TITULO PRELIMINAR

As we saw in Section 7.1, what seemed to be the easiest forms for students to correctly produce were simple past forms, particularly of regular verbs but also of many irregular verbs. However, some students seem to have had difficulty with irregular verb forms (see Section 8.3.2), including such common words as hear and go, where a number of students consider hear a regular verb and some did not know (or did not remember) that the past participle of go is gone, not went. Nevertheless, the majority of students did well with verb inflection. This is perhaps because many irregular verbs are in wide use, and at school, pupils are often expected to learn them by heart. Furthermore, students may be most exposed to using the past tense, since several genres that they practice reading and writing are written with the past simple as the dominant verb form. The book key expected a past simple form in 50% of the slots (see Section 7.1.2). Table 26 provides information about the distribution of the forms given by the students in slots where the expected correct answer is the simple past tense in the active. The list is organised so that regular affirmative forms are given first, followed by verbs with both a regular and an irregular form, after which the irregular affirmative forms are given. The negative forms begin with the words were and had, after which the forms including did are given. Passive forms are

discussed in Section 8.3.3, and progressive forms and the past perfect are discussed below in Sections 8.1.2 and 8.1.3. The expectation of the past form is taken from the greatest consensus within teachers and the book key. Forms with more extensive teacher disagreement, which often match more extensive student disagreement, are not included in this table because they are discussed elsewhere in this study (e.g. in Sections 8.2 and 9.2).

Table 26. Slots where the simple past is the expected form (the spelling must match the expected form), excluding forms with greater teacher disagreement

Slot Expected form Number of students % 7 wanted 265 83 9 asked 306 96 12 called 312 98 13 noticed 306 96 15 answered 307 96 28 phoned 300 94 29 talked 289 91 38 decided 305 96 52 remembered 282 88 55 walked 312 98 57 reached 297 93 59 called 294 92 64 seemed 299 94 68 stopped 293 92 78 realised / realized 313 98 94 seemed 298 93 34 spilled / spilt 267 84 65 showed 300 94 11 told 312 98 18 took 299 94 23 heard 283 89 24 came 278 87 26 heard 272 85 30 told 313 98 37 crept 117 37 43 took 286 90 44 went 292 92 45 saw 303 95 47 saw 308 97 56 met 306 96

Slot Expected form Number of students % 60 was 250 78 63 let 300 94 69 went 308 97 71 got 283 89 75 was 229 72 80 left 289 91 86 bought 302 95 88 went 282 88 89 went 298 93 90 lost 273 86 92 met 307 96 97 went 297 93 98 found 300 94 107 met 260 82

82 were not / weren’t 256 80

96 had not / hadn’t81 _{225 71} 5 did not love /

didn’t love

277 86

6 did not murder /

didn’t murder 282 88

22 did not want / didn’t want

298 93

36 did not want / didn’t want

302 95

49 did not see /

didn’t see 285 89

51 did not answer / didn’t answer

288 90

76 did not know / didn’t know

231 72

100 did not even go /

The command of the use of simple past affirmative verbs was high for regular verbs, from 83% with wanted to 98% with realised / realized, with an average of 94% (299 students). The slightly lower percentage for wanted in slot 7 (After dinner last night he said he ___ (want) to check

some business papers in his study) can be explained by the fact that 31 students used the

present tense, perhaps because they either did not realise the fact that this slot included reported speech or they did not know how to mark reported speech in the verb form (see Section 8.1.5). This also affected the word remembered in slot 52 (Then I ___ (remember)), with 17 students using the present tense. Generally, however, the past simple with regular verbs posed few problems. The two words that have both regular and irregular forms (spilled/spilt and showed) were also correctly provided to a great extent, although in the past form, of course, the word showed has no irregular counterpart. The form spilt was very rare, given by only seven students. In this slot (slot 34, He shouted at me because I ___ (spill) a few drops of tea on his desk), the lower percentage is explained by 30 students using the past perfect form instead of the past simple. This slot is further discussed in Section 9.2.2.

The irregular past affirmative forms seemed to be in good command as well, apart from the word crept, which is not equally common in use as most of the other verbs. The accuracy with told was very high, 98%, and the average was 89% (283 students) if we include crept and 91% (289 students) if we do not. The lower figures for was in slot 60 are because 17 students used would be and 11 students used were, and in slot 75, 61 students used am, perhaps not knowing how to use verb tenses in reported speech (see Section 8.1.5). The Swedish-speakers showed no advantage over Finnish-speakers in the command of irregular verbs, despite the fact that in Swedish, the corresponding verbs are often irregular.

The negative forms posed some more problems, but the overall figures remained high. The students were better at using the negatives with did than with had and were, although the form had not / hadn’t is actually the auxiliary of the past perfect, when the main verb is not produced at all in the context. This seems to have made some students confused, since 33 students provided either didn’t have or didn’t had. Such forms were otherwise not prevalent in the responses. The forms with did not / didn’t were used quite confidently, with 87% success (277 students), although unconventional spelling made some students “fail” in these forms. The students were particularly successful with did not want / didn’t want in slots 22 and 36. The lower rates for did not know / didn’t know in slot 76 (... who ___ (not/know) what ...) are perhaps explained by the fact that this was again an instance of reported speech, and 33 students produced don’t know, 28 students doesn’t know and 11 students does not know.

In this study, students were not likely to provide progressive forms when they should use the simple. Of the slots in the table above, students never suggested a progressive (counted from any instance of the –ing form) in 26 of the slots, and only 1 to 8 students per slot did so in the remaining 27 slots, except for slot 29 (... and we ___ (talk) for ages), where 23 students used a form with -ing. Usually, there was only one instance per student when they used the progressive where the simple would be more standard, but a number of students used this strategy more often; for example, Student 280 did this six times and Student 131 four times. In total, the progressive was used in slots where it was not expected 120 times in 40 slots82_{; this is}

1% of all the forms given in those slots. In addition to slot 29, slot 106 (Lucy ___ (not/walk)

to the village and back, if ...) was slightly more productive with the –ing: 13 students provided

was not walking, wasn’t walking or weren’t walking. Slot 29 (... and we ___ (talk) for ages) was followed with ‘for ages’, which possibly made some students search for the progressive and made some teachers find this a suitable response. Incidentally, the British teachers found were talking the best form in slot 29, while the other teachers disagreed. Perhaps the talking could also be understood as happening parallel with the next sentence (slot 30: I ___ (tell) her

I ...). Slot 106, however, was a less common context for the progressive, since it seemed to

emphasise the result of events, not their progression: Sergeant Ross seemed to question whether Lucy walked to the village and back or whether she went there at all.