The Problem of Tenses among Nigerian Speakers of English
Chapter One
AIMS AND OBJECTIVES
This study aims at discussing in some details the English tenses in order to examine the possible mother tongue interference on the speakers or learners of English as a second language and also to point out other factors responsible for the misuse of English tenses. This study seeks to explain at length the problems students encounter in the usage of tenses and tries to offer some ways with which to overcome these problems.
CHAPTER TWO
INTRODUCTION
The wrong use of English tenses is said to be predominant among grammatical errors of different kinds. This chapter addressees errors committed by students in the area of tenses in grammar. It looks into the misuse of English Language tenses as per different scholars Robert Palmer quoted in Alagbe:
Language as a means of communication among people has a sensitive aspect which is the verb. So learning to write or speak correctly and meaningfully is like trying to operate the verbal forms of the language involved.(91)
The above clearly shows that in order to speak fluently and write correctly, it is important you make yourself familiar with the verbal forms of the language in use because the verbs cannot be left out if meaning is to be made, since English Language is what is being talked about here, one has to make himself familiar with English verbs so that if there is a mastery of the verbal forms of English, there will be consistency in the usage of English tenses.
TENSES
The wrong usage of tenses are said to be prominent among the grammatical errors of different kinds committed by most learners or speakers of English Language in their written and spoken forms.
MISUSE OF TENSE: An Analytical Perspective
The misuse of English tenses could be traced down to numerous reasons among which is the mother tongue interference (MT) on the target language (TL) and due to this reason, speakers of English Language tend to have so many problems, like the problem of overgeneralization, gravitational pull of the first language (LI), internal analogy and overgeneralization as earlier stated, pronunciation according to spelling, poor learning, exposure to non standard variety of English used outside the classroom, the attitudes of the community, those in power, the policy of the government and some other factors like failure to understand the nature of the second language, lack of adequate vocabulary and the culture gap between the two systems.
Scholars all over the world have been theorizing on L1 interference on L2. Many of these researchers’ theories have subsumed under two basic models: positive and negative interference.
However, much attention is being given to negative interference. This is so because it is the aspect which has negative impact on L2 learners of any language and the end is to improve such a situation.
This study is not far from the aforementioned scholarly reviews, as it investigates the extent to which the Nigerian users of English as a second language misuse the English tenses due to interference and poor teaching background among other causes.
The negative view of L1 interference on L2 is mainly represented by two theories contrastive analysis (CA) and constrastive rhetoric (CR). Carl James and Lado. R. CA hypothesis has both a psychological and linguist aspect. The psychological aspect is based on behaviourist learning theory and the linguist aspect, on structuralist linguistics. Behaviourist learning emphasizes on interfering elements of learning, claiming that interference entails difficulty in learning. Structuralist linguistics lays a strong emphasis on differences between languages.
CHAPTER THREE
DATA PRESENTATION AND ANALYSIS
INTRODUCTION
This chapter presents the data collected and a critical analysis of the collected data. The sentences in the extracts presented are numbered for easy reference in the analysis.
Extract 1: (Essay 1; sentence 1 and 2)
- My experience on campus is characterized with a lot of hurdles and achievements, which can be tracefrom my first day on campus.
- The registration exercise isa very tedious one which took me two weeks to complete because I have not experience anything of such before.
CHAPTER FOUR
SUMMARY, CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS
INTRODUCTION
This chapter summarises the whole content of the work discussed in the proceeding chapters. It provides the conclusion and finally gives recommendations.
SUMMARY
The study from the beginning examined the English Language tenses. It discussed the related literature and discovered problems students encounter in the usage of English Language tense. This as examined in the previous chapters is due to fossilization of some L1 features (problem of time specification of illogical time sequences), non-challant attitude on the part of the students, exposure to the non-standard variety of English Language used outside the classroom, false hypothesization or analogy and overgeneralization. The study subsequently, after reviewing made use of the theory of error analysis with the inter language approach as a befitting theoretical framework for the analysis of the study.
The methodology used for the research includes both primary and secondary sources where we have observations as well as other sources were used.
CONCLUSION
As it was generally noted in this research, it can be concluded that most students are unable to use most of the English tenses correctly and that they still need to go back to their note books, text books and even to their elementary grammar texts in order to rebuild their weak foundation.
Thus, I am of the opinion that the inadequate exposure to language use and probably poor teaching background, overgeneralization and all other factors mentioned earlier are the contributing factors to the problems we still have with the misuse of tenses in English Language among other factors includes the L1 interference on L2 (English Language).
RECOMMENDATIONS
From the study so far, the following recommendations have been drawn for the readers to exempt themselves from wrong usage of tenses in communication.
These recommendations are:
- That student should try to familiarize themselves with the distinctive English tense system so that they can easily identify their problems and aim of improving on them.
- That student should try to study (at their leisure time) those grammar book such as : – Gimson, Roach, Tomori, Quirk and others so that they can build themselves on the language tenses as well as verbs.
- That the government should also try at all cost to provide facilities and equip the library for successful learning of the English Grammar.
If the aforementioned recommendations are strictly adhered to, I believe the problems of the misuse of tense in communication would be overcome or minimized to the lowest level.
WORKS CITED
- Ayo Bamgbose: “The English language in Nigeria”1994, Ibadan, Nigeria. (print)
- Ayo Bamgbose, Ayo Banjo, Andrew Thomas: New Englishes – A West African perspective “On codifying Nigeria English Research” British council, 1995
- “English in Nigerian Environment”, 1995 Ibadan, Nigeria. (print)
- Barber Charles. “The story of Language” 1975 London. (print)
- Carl James. An introduction: “Constrastive Analysis” 1980 Longman, London. (Print).
- David Jowitt. “Nigeria English usage”, 1991, Longman, Lagos, Nigeria. (print)
- Eka David and Udofot. “Aspect of spoken Language” 1996, Bon University Press, Cross River. (print)
- Festus Adesanoye. “Formally as an aspect of unreadibility in Nigeria”, 1979. African Universities Press, Lagos. (print)
