Abstract
English tense-aspect system has long been recognized as a difficult grammatical feature for students to learn. However, traditional grammar instruction which focuses on single rule explanation with illustrations in sentence examples is unsuccessful in addressing learner difficulty in tense-aspect learning, as it fails to capture the tense-aspect characteristics as being a complex system and being subjective to context or discourse. The present study, based on the linguistic analysis of English tense-aspect and the learner error analysis, as well as the suggestions in previous studies, proposes that Contrastive-Context can be used to help learners have better understanding toward the various tense-aspect types at a larger text level and make better tense-aspect choice in their writing. In this teaching method, structured input techniques are used in presenting the Contrastive Context in which different tense-aspect types appear. Two intact classes of high school students are recruited—one receiving the Contrastive-Context Method of instruction and the other the traditional rule-explanation instruction. In the pre- and post- tests, the subjects are required to take a cloze test and write a narrative; the former intends to gather information concerning the subjects’ understanding toward English tense-aspect, while the latter attempts to examine the subjects’ tense frame use, tense-aspect accuracy and variety after the treatments. Descriptive statistic tools and inferential statistic tools, including T-test, Chi-square, ANCOVA, and regression analysis are performed to analyze the data. The effects of the different tense-aspect instructions are examined from many perspectives, including the participants’ performance on the cloze-test items and narrative writing. The cloze test items include 26 simple past items, 12 present perfect items, and 10 past perfect items. The learners’ performance on the individual types is further analyzed. The result shows that the Contrastive-Context Group improved significantly more than the other group on the overall cloze test items. As for the performance on the three individual types, the Contrastive-Context Group also outperformed the other on all the measures. Another analysis was conducted to explore the effects of the treatments on the sententially-cued items and contextually-cued items. The Traditional-Method Group was previously expected to outperform the Contrastive-Context Group on the sententially-cued items. Yet, the result showed that the Contrastive-Context Group did a better job on both of the categories. One of the reasons might be that the traditional method places emphasis on the teaching of the collocation of a particular tense-aspect type and temporal adverbials. This, however, may trap the learners into framing false grammatical concepts. The participants’ performance on the narrative writing is also investigated from three aspects—the tense frame used in writing, tense-aspect accuracy rates, and tense-aspect varieties. There were some findings of great significance and interest. First, the Contrastive-Context Group significantly reduced inaccurate shifts from past to present tense frame in describing the same past events. Second, with respect to the tense-aspect accuracy, both of the groups did not improve significantly after the treatment, the reason for which was discussed in the thesis. Third, concerning the variety use, the result showed that the number of participants who used more than two tense-aspect types increased significantly in the Contrastive-Context Group after the treatment. Though the Traditional-Method Group also revealed similar improving patter, the number of increase did not achieve significant level as revealed by a Chi-square analysis. After the analysis of learner performance on the cloze test items and narrative writing separately, it is necessary to explore the relationships between the learners’ grammatical understanding and narrative writing. The students’ essays were rated using TOFEL CBT rating rubric, which gave a holistic score to measure the participants’ overall writing ability. To insure good inter-rater reliability, the two raters underwent a rater-training process and a re-rating phase before and after rating respectively. The general narrative writing ability was then rated into six levels based on the rating scale. The predictors for the regression analysis were the learners’ pre-writing ranking scores, pre- and post- cloze test scores, pre- and post- accuracy rate of tense-aspect use, pre- and post- use of tense-aspect varieties. The result showed that the participants’ pre- writing ability was the strongest predictor, but the learners’ post- cloze test scores and post- variety use were also significant predictors for learners’ final writing success. There is a further discussion in the thesis. Above all, the proposed method is indeed more effective than the traditional method in helping intermediate-leveled learners understand the concept of English tense-aspect. Although in the narrative writing, the learners did not improve significantly with respect to tense-aspect accuracy, this could not downgrade the value of the proposed method. One of the reasons could be a lack of time for the participants to practice what they learned, which prevent them from turning the grammatical rules they learned in class into effective monitoring strategies for language production, which usually comes with repeated practice. The value of the proposed study is that it is conducive to the development of grammatical concept concerning how English tense-aspect works at a discoursal or contextual level; furthermore, it encourages learners to demonstrate diversity of tense-aspect use in describing the events more clearly and properly. This study contributes to the research line of tense-aspect instruction by supporting the view with empirical evidence that contrast and context are helpful for learners to understand the tense-aspect to a larger text level. As for its impact on writing, it significantly reduces the learners’ inaccurate tense shifts, and helps them show tense-aspect diversity in narrative writing. This study provides the English teachers in Taiwan with a good alternative to deal with the problems the learners may face in learning tense-aspect.