How Do Chinese Learners of English Handle the Future Tense and Aspect

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Research of second language learning has often suggested that learners whose native languages are tenseless would face a difficult position of learning English tenses. Other studies have also revealed the acquisition of aspects in sequence. However, research which has empirically documented how Chinese Learners of English deal with English future tense and aspect is scant. Therefore, the aim of this paper attempts to explore how English learners of diverse English proficiency levels, namely, English majors of higher proficiency level, English majors of lower proficiency level and non-English majors, manage English future tense and aspect intrasententially and intersententially as well as how Mandarin facilitates their use of English aspect. This study involved an experiment, comprised of two sets of questionnaires concerning the use of tense and aspect in sentence level with three different future contexts, viz. verbal, lexical and syntactic future contexts, and the use of tense in discourse level. 66 college students participated in the study. The quantitative analysis of the questionnaires was conducted through ANOVA and Chi-square. Results of this study, in the intrasentential section, showed no discrepant use of future tense among groups, while significant differences of tense in diverse future contexts were found in English majors. Moreover, a significant effect of groups on the link between the use of grammatical aspects and three lexical aspects, that is, achievements, activities and states, were discovered. Although the results also confirmed the aspect hypothesis proposed by Bardovi-Harlig (1998) and was consistent with her findings, this study further pointed out 'states' is the best acquired lexical aspect, followed by achievements, accomplishments and activities. Regarding the intersentential section, the continuity of temporal frame was influenced by the distance between the adverbial phrase in the first sentence and the verb slots. The qualitative analysis demonstrated that Mandarin grammatical aspect assisted the use of English aspect. To conclude, this study may be of importance in providing English teachers with a better understanding of how students learn English future tense and aspect, as well as in bringing some pedagogical implications.