An Analysis of Verb Tense Errors in Palestinian Undergraduate Students' Essay Writing
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.33096/tamaddun.v25i1.1139Keywords:
error analysis, verb tense errors, EFL writing, Palestinian undergraduate students, Arabic-English transfer, academic writingAbstract
This study examines verb tense errors in essays written by Palestinian undergraduate students learning English as a foreign language. The study addresses three questions: what types of verb tense errors appear in students' essays, which error type is most dominant, and what linguistic and pedagogical challenges may explain the observed patterns. Using a qualitative descriptive design supported by error analysis, students' essays were examined and coded according to the surface strategy taxonomy of omission, addition, misformation, and misordering. The analysis identified 60 verb-tense-related errors. Misformation was the most frequent category, accounting for 28 errors (46.7%), followed by omission with 15 errors (25.0%), addition with 10 errors (16.7%), and misordering with 7 errors (11.7%). The findings indicate that the major difficulty was not merely knowing the names of English tenses, but selecting contextually appropriate verb forms, maintaining tense consistency across clauses, and controlling subject-verb agreement in extended writing. The discussion relates these findings to interlanguage theory, Arabic-English cross-linguistic influence, overgeneralization, limited automatization of inflectional morphology, and the instructional separation of grammar practice from authentic writing tasks. Pedagogically, the study argues for form-focused writing instruction, explicit attention to tense-aspect meaning, guided noticing activities, focused written corrective feedback, and repeated revision cycles. The study contributes to EFL writing research by offering a tense-focused account of Palestinian undergraduate writing and by translating error analysis results into practical implications for grammar-informed academic writing pedagogy.
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