedures for generating results, almost all L1-English authors and participants used simple past tense while L2-English authors and participants used either simple past tense or simple present tense, with a higher proportion of the simple past tense (still apparently lower than the frequency of the same tense in the observed L1-English written performance). By probing into the explanation of both the L1-and L2-English users observed, it was found that L1-English users had mastered far more functional meanings of the simple past tense of English other than reference to past time, compared with L2-English users. The latter used more often the simple present tense, owing to the fact that they had blind spots in such functional meanings of the simple past tense as limiting the scope of the results to the study being discussed, realizing psychological remoteness, objectivity and a modest mood. Without such knowledge, they failed to utilize the simple past tense to achieve better rhetorical quality as L1-English users did. It was also revealed that even L1-English scholars might have different considerations in tense selection under the same context, and tense selection in the empirical report was by nature a rhetorical selection, depending on the user’s pragmatic intention. On the other hand, some prescriptive rules were made by academic institutions such as the American Psychological Association (APA) whose publication manual (2009) required past tense in reporting empirical results, which effectively standardized the tense use in academic works, but also invoked criticism of some linguists from the perspective of linguistic functions.The present study finds that advanced L2-English learners observed had not acquired all the functional meanings of the simple past tense. It provides evidence to Bley-Vroman (1989)’s fundamental difference hypothesis between L1acquisition and L2learning, as well as to Wang(2003)’s context compensation hypothesis. Their failure may be attributed to the context paucity in classroom teaching. It is also possible that unconscious transfer of L1mentality leads to the higher proportion of present tense use by L2-English users. It implies that in the process of foreign language teaching, teachers should bring more contextual experience to the students.