On Teaching Future Time to Arab EFL Learners:
Problems and Solutions


By
Kadhim, N. Al-Rifaee, (Ph.D.) - Assistant Prof.
Department of English Language and Literature
Faculty of Arts, Irbid National University

ABSTRACT
This study in all its overall presentation seeks to give a comprehensive account of the difficulties involved in teaching future time to Arab students who learn English as a foreign language; and the (pedagogical) solutions humbly suggested for earners, teachers, text-book writers, linguists and psychologists since they are expected to be the best who can deal with the problems that impede ‘e acquisition of the foreign language concepts. The work like many language teachers’ works is a reaction to the frustrating state of our students who cannot use their knowledge in a real communicative situation. It spotlights the reasons of students’ inefficient use of the English future structures; and projects, through a questionnaire, the most possible reasons of this problem propounding some useful techniques to over come the problem depending on what is written in the literature of language learning and teaching. The study tackles the topic of tense and time as an entrance to investigate the nature of future structures. Apart from presenting a pedagogical view of future time references, it provides almost all the constructions used to express futurity and - indications they refer to getting use the idea of Fleischman’s time-line. The study ends with many critical results, findings and pedagogical suggestions.

The Topic of Tense and Time Once Again
By
Kadhim, N. AI-Rifaee, (Ph.D.)
Assistant Prof.
Department of English Language and Literature
Faculty of Arts
Irbid National University

ABSRACT
This study in all its overall presentation seeks to give a comprehensive account of the two concepts of ‘Tense’ and ‘Time’ in English. It surveys the literature of the two concepts and focuses on the different approaches of traditional, structural, and transformational schools. However, the main focus of the study is on Bull’s Framework and Chafe’s Observation. Traditionally it refers to the seven-tense system of Jespersen, and the nine-tense system of Madvig where the three main tenses: past, present and future are respectively associated with the three divisions of time. As regards the structural approach, which in the main is ‘formal’, it shows how such grammarians as Hockett, Joos, Twaddell and Palmer adhere in their general approach to the basic tenets of structuralism in which no meaning- based classification of the English tense-system is given; and how some other structuralists such as Quirk and Rosenbaum suggest that it is perhaps best to regard ‘tense’ as a formal syntactic verbal category and leave the term ‘time’ (reference) for semantics of verbal forms. The study reviews the transformational approaches exposed by Chomsky, Kiparisky, McCawley and Huddleston arguing that ‘tense’ is analyzed as an obligatory ‘feature’ or ‘constituent’ underlying verbs. Finally the study concludes that the combination of Bull’s Framework and Chafe’s Observation is essentially meaning based and that the five systemic units, which are, in effect, pragmatic units, cover all the theoretical possible order-relations with its various axes of orientation, and provide a semantic and pedagogical base for the two processes of teaching and learning to take place.