• Asia Pacific Journal of Corpus Research
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.1-16
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• 2022

This study investigates the cooccurrence between temporal adverbs and grammatical tenses in Spanish and contrasts temporal specifications across Spanish, English, and Chinese. Based on a monolingual Spanish corpus and a trilingual parallel corpus, the study identified the top ten frequent single-word temporal adverbs collocating with grammatical tenses in Spanish. It also contrasted the cooccurrence of temporal adverbs and verb tenses in three languages. The results show that aun 'still', hoy 'today', and ahora 'now' collocate with the present tense at more than 80%. Ayer 'yesterday' and finalmente 'finally' cooccurring with the simple past tense are at 84% and 69%, respectively. Then, mientras 'meanwhile' collocates with the past imperfect at 55%, the highest of all. Mañana 'tomorrow' cooccurs with the future and present tenses at 34%. Other adverbs, ya 'already', siempre 'always', and nuevamete 'again', do not present a strong cooccurrence tendency with a tense overall. The contrastive analysis of the trilingual parallel corpus shows a comprehensive view of temporal specifications in the three languages. However, no clear one-to-one mapping pattern of the cooccurrence across the three languages can be concluded, which provides helpful insights for second language instruction with natural language data rather than intuition. Future research with larger corpora is needed.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.133-156
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• 2007

Although the understanding of English tense system is a crucial factor for communicative English learning and teaching for EFL students, it has been neglected over the years. As with other areas of the grammar, difficulties may arise from the nature of the system itself or from differences between time, tense and aspect. Consequently, many learners face a considerable difficulty with the English tense system as they are more often unable to grasp the basic conceptual differences of present/present continuous, past/present perfect, will/be going to along with many others. More concerning fact is that lots of instructors or so-called native English teachers seem not to be aware of the importance of teaching English tense system. The purpose of this study is to review and examine various theories and practical usages of tense in order to establish and/or present better methods for teaching tenses. This paper is focused on comparatively exact distinction of time, physical notion from tense, grammatical category as well as sequences of tenses in view of school grammar and communicative function. At the end or middle of each chapter, efficient teaching and learning techniques or strategies on tenses are suggested to help instructors or learners who relentlessly face confusions in understanding tense and its usage for communicative English learning and teaching. This study attempts to influence learners' ability to recognize and write tense in authentic contexts not to mention spoken English.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.73-98
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• 2011

This study investigated the feasibility and effectiveness of incorporating oral corrective feedback into the content-based business English writing class. Two types of oral corrective feedback, recasts and metalinguistic feedback, were integrated into business English writing classes to help low intermediate-proficiency Korean university students improve the ability to use the simple past, present progressive, and present perfect tenses correctly in their written production. Prior to the treatments, the subjects had basic grammatical knowledge of the target verb tenses, but they had only limited control over them in their written production. Three groups were formed: recast group that received corrective recasting, metalinguistic group that received metalinguistic clues, and control group that received no oral corrective feedback. The study demonstrated that it was feasible to incorporate recasts and metalinguistic feedback into content-based business English writing classes and that metalinguistic feedback had greater and more endurable effects than recasts on promoting the correct use of the target verb tenses in written production. It can be concluded that oral corrective feedback, metalinguistic feedback in particular, can be used in the business English writing classroom to help students gain greater control over already partially acquired forms and therefore improve their writing accuracy.

• Korean Linguistics
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• v.71
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• pp.1-22
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• 2016

The early 20th century is a period of time when Korea confronted with the surging waves of modernization, and made a variety of internal reactions. The Korean language, not immune to the upheaval, also experienced new changes and gradually gained characteristics of today's Korean. Although scholars have not yet fully agreed upon the time division of Korean, Gabo reformation (1896) is usually considered to be the beginning of modern Korean. Thus, the early 20th century was also the beginning of modern Korean. Phonological, lexical, and grammatical characteristics of modern day Korean began to appear during this period of time. Phonologically, the 10 vowel system was established, glottal sounds and aspirated sounds increased, vowel harmony declined. Phenomena such as vowel raising, front-vowelization, monophthongization, and the word-initial rule appeared. Meanwhile, hangul-Chinese mix writing became common practice, and hangul-only writing also started to take place in narrative writing, and elements of spoken language began to reflect in written language. All those pointed to the unification of written and spoken language. Under the influence of modernization, a great amount of new words appeared. Especially, Japanese and other foreign words flooded in in great quantities. Grammatically, '-eos-(-엇-), -neun-(-는-), -ges-(-겟-)' trichotomy system of tenses was established, and hearer-oriented honorific system also formed a binary system of 'hasoseo(하소서), hasibsio(하십시오), hao(하오), hage(하게), haera(해라)' and 'hae (해), haeyo(해요)'. In word formation and sentence construction, the use of '-gi(-기)' became more frequent than '-eum(-음)', while '~geot(~것)' also significantly increased. In negative, causative and passive expressions, the use of long form, which has fewer restrictions than the short form, became more frequent. A tendency towards simplicity appeared. In the same vain, long and complex sentences with several clauses tend to be avoided. Instead, short simple sentences became more favorable. Korean linguistics scholars should pay closer attention to the modernization period, which includes the early 20th century. In order to fully understand today's Korean language, more thorough research on this immediately preceding period is necessary.