Fostering Independent Learning of English Verb Tense, Aspect and Voice Forms at the Tertiary Level

Abstract

The prior research on typical errors in student tests on tenses (Apse and Farneste, 2014) demonstrated that first-year undergraduates who were majoring in modern languages and business encountered such problems as distinction between the verb-aspect forms, which were followed by the verb tense forms and the combination of both. Although students had studied English as a Foreign Language for almost ten years, they still could not distinguish between the use of the present and past tenses in the given context. One of the reasons for student problems was insufficient practice of independent learning. Thus, the present study was focusing on designing exercises which were related to the content and the skills required for the completion of the study programme and which could foster developing independent study skills. The research was a case study. Undergraduate students from full-time studies (22 students) were selected. The results of the pre-test-post-test design showed that doing the selftest and several practice exercises helped students to improve the use of verb forms. The views collected with the help of a questionnaire survey revealed that half of the students considered useful the provided self-test, and they had retaken it before the final test in class, but only few of the students had also done the electronically available additional exercises for self-study.