When It Makes Little or No Difference: The Influence of Instruction on the Acquisition of the English Past Tense among Tanzanian Learners

Abstract

Much research on the acquisition of tense aspect morphology has been largely associated with learners of a foreign language being immersed in the target language environment. Interest in this area is gradually shifting towards gaining an understanding of instructed learners within the same boundaries but with limited focus on similar learners in a purely foreign language-learning environment. Moreover, studies have reported a relationship between pedagogy and the natural sequence of acquiring the English tense-aspect (Bardovi-Harlig, 1995b). Using narratives written by 309 study participants from a cross-section of Tanzanian learners of English as a Foreign Language (EFL), the study sought to determine whether the potential effect of instruction on Tanzanian learners is correlated with the appropriate use of the past tense and its pedagogical implications for Tanzanian learners of EFL. Generally, the study findings point out that there is a significant effect of instruction across groups of learners F (9,299) =39.776, p=.000 r=.54.However, post-hoc analysis showed that a number of the cross-sections were not significantly different from each other. Moreover, the data displayed distributional bias that can be attributed to the saliency and frequency of instruction on particular tenses.  Keywords: English as a Foreign Language (EFL); language in Africa; language instruction; Tanzania