The Difficulties Students Face in Applying Past Complex Tenses in Written Expression Classes

Abstract

The current study attempts to identify the main difficulties students face in using past complex tenses including: past perfect, past continuous, and past perfect continuous. Through highlighting and finding out the errors students make while applying these tenses in their writing two research questions are raised: 1) What kind of difficulties students encounter in applying the past complex tenses in written expression classes? 2) What kind of errors students produce while using the past complex tenses in their writing. Data for this study were collected using a grammar test that was given to a sample of fifty third year students at Mohammed Seddik ben Yahya university . Moreover, a questionnaire was administrated to ten written expression teachers at the department of English of the same university. The results obtained from this study showed that the most problematic tenses are past perfect and past perfect continuous, students have less difficulties concerning the past continuous in comparison with the rest past complex tenses. Furthermore, students face difficulties in using the past complex tenses in their writing both at the level of use and form. Regarding the tense use, Most of the students struggle to apply the past complex tenses appropriately within the context. They feel confused to differentiate between their complex uses. They either substitute the tense with other tenses, or use simpler tenses to avoid their complexity. Regarding the tense form, the main types of errors are omission, addition, Misordering, and misformation. Students find it challenging to offer the correct form that suits each tense in their writing. Consequently, teachers are recommended to provide a deep explanation concerning the functions and forms of tenses; especially those are rarely used in order to overcome all kinds of confusion that can lead students to avoid using these tenses in their writing.