Volume 3 (2012) Issue 2
Teaching the imparfait and the passé composé in French:
New Findings on Sequence
Valerie Wust (Raleigh (NC), USA) /
Barbie Book Brown (Knightdale
(NC), USA)
Abstract
Research
on instructed second language (L2) learners of French consistently shows that
the preterit emerges before the imperfect and remains the primary past tense
marker until the advanced stages of acquisition. This study investigated whether
instructional order (preterit-imperfect vs. imperfect-preterit) impacts upon
past tense-aspect acquisition by high school learners of French. It was
hypothesized that a sequence accounting for the increasing formal complexity of
the two primary past tenses in French (e.g., imperfect before preterit) would
positively affect mastery of the formation and distribution of both tenses,
resulting in increased performance on a written cloze task. This hypothesis
could be verified. The findings offer support for conducting further empirical
investigations of grammar sequencing as a means of improving the effectiveness
of instruction.
Key words:
French as a second language, past tense, aspect, instructional sequence
Résumé
Les recherches sur l’acquisition du français par les apprenants en milieu
scolaire montrent que le passé composé
est traditionnellement enseigné avant l’imparfait
et reste le marqueur du passé principal jusqu’aux stades avancés de
l’acquisition. Dans la présente étude, la question est examinée de savoir si la
séquence d’instruction (passé
composé-imparfait vs. imparfait-passé
composé) a un impact sur l’acquisition des temps du passé et de l’aspect
par les apprenants de français inscrits à l’école secondaire. Nous partons de
l’hypothèse qu’une séquence d’instruction tenant compte d’une complexité
formelle croissante des deux temps du passé principaux en français (ex. l’imparfait avant le passé composé) a un impact positif sur la maîtrise de la
formation et de la distribution des deux temps. La méthode choisie est un test
de closure écrit. Dans la présente étude, cette hypothèse a pu être vérifiée. Pourtant,
il importe de constater qu’avant que l’on puisse transférer les résultats de
cette étude à l’enseignement pratique du français langue étrangère, d’autres
études empiriques du même type devront être effectuées.
Mots clés: Français langue étrangère, temps du passé,
aspect, séquence d’instruction
1 Introduction
Studies of past tense-aspect acquisition by Anglophone, instructed
second language (L2) learners of French consistently generate two principle
findings:
1)
the passé composé becomes productive before
the imparfait; and
2)
form
distribution varies across verb types.
The passé composé appears in
conjunction with dynamic predicates (e.g. tomber, nager un kilomètre, manger),
while the imparfait is used with a
restricted group of statives, namely être, avoir, aimer, vouloir and pouvoir (Ayoun 2001, 2004, Bergström 1997, Harley 1992, Kaplan 1987,
Salaberry 1998). These findings align with certain predictions of the aspect
hypothesis, wherein the semantic properties of verbal predicates constrain
the acquisition of perfective and imperfective markings (Andersen 2002). The
aforementioned researchers, then, have focused on documenting a developmental
sequence whereby imperfective usage spreads from stative to non-stative verbs,
and perfective usage spreads from punctual to non-punctual verbs. However,
instructional-, input- and form-related factors which could potentially
contribute not only to the ‘early’ emergence of the perfective (in contrast to
the imperfective), but also to the sustained use of the perfective as the
preferred marker of past tense in French have been largely ignored to date.
As relates to potential instructional influences, Kaplan (1987) argues
that the past tense sequencing in mass-marketed L2 French pedagogical materials
(passé composé before imparfait) contributes to the emergence of
the former tense before the latter. Ayoun (2005) actually poses the question of
whether the passé composé, as the preferred
past tense form in the production of L2 French learners, is a product of
instruction, given that the majority of textbooks and curricula present the passé composé before the imparfait
(Ayoun 2005: 248). As for a potential role for input, Kaplan (1987) and Swain
(1990) document an ‘input bias’ in classroom settings that could conceivably
account for this well-documented developmental sequence of French past tense.
More precisely, Kaplan (1987) reports that 84% of all past tense forms present
in a sample of discourse from an L2 French classroom are in the passé composé. Swain’s (1990) analysis
of classroom talk in grade six French immersion classes shows that 15% of all
teacher-generated verbs are in the past, two-thirds of which are in the passé composé and one-third of which are
in the imparfait. Acknowledging the
importance of input, Ayoun & Salaberry concede that “…input biases may be
all there is to the significant use of perfective forms in beginning and
subsequent stages of acquisition’ (Ayoun & Salaberry 2005: 265). As for
distribution-related factors, in her earlier work, Ayoun (2004) asserts that
her data show that the imparfait is more
difficult than the passé composé for
English-speaking, university-level learners of French due its increased
aspectual complexity (e.g., imperfective, iterative and durative values), as
compared to the single aspectual value of the passé composé (perfective). An alternative, and opposing,
form-related argument presented in Kaplan (1987) is that the passé composé (a compound tense with
requisite auxiliary verb selection between
avoir / être and many irregular past participles) is acquired first, despite being more
grammatically-complex than the imparfait,
which represents the morphologically most regular tense of French.
The extant research on the acquisition of past tense-aspect by
Anglophone learners of French clearly shows that this is a problematic area in
development. Researchers frequently cite the negative effects of L1 influence
on French tense-aspect acquisition for these learners (e.g. Ayoun 2005
Izquierdo & Collins 2008, Kaplan 1987, Macrory & Stone 2000). Pedagogues,
for their part, propose a litany of ‘best practices’ for teaching the passé composé and imparfait although no consensus has been reached to date (e.g.
Blackburn 1995, Blyth 2005, Connor 1992, Gezundhajt 2000, Martin-Lau 2001, Moore 1981, Trèscases 1979). Taking the research agenda of the last thirty
years in a new direction, the current study asks how the success of past tense-aspect
instruction in L2 French, as measured by form- and tense-selection accuracy
rates on a written cloze task, is affected by pedagogical sequence (passé composé-imparfait vs. imparfait- passé composé). As they are being
taught the less formally complex imparfait before the more complex passé composé,
it is hypothesized that students in the imparfait- passé composé condition will more
accurately identify appropriate usage contexts (e.g. tense selection) and form
targetlike past tense exemplars (e.g. tense formation) on a contextualized
production task.
2 Literature
Review
2.1
Target Structures
In the current study, the target forms are the
passé composé (preterit) and the imparfait (imperfect), which are the two primary tenses
used by French speakers to communicate ideas in the past. Acquisition of these
two tenses embodies three dimensions: morphosyntax (form), semantics (meaning)
and pragmatics (use):
Passé composé (preterit)
|
Imparfait (imperfect)
|
|
Form
|
subject + auxiliary verb (present indicative) +
past participle (lexical verb)
e.g. J’ai,
tu as, il a, nous avons, vous avez, ils ont parlé.
|
subject + root of lexical verb (first person
plural, present indicative) + inflectional endings, e.g. Je parlais, tu parlais,
il parlait, nous parlions, vous parliez,
ils parlaient
|
Meaning
|
- what one did
|
- what one was doing
- what one used to / would
do
- what one thought / knew
(or any other stative
verb)
for a certain period of
time
|
Use
|
- completeness of past event, e.g., Pendant le semestre, j’ai beaucoup étudié.
|
- enduring / ongoing actions
or state in the past,
e.g. Vous
vous parliez au téléphone.
- a state or an action with a certain duration in the
past, e.g. Nous ne
savions pas qu’il mourait.
- habitual action or state in
the past, e.g. Le week-
end, j’allais au cinéma.
|
Tab.1:Distribution (form, meaning, use) of French passé composé and imparfait
Table 1 clearly shows that the French passé composé and imparfait
differ both in terms of formal and functional complexity, as can be seen in the
form and use columns. For our purposes, formal complexity is
determined by the number of transformations required from an underlying base
form to the target form (e.g. from the infinitive of the lexical verb, and in
the case of the preterit, the auxiliary verb). Functional complexity is
operationalized as the degree to which a structure has multiple form-function
mappings or the overall transparency of its meaning.
In the current study, the passé
composé is classified as having greater formal complexity than the imparfait, because it requires more
transformations of its underlying base form to arrive at a well-formed exemplar.
Here are the pedagogical rules provided to our learners:
1) As a function of the
primary verb, determine which auxiliary verb to use (être for reflexive verbs and sixteen stative and motion
verbs vs. avoir for all
other verbs);
2) Conjugate the chosen
auxiliary verb in the present indicative, according to the person and number of
the subject;
3) Determine if the
primary verb has a regular past participle or not;
4a) If the verb is regular and belongs to the –er, -ir or –re class, drop the infinitive ending,
4b) and add the appropriate past participle ending: -é for –er verbs, -i for –ir verbs or –u for –re verbs;
5) If the verb has an
irregular past participle, use the memorized form;
6) For être-verbs, determine the gender and
number of the subject of the sentence (masculine or feminine; singular or
plural);
7) Add the appropriate
agreement ending(s) to the past participle (masculine singular -, feminine
singular –e, masculine plural –s, feminine plural –es).
In comparison, the structure
of the imparfait is relatively
simple. To arrive at a well-formed exemplar, students were instructed to:
1) take the stem of the first person plural form of the present
indicative of the verb;
2) drop the –ons ending;
3) add the endings of the imparfait in the corresponding person and number:
Singular
|
Plural
|
I -ais
|
I –ions
|
II -ais
|
II –iez
|
III -ait
|
III -aient
|
Tab. 2:
French Imperfect Inflectional Endings
Based on the number of
transformations from the base form to the target form for these two past tenses,
this formal complexity analysis shows the potential interest in presenting the imparfait first in the L2 French classroom.
There is, however, also the
question of the functional complexity of the passé composé and imparfait in French. As can be seen in
Table 1 above, the imparfait is more
functionally complex than the passé composé as it encompasses
three difference semantic aspectual values (imperfective, iterative
and durative). In contrast, the passé composé only embodies the
perfective aspect. On the basis of the functional complexity of the two primary
past tenses, it could be argued that we should continue to present the passé
composé at an earlier point in the instructional sequence than the imparfait.
As we will later describe the
methodology used in the study, we will show how our design will allow us to examine
the differential effects of presenting both the more formally complex past
tense (the passé composé) and the more functionally complex past tense
(the imparfait) first in the
instructional sequence.
3 Past Tense-Aspect Acquisition by Anglophone
Learners of French in
Instructed Settings
As the
literature on the acquisition of past tense-aspect by L2 learners of French has
been reviewed extensively by Ayoun (2001, 2004, 2005), we will focus our review
specifically on trends which can be identified in select studies conducted on
instructed learners in the North-American, and to a lesser extent, European
contexts. Research on instructed past tense-aspect acquisition by
English-speaking students in Canada (e.g. Harley 1992, Harley & Swain 1978,
Izquierdo & Collins 2008, Kenemer 1982;, Knaus & Nadasdi 2001), in the
United States (e.g. Ayoun 2001, 2004, 2005, Bardovi-Harlig & Bergström
1996, Bergström 1997, Kaplan 1987, Kenemer 1982, Salaberry 1998) and in Europe
(e.g. Harris 1988, Howard 2001, Macrory & Stone 2000) has employed a
variety of tasks, such as written clozes, oral interviews as well as oral and /
or written narrations. Despite the differences in learner-related factors (e.g.
child vs. adult learners), program-related factors (e.g. immersion programs vs.
L2 programs) and task-related factors (e.g. oral vs. written mediums, highly
structured tasks vs. open-ended tasks), the results are strikingly similar. The
passé composé is
the first past tense to become productive for beginning-level language learners
(e.g. Ayoun 2004, Harley 1992, Kaplan 1987, Bergström 1997). These results
align with the default past tense hypothesis, whereby in the early
stages of acquisition learners mark tense distinctions, as opposed to aspect
distinctions, and in doing so use the perfective form as their one and only
past tense marker (Salaberry 1999, 2003). In early stages, the passé composé is
used with telic verbs, such as se lever or écrire une lettre (e.g. Bardovi-Harlig & Bergström 1996, Harley 1992). The
imparfait, which does not become productive until later in the course of
acquisition, is used exclusively with the high-frequency statives avoir and être before its usage is extended to the domain of modals
(e.g. vouloir, pouvoir) and other
statives like détester, penser, habiter (e.g.
Harley 1992, Harley & Swain 1978). As acquisition unfolds, English-speaking
learners of French extend the scope in which the imparfait is used, adding
atelic verbs, i.e. activities such as manger, courir and nager (e.g. Bardovi-Harlig
& Bergström 1996, Harley 1992, Harley & Swain 1978). As proficiency
increases, learners also use specific verbs in non-prototypical contexts: the passé composé with
atelic predicates (e.g. balader dans le
parc) and the imparfait with telic predicates (e.g.
fermer la fenêtre), as in Salaberry (1998). Advanced English-speaking learners of French,
in comparison to native speakers, have been shown to over-use the passé composé and
to prefer prototypical uses of the passé composé and imparfait despite the fact
that any verb can in either tense depend on the speaker’s perspective (e.g.
Harley 1992, Salaberry 1998).
While the
passé composé may
be the first past tense which is used productively by English speakers learning
French, form-related difficulties persist, even with what could be considered
advanced-level learners. As the following examples clearly show, emergence of
the passé composé and
its mastery are two different things. Researchers note, in particular, that the
presence of a dual auxiliary system and the necessity of variable agreement
marking on past participles are problematic for beginning- to advanced-level L2
learners of French. For example, learners delete auxiliary verbs, creating
simplified preterit forms, as in *Je ø
parlé for J’ai parlé’
(e.g. Harris 1988, Kenemer 1982, Macrory & Stone 2000). The auxiliary verb avoir
is overused, as in *J’ai parti instead of Je suis parti(e) (e.g. Harley
1992, Harris 1988, Kenemer 1982, Knaus & Nadasdi 2001, Macrory & Stone
2000). L2 learners also fail to mark subject agreement on past participles with
être-verbs, as in *Elles sont tombé - masculin singular for Elles
sont tombées, feminine plural (Kenemer 1982).
Not
surprisingly, given its relatively decreased formal complexity, research on
Anglophone learners’ of French production of the imparfait does not focus on
form-related learner errors. ‘Distribution’ problems have been mentioned, such
as present indicative forms being used in imperfect contexts (Kaplan 1987).
More commonly, learners overuse the passé composé, also applying it to imperfect
contexts (e.g. Ayoun 2004, Izquierdo & Collins 2008). Problems relating to
the functional complexity of the imperfect, which encompasses three different
semantic aspectual values, are documented in Ayoun (2004). In this study, the
imparfait is primarily used by students in second- to fourth-semester
university level courses in its durative function, with minimal tokens of its
imperfective- and iterative-functions.
There are clearly two major ‘learnability’ issues identified in the
instructed L2 French acquisition literature which are important for the current
study:
· the high-level of formal
complexity of the passé
composé, which has been shown to result in common interlanguage (IL) forms in
learner production and
· the functionally-complex imparfait, for which
asymmetries in learner production of the three aspectual values have been
documented.
4 The
Study
The general aim of our research is to investigate the role of sequence
in promoting the development of past tense-aspect in an instructed L2 learning
context. Specifically, we examine possible differential roles for explicit,
form-focused instruction as a function of whether a more formally complex past
tense structure (e.g. passé composé) or a less formally complex one (e.g. imparfait) is presented first in the
instructional sequence.
4.1
Participants
One hundred and three high school students enrolled in
French II, aged 14-18 years, participated in the current study. The students attended two different high schools
located in the same school board in the state of North Carolina . French II, which is typically
taken during the second semester of instruction, is a block course, such that
students receive instruction in the form of five ninety-minute classes per week
over a five-month period. The first half of the course includes a review and
expansion of grammatical structures such as the present indicative tense,
object pronouns, reflexives and basic vocabulary related to food, clothing,
homes, shopping and travel. During the latter part of the course, students are
introduced to new structures, including the passé composé and imparfait, as well as vocabulary
pertaining to childhood activities, health and feelings.
All of the students were enrolled in one of four intact classes taught
by two female, National Board-certified educators, who were pursuing Master’s degrees
in the same program. One instructor taught two classes of students using a
traditional sequence of instruction in which the passé composé was presented
before the imparfait, henceforth
PRET-First. A second instructor taught two classes using a non-traditional
sequence in which the imparfait
was introduced before the passé composé, which will henceforth be referred to as IMP-First. Each high
school was purposely selected due to similar profiles as determined by the
socioeconomic status, race and achievement levels of the student body.
4.2 Materials
Over the course of four chapters from the county-mandated French II textbook,
Allez, viens! French Level 2 which
present the passé composé and the imparfait,
the two experimental groups received instructional treatments that were
identical in terms of content The treatment took place during the final two
months of the instructional year and varied only in the sequencing of Chapters
5, 6, 7 and 9. The fifty PRET-First students were presented with a
traditional learning sequence: treatment of the passé composé over the course
of two chapters (5 and 6), followed by instruction on the imparfait for one chapter (7) and
instruction on choosing between the two tenses in the final chapter (9). The
fifty-three IMP-First students, who were enrolled at a second high
school, received instruction first on the imparfait (Chapter 7), followed by the passé composé for two
chapters (5 and 6) and instruction on the
correct use of the two tenses in the final chapter
(9).
The instructors met before the onset of instruction on the
past tense and prepared and agreed upon all of the content to which their
students would be exposed. All students received identical grammatical
explanation in the classroom, with deliberate focus on the two target tenses.
In the presentation of the two tenses, both inductive and deductive strategies
were used, with the goal of helping the students to understand and apply
concrete rules for both forming and using the tenses in a systematic manner.
The students were asked to complete the same mechanical, meaningful and
communicative activities throughout the semester, beginning with discrete
sentences and moving to longer stretches of contextualized discourse.
Opportunities for practice consisted of speaking, reading, writing and
listening tasks. Students also completed the same assignments outside of class,
primarily from their workbook. In addition, the instructors prepared a timeline
and decided how many instructional hours would be spent on each chapter. The
two instructors regularly communicated with each other via e-mail so as to
ensure that they were providing the same instruction and practice opportunities
as originally agreed upon. To this end, the input and output activities in the
two conditions were identical, with variations in the course instructor and the
order of presentation of the two past tenses under examination.
Following the four-unit instructional
treatment, the learners were given two assessments measuring their ability to
both conjugate the passé
composé and the imparfait (e.g. form
accuracy) and their ability to correctly select which tense would be most
appropriate to use within the context provided (e.g. appropriate form
distribution on a written cloze and a sentence-preference task). Learners began
with a written cloze passage containing 27 target forms (Appendix A). The
story, about a group of girls who get a flat tire on the way to their friend’s
house for dinner, was developed by experienced L2 French instructors using verbs
and other vocabulary from the North
Carolina French
II Standard Course of Study in order to facilitate overall comprehension of
the text. A bilingual glossary of potentially difficult lexical items from the
cloze was provided for students in an attempt to eliminate any potential
interactions due to variations in individual vocabulary breadth. Native
speakers checked the text for appropriateness. The 27 predicates of the cloze
task targeted the imparfait (15 tokens) and the passé composé (12 tokens), and were distributed across four
lexical aspectual categories (states, activities, accomplishments and
achievements). Given the well-documented variability in IL (interlanguage)
forms produced by L2 learners of French (e.g. Kenemer
1982, Macrory & Stone 2000), learners were required to indicate their tense
selection by writing PC (= passé composé) or I (= imparfait)
in the space provided (to indicate
preterit and imperfect, respectively) as they completed the cloze. This served
as a measure of tense-distribution knowledge. Tense-distribution information
was supplemented by the learners’ actual conjugation of the targeted lexical
verbs, which served as a measure of targetlike formation.
As the goal of this study was to
examine the impact of instructional sequence on past tense acquisition, and not
to test the aspect hypothesis, no attempt was made to balance the number of
tokens across either tenses or aspectual categories. Preference was given to
creating a natural-sounding text, with target sentences that mirrored the demands of the language
to which the students were regularly exposed in their classes. Obligatory contexts were determined as a
function of the responses of four native speakers of French, who served as a
control group for this pilot study.
4.3 Procedure
All instruction and assessment
occurred in the students’ classrooms, during regularly-scheduled class times.
The treatments were administered by the students’ regular instructor, while a
single researcher administered the two assessments (written cloze;
sentence-preference task) on the same day. Students were given adequate time
(never exceeding 45 minutes) to complete the two assessments, which were
supplied in a numbered envelope to ensure anonymity. Only the results of the
written cloze will be examined in the current article. Following from Ayoun
(2005), the participants were instructed to read the short story, containing a
series of blanks followed by the infinitive form of lexical verbs, in its
entirety before beginning the production component of the task. They were
encouraged to use the bilingual glossary at the end of the text for lexical
items that were marked with an asterisk to enhance their comprehension.
Students were told that their task was two-fold:
1) to
indicate their tense selection for each targeted verb by writing PC or I
inside the square bracket provided (to
indicate preterit and imperfect, respectively); and
2) to conjugate the lexical verb in the chosen past
tense, making all necessary agreements in the case of the preterit.
Students were instructed that once they had completed the cloze task,
they were to return it to the envelope containing their assessment materials
and not permitted to return to it once they had begun the sentence-preference
task.
4.4
Coding and Analysis
The cloze data was coded in a binary fashion (1 = correct, 0 =
incorrect) for both tense distribution and tense formation. As was the case in
Izquierdo and Collins (2008), the cloze data was coded twice by the same rater
to ensure coding reliability. For imperfect tokens, the stem and the ending were coded separately, for a
maximum of two points. To this end, one point was still awarded in the case of
errors in agreement between the imperfective inflection and the head noun
phrase (e.g. *ses amies était en route (3rd person singular) instead of of ses amies étaient en route (3rd person plural). Full points were awarded in
instances in which appropriate diacritics were absent in the imparfait, such as
the third person singular form etait (instead
of était) written without an accent
aigu. However, in the preterit, the absence of an accent aigu (chante instead of chanté) in the past participles of
-er verbs such as chanter [to sing] was considered incorrect
as it made the form graphically indistinguishable from the first- and
third-person singular verbs in both the present indicative and subjunctive
moods. For passé composé tokens,
auxiliary verb selection and conjugation, past participle formation and agreement
markings on the past participle were all coded individually for each token, for
a maximum of four points. For example, two points were deducted in cases in
which the learner used an inappropriate auxiliary in a perfective construction
(e.g. *elles ont arrivées chez Michèle (feminine plural +
incorrect auxiliary choice) instead of the accurate form elles sont arrivées chez
Michèle (feminine plural + correct auxiliary choice). Similarly, one point was deducted in cases where the past
participle was ill-formed (e.g. *elles
ont voit une
station-service (feminine plural + incorrect past participle) instead of the accurate form elles
ont vu une station-service (feminine
plural + correct past participle). A point was also
deducted in cases in which correct agreement was not marked on the past
participle for être-verbs (e.g., *ses amies …. se sont dépêché (feminine plural + incorrect agreement on past participle) instead of the accurate form ses amis …
se sont dépêchées (correct agreement on past participle). This
fine-grained coding scheme allowed for more detailed insight into students’ IL
representations of past tense forms.
5 Results
5.1
Tense Selection
The data were first analyzed to see whether students were able to
correctly identify contexts on the cloze in which the passé composé (PC) or
imparfait (I) should be used. Students indicated their tense selection directly
on the cloze-task sheet inside the square brackets preceding each targeted
lexical verb. Native-speaker responses indicated that fifteen imperfect tokens
and twelve preterit tokens should be used (for a maximum of twenty-seven points).
In the fifteen imparfait contexts, students in the IMP-First group had a
mean score of 10.06, and students in the PRET-First group had a mean
score of 8.44. In the twelve passé composé contexts, IMP-First students
had a mean score of 9.53, compared to those in the PRET-First group who
had a mean score of 6.90. Students in both conditions were more accurate in the
identification of appropriate contexts for imperfect, as opposed to preterit,
usage.
A one-way ANOVA test revealed
that in imparfait contexts, the difference in means between the PRET-First
and IMP-First groups was statistically significant (F (1, 101) = 7.080, p
< .01). In passé composé contexts, the difference in means was statistically
significant to an even greater degree (F
(1, 101) = 24.072, p < .001). We
see that the IMP-First group consistently and significantly outperformed
the PRET-First group on tense selection on the cloze task. This result
simply means that the IMP-First learners were better at distinguishing
between contexts necessitating the use of the passé composé and the imparfait after
two months of instruction on past tense-aspect. The fact that the difference in
means between the two groups reached greater significance in passé composé -contexts,
as opposed to imparfait -contexts, is particularly striking precisely because IMP-First
learners were exposed to the passé composé later in the instructional sequence
than learners from the PRET-First condition. Given the comparable levels
of students in the two conditions prior to the treatment as determined by a
one-way ANOVA test (F (1, 91) =
.001, p = .974), these results could
indicate that students in the IMP-First group outperformed their peers
in the PRET-First group on tense selection despite being presented with
a more functionally-complex past tense (the imperfect: three functions) before
a functionally ‘simpler’ one (the perfective: one function).
5.2 Tense Formation
A second analysis of the data allowed us to determine whether the
students were able to produce targetlike forms of both the passé composé and
the imparfait on a written cloze task. For accurate tense formation in
imperfect contexts, students in the IMP-First group had a mean score of
16.64 (out of 30) and students in the PRET-First group had a mean score
of 13.88. In passé composé contexts, IMP-First students had a mean score of 29.19 (out of 48) and PRET-First
students had a mean score of 13.38.
In Table 3, a component analysis of tense formation on the
written cloze is provided, including differences between numeric means for
correct formation of the stem and ending for the imparfait contexts and correct selection and formation of the
auxiliary verb, correct formation of the past participle and correct agreement
markings on the past participle for the passé composé contexts. In all instances, and as group, students in the IMP-First
group outperformed those in the PRET-first group:
Condition
|
M
|
SD
|
SE
|
|
Score for correct stem (imperfect) /15
|
IMP
|
8.74
|
2.33
|
.32
|
PRET
|
8.14
|
2.67
|
.38
|
|
Score for correct ending (imperfect) /15
|
IMP
|
7.91
|
3.36
|
.46
|
PRET
|
5.74
|
3.33
|
.47
|
|
Score for correct aux. selection (preterit) /12
|
IMP
|
7.00
|
4.12
|
.57
|
PRET
|
2.58
|
2.99
|
.42
|
|
Score for correct aux. conjugation (preterit) /12
|
IMP
|
6.21
|
4.27
|
.59
|
PRET
|
1.62
|
2.26
|
.32
|
|
Score for correct past participle (preterit) /12
|
IMP
|
8.79
|
2.35
|
.32
|
PRET
|
5.08
|
3.64
|
.51
|
|
Score for correct agreement (preterit) /12
|
IMP
|
7.19
|
2.59
|
.36
|
PRET
|
4.10
|
2.77
|
.39
|
Tab. 3:
Component analysis of tense formation on the written cloze (Descriptive statistics)
A one-way ANOVA test revealed that in imparfait
contexts, the difference in means for correct tense formation between the PRET-First
and IMP-First groups was statistically significant (F (1, 101) = 7.531, p
< .01). In passé composé
contexts, the difference in means for correct tense formation reached even
greater statistical significance (F
(1, 101) = 53.849, p < .001). Once
again, the results show that the greatest impact of instructional sequence on
the formation of the past tense rests with the use of the passé composé, a more formally complex tense requiring multiple transformations from
its base form (the infinitive of the lexical verb). The difference in
numerical mean scores for the formation of the passé composé is about five times larger than the difference in
mean scores for the formation of the imparfait,
in favor of students in the IMP-First group. A difference of this
magnitude could offer support for our hypothesis whereby learners who are
introduced to a ‘simple’ past tense before a ‘complex’ one (from a formal
complexity standpoint) would generate more accurate tokens of both tenses on a
production task, such as a cloze, for reasons of developmental readiness.
In summary, these results
provide tentative support for our initial hypothesis that the sequence of
presentation of the imparfait and
passé composé has a significant
impact on learners’ abilities to both correctly identify appropriate usage
contexts (e.g. tense selection) and to form targetlike past tense exemplars
(e.g. tense formation) on a contextualized production task such as the written
cloze.
6 Discussion
The general question addressed in this study is how the success of past
tense-aspect instruction in L2 French, as measured by form- and tense
selection-accuracy rates in written production, is affected by pedagogical
sequence. Or in even more general terms, is one past tense more teachable than
another as a function of its complexity? Researchers working with instructed L2
learners of French have made suggestions to this effect without actually
testing them empirically (e.g. Ayoun 2004, 2005, Kaplan 1987). In this study,
we hypothesized that a sequence accounting for the increasing formal complexity
of the two primary past tenses in French (e.g. imparfait before passé composé)
would positively affect L2 French learners’ mastery of the formation and
distribution of both tenses, resulting in increased performance on a written
cloze task. This hypothesis could be verified.
In many ways, it is
difficult to compare our results with those of the extant research on the
acquisition of past tense in L2 French precisely because ours is the first
study to examine the impact of presentation order on the acquisition of the passé composé and the imparfait. Comparisons to
Kaplan’s (1987) study, in which beginning-level university students were taught
the imparfait before
the preterit, are less than ideal as her data are oral, as opposed to written,
and were collected using questions and cues for eliciting past tense
utterances. Kaplan’s study design is also characterized by a number of
weaknesses, which she herself acknowledges, such as the impossibility of
distinguishing between certain homophonous passé composé / imparfait forms in oral data and
exaggerated passé
composé
accuracy rates dues to chunking phenomenon. For this reason,
we compared learner performance in our two conditions instead, using the form
and distribution error rate comparison suggested in Kaplan (1987). The students
in the IMP-First group in our study make fewer distribution-related
errors in both past tense contexts than do their counterparts in the PRET-First
condition (21% vs. 42.5% for preterit contexts; 33% v. 44% for imparfait contexts,
respectively). As for the correct formation of
the two past tenses, IMP-First students commit fewer errors than those
in the PRET-First group (39% v. 72% for PRET contexts; 45% v. 54% for
IMP contexts, respectively). It is noteworthy that learners in the IMP-First
condition not only perform better on the formation of the more formally complex
perfective tense, they also have a better mastery of the distribution of the
more semantically complex imperfective tense, which encompasses imperfect,
durative and iterative meanings. The rates of form- and distribution-related
errors show that learners in both conditions still need significant exposure to
and practice of the passé
composé
and imparfait so
as to achieve native-like mastery. This is not surprising as they are only in
their second semester of language study, particularly given the abundant
research in L2 French detailing the prolonged developmental trajectory of past
tense acquisition. What is more important, however, is that our research
suggests that past tense instruction may be more beneficial, in terms of
accurate form production and distribution on a written cloze, when beginning
level learners are presented with the imparfait before the passé composé.
Clearly, the results of this study must be interpreted with caution
given certain limitations of the design.
First, acting under the advisement of a statistician, we compared the percent means of the percent final course grades in French
I of students in both the PRET-First and IMP-First groups, using
a one-way ANOVA test, which indicated no significant
differences prior to the administration of the past tense treatment in the
current study. For future studies, the use of a standard pre-test
measure as a baseline allowing for comparisons of the mastery of important
syntactic structures (e.g. regular and irregular present indicative verbs) by
students in both conditions is recommended so as to better determine potential
differences prior to administering the instructional treatment.
Second, and for practical reasons, the study was designed such that each
instructor and her two intact classes were assigned to the same treatment (e.g.
instructor 1 = 2 PRET-First groups; instructor 2 = 2 IMP-First
groups). In future empirical
investigations on the role of grammar sequencing in improving the effectiveness
of instruction, it would be desirable to control for teacher effect as a possible confounding variable by having each
instructor deliver both treatments to two intact sections of the same course.
While the current study controlled for teacher input and student opportunities
for practice, it cannot be stated unequivocally that the superior performance
of IMP-First students is solely due to instructional sequence rather
than teacher factors, such as personality or rapport with students.
7 Conclusion
Previous research on the acquisition of past tense and aspect by
instructed learners of L2 French shows early emergence of the preterit as compared to the passé composé (e.g.
Ayoun 2001, Bergstrøm 1997, Harley 1992). The current study is, to the best of
our knowledge, the first one to use empirical data to challenge the assumption
that the so-called ‘early’ emergence of the passé composé is not, in fact, due
to instructional sequence (possibly in combination with another factor like
form frequency in classroom input). Our findings show that despite a delayed
introduction to the passé composé, IMP-First students correctly mark
perfective and imperfective contexts with the passé composé and imparfait,
respectively, more frequently than do PRET-First students. Moreover,
students in the IMP-First group are more accurate in the targetlike
formation of these two tenses.
If these preliminary findings for increased
accuracy on the identification of appropriate contexts for passé composé and imparfait usage and
targetlike formation of these two tenses as a function of order of presentation
can be supported by future research, they will have profound implications for
L2 teaching and syllabus design. By challenging the traditional passé
composé -before-imparfait sequence which abounds in L2 classrooms and
mass-marketed pedagogical materials, teachers will be able to capitalize on
what may be more developmentally appropriate orders, potentially increasing the
rate of acquisition. A sequencing approach to the acquisition of past
tense-aspect by instructed learners suggests an alternative answer to the
longstanding debate between researchers and teachers, alike, as to the most
effective way to help students learn the preterit / imparfait nuance. To be clear, we are not arguing that
the way in which the past tenses are taught (e.g. explicit vs. implicit,
deductive vs. inductive) has no influence whatsoever on acquisition as this is
beyond the scope of our current research. Rather, taking a similar stance to
Pienemann (1989), we maintain that the influence of teaching is restricted to
the learning of items for which learners are developmentally ready. Teaching
can only promote acquisition by presenting the learner with that which is
learnable at a given point in time. In other words, grammatical forms
characterized as ‘developmental’ (such as the passé composé and imparfait in French) could be positioned in a syllabus according to their
learnability as a function of their formal and / or functional complexity.
The fact that learners in the IMP First
condition in our study significantly outperformed their peers in the PRET-First
condition on both the formation and the distribution of the two primary French
past tenses constitutes an argument for conducting further studies on the
impact of sequencing in instructed L2 acquisition. This is not a call for a
return to the morpheme studies which went out of fashion in the early 1980s
(e.g. Dulay & Burt 1973, Larsen-Freeman 1975, Pica 1983), but rather a
chance to explore whether
empirical investigations of grammar sequencing might provide solutions for
enhancing instructional outcomes for the acquisition of difficult aspects of
L2s, such as verbal and pronominal systems. As a first step in this direction,
our results point to the potential
efficiency of teaching less formally complex target forms (passé composé) before their more complex counterparts (imparfait), even in cases in which the less complex
form has multiple form-meaning mappings.
Appendix: The
Written Cloze Task
Instructions
Throughout
this task, you will read a short story, which contains a series of blanks
followed by a verb in the infinitive form. For each verb, you are to decide
whether it should be in the passé
composé or the imparfait and then conjugate the
verb appropriately. Before each conjugation, confirm the tense you chose by
writing a [PC] to indicate the passé
composé or an [I] to indicate the imparfait.
If you hesitate between forms, choose the one that makes the most sense out of
the two. It is recommended that you read the entire passage carefully as the
context will help you choose the appropriate verb form. A vocabulary list is
also provided at the end of the story for the words and phrases that are
followed by a star.
Il [ ] ….. (être) une fois, une fille qui [ ] ….. (faire) la tête*, parce
qu’elle [ ] ….. (vouloir) sortir avec ses amies au parc. Elle [ ] ….. (être)
triste parce qu’il [ ] ….. (pleuvoir) et qu’elle [ ] ….. (devoir) finir ses
devoirs pour le lycée. Tout à coup, elle [ ] ….. (avoir) une très bonne idée.
Elle [ ] ….. (téléphoner) à ses amies et elle [ ] ….. (inviter) ses amies chez
elle pour dîner et regarder la télévision. Ses amies [ ] ….. (accepter)
l’invitation et [ ] ….. (se dépêcher)* de partir de chez elles. Pendant* ce temps,
Michèle [ ] ….. (ranger) le salon et elle [ ] ….. (nettoyer) la cuisine.
Pendant que* ses amies [ ] ….. (être) en route*, leur voiture [ ] ….. (tomber)
* en panne. A 7h30 du soir, il [ ] ….. (faire) noir et elles [ ] ….. (avoir)
assez peur. Elles [ ] ….. (pleurer)* au moment où elles [ ] ….. (voir) une
station-service. A la station-service, elles [ ] ….. (acheter) des bonbons et
un mécanicien [ ] ….. (réparer) la voiture. Enfin, quand elles [ ] …..
(arriver) chez Michèle, elle [ ] ….. (faire) la cuisine. Puis, Michèle [ ] …..
(demander) pourquoi elles [ ] ….. (être) en retard. Elles [ ] ….. (expliquer)
la situation pendant qu’elles [ ] ….. (manger) le dîner.
Vocabulary List (in alphabetical order)
en route on the way
faire la tête to sulk
pendant during
pendant que while
pleurer to cry
se dépêcher to hurry
tomber en panne to break down
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Authors:
Valerie
Wust, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of French Applied Linguistics
Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures
E-mail: vawust@ncsu.edu
Barbie Book Brown
French
Teacher
Department
of World Languages
Knightdale
E-mail:
bbrown1@wcpss.net