Causes of improper tense shifts in high school students' composition writing

Abstract

In the LGCSE English Language Syllabus, writing is the only mode of assessment. Creative/composition writing in particular, assesses learners on the ability to use English Language appropriately in sentence construction to create meaningful texts. Nonetheless, research and documented scholarship show that managing verb tenses in composition writing is a daunting task for most L2 learners. Their tense errors are in the form of improper shifts from one tense to another and wrong verb inflection in different tenses. These errors blur meaning and evince learners’ lack of communicative competence. This study, therefore, investigates causes of improper tense shifts in high school learners’ composition writing. The study adopted a qualitative approach and an interpretive paradigm. Data was sourced from the participants through open-ended interviews with LGCSE English Language teachers from three participating schools and through the analysis of the content in Form E learners’ compositions. Major findings were consolidated into language and linguistic competence deficit. The guiding principles of L2 learners’ interlanguage were used to classify learners’ tense-related errors into types. Learners’ tense-related errors of omission, addition, misformation and misordering were interpreted in terms of interlingual and intralingual transfers, ignorance of rule restriction, incomplete application of the rules, false concepts hypothesized and the context of learning as causes of errors.