Yabancı dil seviyesi alt-orta seviyede olan ve İngilizceyi yabancı dil olarak öğrenen Türk öğrencilerin fikir yazılarındaki zaman-görünüş yapıları

Tense-aspect system in English has been one of the main challenges faced by second/foreign language learners due to its components such as language-specific features, complexity, and cross-linguistic variation (Bardovi-Harlig, 2000). Second language acquisition comprises of the acquisition of various linguistic means to express time. Lexical means include temporal adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, and verbs, and tenses and aspects constitute grammatical means. For the most part, time is expressed by using more than one means, and learners of a second/foreign language generally have difficulty in employing the means properly when producing in the target language. The present study is an exploratory study which aims to analyze structures on the English tense-aspect system through written texts produced by pre-intermediate level Turkish EFL learners at Bursa Uludağ University School of Foreign Languages Intensive English Program to define and come up with explanations about the correct and erroneous structures. Subsequently, for comparison purposes, a native data set is investigated for tense-aspect structures to find out similarities and differences between the two corpora. The findings show that both pre-intermediate level Turkish EFL learners and native English speakers employ present-tense verbs higher in number than past-tense verbs in their opinion essays. The error analysis revealed that simple aspect of past tense was found to be the most error-prone tense while progressive aspect of present tense was found to be the most error-prone aspect. Regarding the findings of the current study, implementation of new approaches to grammar teaching, and more specifically teaching "time" in English is suggested for the second language pedagogy.