engleski

Time adverbials as guidelines for using present perfect

This lecture explores in what way and to what extent time adverbials determine the choice of the present perfect, the tense Croatian students find difficult to grasp due to lack of its equivalent in Croatian. Therefore the present perfect represents a demanding grammatical category which is the subject of numerous researches and discussions. In other words, this tense is peculiar from the viewpoint of the Croatian language since it denotes a past time relevant to the present which constitutes a grammatical relationship between the past and the present (Žic Fuchs, 2009). The research will be conducted with the first and second year undergraduates taking English as their optional course at the University of Zadar (level B1/B2). Students’ task will be to put the infinitive form of a verb into one of three suggested tenses. A certain number of sentences will contain time adverbials used exclusively with the present perfect whereas the remainder will contain time adverbials possible with all three of the required tenses. Our aim is to show that sentences containing time adverbials typical of the present perfect will show the highest percentage of correct answers while those with time adverbials possible with all three of the tenses will show lower percentages of correct answers. Furthermore, the results will be analysed and possible application of our findings will be suggested.

time adverbials ; present perfect ; undergraduates

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