The Use of Tenses in the Iraqi Advanced EFL Learners' Writings: An Error Analysis

Abstract

Iraqi EFL learners study English for almost about eight years before joining the university; for the last four years in the high school, they are exposed to English tenses regularly and intensively. Besides, when they join the departments of English at the university level, they intensively study English for another four years. The designed curriculum is tense-teaching oriented. Grammar is taught with an amount of three hours a week for thirty weeks annually during these four years. Yet, Iraqi EFL learners suffer from serious problems in some grammatical points such as tenses and their uses. The present paper is a data-analysis-based study that aims to identify the grammatical errors, their nature, types, and sources. It is hypothesized here, first, that Iraqi EFL learners tend to commit errors in verb-forms and the use of tenses. Second, these errors could be due to several causes basically related to L1 interference. To achieve the objectives behind the study and validate its hypotheses, an error analysis has been made for Fourth Year EFL classes final exam writings of the Dept. of English/College of Arts/ University of Kufa. The representative sample is all the available writings in compositional subjects where students are expected to feel free and spontaneous to write concentrating on concepts and ideas rather than linguistic points. Only then could students be expected to commit unconscious mistakes that reveal their competence in the use of tenses. The paper is expected to be of value for EFL teachers, syllabus designers, translators to and fro English, and psycholinguistic grammarians who seek to identify competence.