engleski

"It happened" rather than "it was happening" - problems in conceptualizing the core meanings of the progressive aspect in English

The aim of this paper is to investigate how first-year students of English conceptualize the category of verbal aspect, namely the contrast between the progressive and non-progressive aspect expressed in the choice between the past simple and past progressive forms, as well as what criteria the students base their choice on. We find this topic especially interesting due to the possible interference with the verbal aspect in Croatian, namely the contrast between perfective and imperfective verbs, as well as the tendency to identify the terms “duration” and “length” with the progressive aspect. Our research included 113 participants, first-year students at the very beginning of their studies. The aim was to find out what they had learned about English tenses and aspects in secondary school and how they conceptualized these grammatical categories. The participants were given a carefully selected narrative text in which they were supposed to use the given verbs in the past simple or past progressive form. For each of the answers they had to explain why they had chosen that particular form, whether both forms could be used, and if so, which of the two they would prefer to use and why. Our analysis of the answers has shown the basic criteria which the participants used in their choice between the simple and progressive aspect, which indicate that the teaching and/or acquisition of this grammatical category is unsystematic and fragmented. The answers lead us to conclude that the participants tend to visualize the big picture in that they intuitively take into account all elements that make up a situation, but their understanding of the English tense system and the core meanings of tenses and aspects is unclear. The basic problem in choosing the appropriate form lies in the idea of “duration” or “length”. Our research shows that the participants fail to distinguish between “duration” as a psychological versus a chronological category, which leads to problems in relating these categories with the grammatical category of aspect. A more systematic approach to teaching English tenses and aspects needs to be established, in which it is crucial to find appropriate terminology, which will both be illustrative and prevent students from equating grammatical with extralinguistic categories.

verbal aspect, progressive and non-progressive aspect, past simple and past continuous, duration, situation types, perfective and imperfective, boundness

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