| Title: | Understanding the Grammatical Category Aspect in Present Tense Forms and Past Tense Forms in Primary School : master's thesis |
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| Authors: | ID Klar Zadravec, Saša (Author)
ID Jurančič, Klementina Penelope (Mentor) More about this mentor...  |
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| Files: |  MAG_Klar_Zadravec_Sasa_2025.pdf (1,88 MB)
MD5: 837F6D6793B754E5E8CE049B431655DE
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| Language: | English |
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| Work type: | Master's thesis/paper |
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| Typology: | 2.09 - Master's Thesis |
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| Organization: | FF - Faculty of Arts
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| Abstract: | The purpose of the master thesis entitled Understanding the Grammatical Category Aspect in Present Tense Forms and Past Tense Forms in Primary School is to determine whether primary school learners associate the forms of the simple present and past tense with the simple/indefinite aspect and the forms of the progressive present and past tense with the continuous/progressive aspect.
This is crucial for building grammar knowledge of elementary school learners and applying that knowledge in real-life situations. English is becoming more and more integrated into our daily lives and in some cases is a prerequisite for achieving goals. Therefore, the need for learning and teaching English is also increasing. Teachers face the challenge of how to get the learners to actively participate and speak in a foreign language, and applying the grammar rules to achieve the understanding, not just the knowledge of rules.
The theoretical part of the thesis presents English language on a global level with the distinction between L2 users. It further presents the language acquisition and language learning and the factors that affect the perception of the language. It describes different teaching methods, approaches and strategies that the teachers use in the classroom. Then the grammar is presented as various linguists describe and perceive it, based on the universal grammar hypothesis by Noam Chomsky. Further, the focus is on the indefinite and progressive form of aspect and the terminology of terminative and non-terminative verbs is presented. The formation and the uses of Present Indefinite/Progressive and Past Indefinite/Progressive are explained in detail as a base for the empirical part of the thesis. In the end of the theoretical part, the correspondences between the present and past tense referring to the universal truths and general statement, stative/dynamic verbs and limited actions is described.
The empirical part presents the results of a research, conducted in March and April 2022 in two primary schools in north-eastern Slovenia. Learners of 7th and 8th grade were tested with the help of two questionaries. The first questionnaire (Present Simple vs Present Continuous) consisted of six questions plus one additional task. The first five tasks were completely practical; however, the first two tasks included a theoretical task, asking the learners to explain why the said time is used in that particular task.
The last task and the additional task required a more complex thinking since the learners had to use their knowledge of grammar rules and their usage to successfully solve all the tasks on the questionnaire. The second questionnaire (Past Simple vs Past Continuous) consisted of six tasks in total. The first five tasks were practical, with task two and three additionally requiring the learners to write why they thought Past Simple or Past Continuous were used. The data was then analysed and presented in tables in terms of correctness/incorrectness and in the percentage of the answers given by learners.
The results showed that learners learn grammatical rules according to the syllabus and mostly through drilling exercises, which resulted in the very high success rate of the practical tasks, but they achieved poor results on theoretical tasks, where they were required to show the understanding of those rules. The results also confirmed our hypothesis that learners relate the simple present and past tense with the simple/indefinite aspect and the progressive present and past tense with the continuous/progressive aspect.
In the end, we compared the results of our study with the results of the study done by Kaja Podgoršek, since it covers a similar topic. |
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| Keywords: | teaching English, primary school, English tenses, English grammar, terminitative verbs, non-terminitative verbs |
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| Place of publishing: | Maribor |
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| Place of performance: | Maribor |
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| Publisher: | S. Klar Zadravec |
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| Year of publishing: | 2025 |
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| Number of pages: | 1 spletni vir (1 datoteka PDF (XV, 68 str.)) |
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| PID: | 20.500.12556/DKUM-95357 |
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| UDC: | 37.091.3:811.111'243'366.58(043.2) |
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| COBISS.SI-ID: | 253436419 |
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| Publication date in DKUM: | 16.10.2025 |
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| Views: | 196 |
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| Downloads: | 15 |
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| Metadata: |    |
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| Categories: | FF
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