DISMANTLING AND ANALYSING MULTI-PARAGRAPHS TO IMPROVE THE USE OF PRESENT AND PAST TENSES IN WRITING AMONG COLLEGE STUDENTS

Chandra Mohan Vasudeva Panicker

Abstract


Grammar is the backbone of language, providing a set of rules and principles that govern the structure, formation, and usage of words and sentences. This study aims to “dismantle” paragraphs from non-friction material, learn the usage of present and past tenses in these sentence structures, and apply this knowledge in writing sentences containing present and past tenses. A pretest-post-test control group design was employed. The participants of this study would consist of 20 college students who were randomly assigned to a treatment and a control group. Both groups were exposed to the same classroom conditions except for the intervention. Only the treatment group was given intervention. The respondents’ scores were measured at two points, pre-test and post-test. This was followed by a semi-structured interview in which three participants from the treatment group were interviewed. The findings revealed improved participants’ use of present and past-tense writing based on the difference between the pretest and the post-test results. The interview data also revealed that the participants were able to construct more accurate sentences using these tenses. Interestingly, the study respondents said that this activity had made them pay close attention to sentence structures when they read materials in the English language. Exposing students to different genres and studying sentence structure thoroughly can help improve students' grammar, specifically present and past tense, in their writing.

 

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Keywords


grammar, present and past tenses, sentence structure, genres, dismantle

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References


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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.46827/ejel.v9i5.5665

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