Acquisition of English Tense-Aspect Morphology by Korean Instructed Learners

Abstract

This study investigated the acquisition of English simple past and present progressive markers by 84 Korean high school students (grade 10) learning English as a foreign language in the classroom context. Students in four proficiency level groups completed a passage cloze test with a brief questionnaire. The findings indicated that the students' uses of tense-aspect markers were influenced by the lexical aspect in support for the Aspect Hypothesis (Andersen 1991, Andersen and Shirai 1994): The students were more successful at marking the simple past with achievement verbs and the present progressive with activity verbs. However, the analysis of the alternatives to target contexts also revealed the overuse of progressive form contrary to the prediction of the AH.