Lexical Aspect and the Use of Simple Past Tense by Thai Learners of English

Bibliographic Data

ID14823217
AuthorsSuriya Sriphrom (Center for Applied Linguistics, corresponding author), Theeraporn Ratitamkul
Year2014
Volume17
Issue1
Pages64-77
Publication date2014-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueManusya Journal of Humanities (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0859-9920 • E-ISSN: 2665-9077
PublisherWalter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE)
DOI10.1163/26659077-01701004
OpenAlexW2947793344
LanguageEN
References cited10

This cross-sectional study investigated the use of the simple past tense form by twenty Thai learners of English at two levels of proficiency. A cloze test developed by Ayoun and Salaberry (2008) was adopted. The findings showed that the learners in the high proficiency group used the past tense form more accurately than the learners in the low proficiency group. When verbs were categorized according to lexical aspect, both groups of learners were found to use the simple past tense form most often with telic events as well as with states. This did not correspond to the prediction of the Aspect Hypothesis, which asserts that low-level learners tend to use the simple past tense form with telic events first. The distributional bias in the input could account for the pattern found in this study

Linguistics · Mathematics education · Morpheme · Past tense · Present tense · Simple past · Verb · EFL/ESL Teaching and Learning · Philosophy · Psychology · Reading and Literacy Development · Second Language Acquisition and Learning