The Effects of lexical aspect in interlanguage tense use of Turkish EFL learners

This study mainly investigates the relation between the verbal morphology and the aspectual classes of verbs, specifically, whether lexical aspectual classes of verbs are factors that affect tense errors of intermediate-level Turkish EFL learners. The study was applied at Uludağ University, Faculty of Education English Language Teaching Department. Totally, 50 students from the first year classes participated in the study. The subjects were chosen according to the results of the the placement test given at the beginning of the academic year. All the subjects watched a 20-minute film played twice. Before the film, subjects were all told that they would be asked to tell the story after they had seen the film. After they saw the movie, the subjects were given the class period, of approximately 45-50 minutes, to produce their written narratives. At the end of the analysis of the data it was found that two tenses, past progressive tense and presents tense are problematic for intermediate level Turkish EFL learners. The causes of the errors related to the past progressive tense are considered to be the result of LI interference and also statives are considered as a problematic aspectual class. The statistical results also indicate the use of statives in the present tense in past tense narratives as a great problem caused by the lexical properties of the state verbs.