Remediating Verb Tense Inconsistencies in Online English Writing Tasks: A Focused Practice Proposal

Remediating Verb Tense Inconsistencies in Online English Writing Tasks: A Focused Practice Proposal

by:Diana Andrea Galvan Rodriguez & David Michael Oliveras Asis

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Educational Setting and Student Demographics

• Online English language course at a public Mexican university
• 13 students
• Ages 23-64
• Native Spanish Speakers
• 4 men & 9 women.

• Average language proficiency level: A2 (CEFR).

• Placement test for appropriate level assignment.
• Intrinsic motivation:
• Personal (3)
• Academic (2)
• Professional (8).

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Verb Tense Inconsistencies in Free-Writing Tasks.

• Students struggle with Verb Tense Consistency in writing tasks.
• Errors restrain coherent and grammatically accurate writing.
• The problem is compounded by the diverse age range and online learning constraints.
• This issue requires learning theory strategies to improve students' writing proficiency.

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Evidence of Linguistic Error: Analysis of Written Samples

Two main types of errors were identified:

Tense Inconsistency:

Syntactic Misordering:

"I don't have arrive at work..." (correct: have to arrive)

"I forgot my homework because my dog eat it" (correct: ate)

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Frequency and Distribution of Errors

• 18 samples of written texts produced by the students.
• Total 57 linguistic errors were identified.
• Of the 57 errors, 26 were identified as Verb Inconsistency Errors:

• 8 instances classified as Tense Inconsistencies.
• 18 instances classified as Syntactic Misordering.
• These errors were manually identified and counted.

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Hypothesis on the Origin of Verb Tense Inconsistencies

Factors in Verb Tense Errors

• Errors are primarily from Intralingual factors:
• Overgeneralization of the base form of verbs.
• While Spanish and English both express past, present, and future tenses, their morphological markings differ.
• Students rely on simplified verb structures:
• To reduce cognitive load during language production within a restraint limit of time.

Students’ verb tense inconsistencies in writing result from intralingual interference (Richards, 1971). Specifically, overgeneralization of the base form of verbs appears to be a key strategy employed by students (Corder, 1967; Richards, 1971). This strategy is likely complemented by cognitive load in writing tasks under time constraints (Sweller, 1988, 2010).

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Designing a Focused Practice Intervention for Verb Tenses

• Implementation of "Focused Practice on Verb Tenses" intervention.
• Intervention includes:
• Tense-specific exercises
• Sentence transformation drills
• Guided writing exercises
• Focus:
• Correct employment of simple past and simple present tenses.

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Theoretical Foundations: Skill Acquisition and Proceduralization

Two supporting learning theories:

Proceduralization Theory (Ericsson et al., 1993):

Skill Acquisition Theory (Anderson, 1983; DeKeyser, 2007):

Consistent practice supports internalize gramatical rules for effortless application.

Focused practice facilitates writing skill development.

Transition from Declarative Knowledge (knowing about) to Procedural Knowledge (automatic use).

Repeated structured exercises help develop accuracy.

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Pedagogical Exercise Framework

• Four-task worksheet approach:
• Task 1: Fill in the Blanks - Helps students associate specific contexts (adverbs of time, subjects) with the correct verb form. Builds procedural knowledge for the target tenses.
• Task 2: Error Correction - Targets the identified errors (overgeneralization, syntactic issues like auxiliary misuse). Requires students to identify and correct inaccuracies. This is a form of explicit corrective feedback integrated into practice (Lyster & Ranta, 1997).
• Task 3: Sentence Transformation - Students have more control over the grammatical rules. Requires active manipulation of sentence structure and verb morphology, reinforcing the declarative-to-procedural shift.
• Task 4: Story Completion - Moves from isolated sentences to connected discourse, Integrates learned forms into a meaningful context. This bridges the gap towards semi-controlled production.

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Reference

• Anderson, J. R. (1983). The Architecture of Cognition. Harvard University Press.
• Corder, S. P. (1967). The significance of learners' errors. International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching, 5(4), 161-170.
• DeKeyser, R. (2007). Skill Acquisition Research in Second Language Learning. Practice in a Second Language: Perspectives from Applied Linguistics and Cognitive Psychology (pp. 1-18).

• Ericsson, K. A., Krampe, R. T., & Tesch-Römer, C. (1993). The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance. Psychological Review, 100(3), 363–406.
• Lyster, R., & Ranta, L. (1997). Corrective feedback in immersion classrooms: Negotiation of form, error evaluation, and student responses. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 19(1), 37-66.

• Quirk, R., Greenbaum, S., Leech, G., & Svartvik, J. (1985). A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. Longman.

• Radford, A. (2009). An introduction to English sentence structure. Cambridge University Press.
• Richards, J. C. (1971). A non-contrastive approach to error analysis. English Language Teaching, 25(3), 204-219.
• Sweller, J. (1988). Cognitive load during problem solving: Effects on learning. Cognitive Science, 12(2), 257-285.
• Sweller, J. (2010). Element interactivity and intrinsic, extraneous, and germane cognitive load. Educational Psychology Review, 22(2), 123-138.

Tense Inconsistency: an improper shift in verb tense within a text or a sentence without logical justification (Quirk et al., 1985). Syntactic Misordering: refers to an incorrect arrangement or lack of a linguistic item, whether it be a morpheme or a lexis chunk, within a sentence that infringes the word order or rules of a language (Radford, 2009).