Analogy as a Tool for the Acquisition of English Verb Tenses among Low Proficiency L2 Learners

Abstract

The teaching of English grammar to second language learners is usually a tedious, stressful and time consuming activity and even after all the effort, students have generally found these lessons boring and confusing. As such, innovative language instructors have been trying different approaches to the teaching of grammar in their classrooms. Using analogy as a tool for teaching is nothing new especially in science subjects such as Physics. In this comparative study however, analogy is used to teach English verb tenses to low proficiency L2 learners of English. The aim is to investigate the effects of using analogy as a tool for teaching English verb tenses. If using analogy is found to be effective, then it would be interesting to investigate to what extent it can be implemented in the low proficiency classroom. The analogy used has been creatively thought out and incorporated in the lesson with the help of innovative visual aids. A hundred and seventy-two pre-diploma students with low profiency levels of English were selected for this experiment. They were given a pre and post-test task before and after the lesson on verb tenses in order to determine whether the use of analogy implemented during the lesson had a favourable impact to learning. The test scores of the pre and post tests were then compared to verify the feasibility of using analogy in the lesson.