Pontential Problem with Tenses

2           Many learners have  considerable difficulty with the English tense system. As other areas of the grammar, difficulties may arise  from the nature of the system it self or from differences between English and the learners’ mother tongue. English insists on marking every finite verb group for absolute tense, whether or not the time orientation would be clear without it. Many other languages, however, often do not require such marking of the verb group where the time location is either unimportant or is clear from context. This many partly explain why some learners of English tend, for example, to use Past tense only sporadically when writing narratives (Lock, 1996:163).

     Risnawati (1998) reported that Indonesian faced difficulties in writing a composition because of the differences of grammar of sentences  between English and Indonesian language. Indonesian learners got difficulties in using appropriate verb that must be corresponding to the allocation. In Indonesian language the verb form never change. Below are examples she made:

Indonesian language	English
Andi pergi ke sekolah	Andi goes to school
Andi sedang pergi ke  sekolah	Andi is going toschool
Andi pergi kesekolah kemarin	Andi went to school yesterday
Andi telah pergi kesekolah	Andi has gone to school

Table 3.The difference between Indonesian and English in verb change

     The mistakes that students made in learning English as target language, which focussed on English tenses can be classified  into three types

(Yulianita, 2005):

1.      Wrong  form

     Thomshon (1980) says tha there are four forms of verbs should be mastered in English Tenses : the form of present tense, the form of past tense, the form present participle and the form of past participle.

     This is the use of wrong verb, generally relates to the irregular.The changing of  verb from the infinitive another form that does not involve adddition or omission.

Example,

                  Incorrect: She did not told me what happened.

                    Correct: She did not tell me what happened.

2.      Additional of unnecessary item

     Possible cause of the mistake is overgeneralization. Richards (1971) says that overgeneralization happens because the students’ failure to observe the boundary of such rule.

This is the extra  use of such grammaatical item.

Example:   Incorrect: They were  graduated two years ago

                    Correct: They graduated two years ago.

3.      Omission of necessary item

     Long (1989) says that omission of be from a language with no such verbs as example of mother tongue interference.

This is the omission of such grammatical item, that actually needed.

Example:

      Incorrect: He handsome

        Correct: He is handsome..

Teaching and Learning Tenses

                  Mc.Kay(1987: 5) suggests that a grid can be used to conrast particular verb tenses. For example, in  order to contrast the present proggressive and past tense,  the teacher might beginby giving a command to one of the student such as “ Open the window”. As student is opening the window, say “ Luvan is opening the window” After he has done this, say “ Luvan closed the window

PPRESENT	PAST
Luvan is opening	Luvan closed the window

Table 2. Teaching present and past tense

            There are two basic approaches are possible. First is an inductive approach in which the teacher strives to help students from generalizations themselves by providing many examples of a particular grammar point. For example, the teacher should hope that by using sentences which indicates what class members are doing or have done, students would see how the present progressive and past tense are formed in English.

            A second altenative is a deducative approach in which the teacher gives explicit attention to the differences in form. In this case, the teacher might ask several short questions such as the following, and then summarize the student responses

1.         What are the two verbs in sentence 1? (is opening) What has been added to the main verb (ing)

2.         What has been added to the main verb senteces 2 ? (d)

3.         Which senteces describe something that is going on at the present moment?

Tenses

Tense as an element of English grammar has important role. This can be seen in Lock’ view that in order to communicate, we need to be able to:

1)    Represent what it is we want to talk about  and to locate it in time, which  means selecting appropriate process type, participant, circumstances, and tenses;

2)   Make the content interpersonally relevant and appropriate moods, modalitas, and polarities;

3)   Make the whole message relevant to the situational context, which means selecting appropriate thematic organization and appropriate reference.

Seen from this perpective, grammar is not an optional add-on to communication. It lies at the heart of communication.

Later, Bygate (1994) states that grammatical decisions involve choosing:

-       which sequence to put words in

-       which word or phrase should follow a previously selected word  or phrase

-       which groups and clauses need marking and how to mark them

-       what kind of cohesive realirions need to be marked and how to mark them

-       what tense, aspect or number information to select from amongst the options available in the language, and how to mark it

              Tense can be  defined as the linguistic expression of time realitions when this are realized by verb forms. Time is independent of language and is common to all human beings. It is conceptualized by many people, though not necessarily by all, as  being divided in to pas time, present time, and future time. Tense system are language specific and vary form one languge to another, both in the number of tenses they distinguish and in the ways in which these tenses reflect temporal reference ( Downing, 1992: 353).

              Trask (1999) states that tense is the grammar category which relates to time. Every language is capable of expressing limitless distincion of time: soon, tomorrow, next Wednesday at 2.00 137 years ago, 138 years ago. It is possible for a language to build a few of these time distinction into its grammar, and language that does so has the category of tense. Tense is thus  the grammaticalization of time.

              Hurford (1994: 239) states that traditional grammarians and modern linguists have approach this complicated area of languages with slightly different terminological conventions. What many tradisional grammarians label as various kind of tense, modern linguists split in to different ideas, namely:

-       Tense, which is trictly to do with when something happened  or was the case

-       Aspect, which is concerned with factors such as the duration or completeness  of event  and states of affairs.

                      For English, this  difference  of terminology comes out mainly in relation to the perfect and the progressive, which many  traditional grammarians  would treat as part of the system of tense, but  modern linguists treat as belonging to the  system of aspect.

                     Quirk and Greeenbaum (1976:40) views that time is a universal, non- linguistic concept with three division: past, present, and future; by tense we  understand the correspondence between the form of the verb and our concept of time. Aspect concerns the manner in which the verbal action in experienced or  regard (for example as completed or in progrees), while mood relates the verbal action to such conditions as certainly, abligation, necessity, possibility. In fact, however, to a great extent these three categories impinge on each other in particular, the expression of time present and past cannot be considered separetely from aspect, and the expression  of the future is closely bound up with mood.

                     Lock(1996:148-149) divides the English  tenses into absolute tense and relative tense. Absolute tense essentially locates a process in time relative to be here and now. Relative tense further locates the process relative to the aabsolute tense.

There is a selection of three absolute tenses:

1.      Present: location at the moment of speaking  or writing, or an  extended  period including the moment of speaking kor writing.

2.      Past: a time before the moment of speaking or writing

3.      Future: a time after the time of speaking or writing

Table 1. Absolute and relative tense selections

Relative tense	Absolute tense	Example	Usual name
Present in	Present	Is walking	Present progressive
Past in	Present	Has walked	Present perfect
Present in	Past	Was walking	Past progressive
Past in	Past	Has walked	Past perfect
Present in	Future	Will be walking	Future progressive
Past in	Future	Will have walked	Future perfect

Example:

1)      They arrived

2)     They have arrived

3)     They had arrived

            In number 1,  the absolute tense is past; there is no relative tense. The procces is simply located at a time in the past. In nnumber 2, the absolute tense is present and telative  tense is past. The sentece implies not only that their arrival to place  in the past but also that they are here and now. In number 3, the absolute tense is past and the relative tense is also past. The process is located at a time before a time in the past.

Teaching of English Grammar

ther are many ways of describing the grammar of language.

According to  Ur (1996:75-76) “Grammar is the way words are put together to make a correct sentences and grammar does not only affect how units of language are combined in order to look right; it also affect their meaning”. Grammar is the study or science of a rule for forming words and combining them into a sentence (Hornby, 1974 : 5). People describe grammar as the rules of language especially in teaching and learning process.

In teaching grammar, Bygate (1994:18) makes a list of a ’model’ teacher that s/he should :

a)       be capable of putting across a sense of how grammar interacts with the lexicon as a communicable system

b)      be able to analyze that grammatical problems that learners encounter

c)      have the ability and contidence to evalute the use of grammar, especially by learners, against criteria of accurancy, appropriateness and expressiveness

d)     be aware of contrastive relations between native language and foreign language

e)      understand and implement to processes of simplification by which over knowledge of  grammar can best be presented to learners at different stages of learning

Later, Bygate (1994:22) divides the language skills into two categories:

a.    Recetive skills (listening, reading) are more directly under the control of            inductive learning.

b.      Productive skills (speaking, writing) are more likely to be aided by deductive learning.

The first of these two links is easier to make sense of than the second: if we are learning grammar from the receptive point of view, then we are doing so through exposure to, or confrontation with, given textual instances. For a reader or listener to achieve greater comprehension, precise formulation of ‘rules of thumb’ is probably unnecessary, since generalization can be reached inductively. On the other hand, the second of two statement proposes that the use language productively, in speaking and writing. We typically need a more ‘ top down’ approach, making use ‘rules of thumb’ as a short cut  to an ability which could only be acquired more  slowly and tentatively through the inductive method.

Grammar is inescapable fact of a language system, because it is the set of operating principles that permit orderly speaking and writing ( Irmscher, 1972). Chalker (1994) states that grammar is rule.

The English grammar contents many elements. Grammar books discuss them in any ways example; A Practical English Grammar by Thomson and Martinet includes : Article, Nouns, Adjective Prepositions, Conjuction, The Auxiliary, Tenses, The Conditional, The Infinitive, The Gerund, Passive Voice, And Reported Speech. These elements are explained in such as a way enriched with examples to emphasize the rules.

Adjectives, Adjective Phrases and Adjective Clauses

Study the following sentences.
1. Both of the birds were black.
2. The traveler was tired.
3. They are good friends.
4. The unknown traveler stayed the whole night.
5. They could have a good conversation.
• Black, tired, good, unknown, and whole are adjectives.
• An adjective can be placed after an article or before
a noun.
• An adjective can modify nouns as Subjects or
Objects.
• The adjectives placed after to be are Predicate.
1. the eggs in the nest
2. the traveller feeling tired
3. the dragon ascending to heaven
4. the millipede deceiving the cock
• An adjective phrase can follow a noun.
• The phrase the eggs in the nest = the eggs that are in the
nest; the traveler feeling tired = the traveler who is feeling
tired, and so on.
1. The traveler who passed by, ...
2. The dragon that borrowed the horns, ...
3. The traveler whom the birds met, ...
4. The horns that the cock loaned, ...
• An adjective clause, which contains a subject and a
verb, can follow a noun. It describes the noun.
• Who and whom are used for people.
• That is used for people or things
1. The tree whose branch was cut down, ...
2. The traveller whom the birds saw, ...
3. The bird which has a beautiful voice, ...
The italicized words explain the nouns. The clauses can also
be written as follows:
1. The tree's branch was cut down.
2. The birds saw the traveler.
3. The bird has a beautiful voice.

Pronouns

Pronouns are used to replace a noun already referred to, that is,

We use them instead of repeating the noun:

Example:

·         The Duck decided to go to the river. She took a lot of food with her.

·          ... The frog had a huge pile of food. He picked it all up ...

·         This house will go to the children. It will be theirs after my death.

The pronoun it is used in some impersonal expressions.

Example

·         It was a beautiful summer's day.

·         It is raining.

We distinguish three persons to which pronouns refer

·         The persons speaking: I and we (first person)

·         The persons speaking to: you (second person)

·         The persons spoken about: he/she and they

·         The things spoken about: it and they