Acquisition of Tense and Aspect in Second Language and Foreign Language Learning: Learner Narratives in ESL and FFL

This cross-sectional study investigates the acquisition of tense and aspect by instructed learners in two populations, learners of English as a second language (ESL) and learners of French as a foreign language (FPL). Written narratives were collected from 23 ESL learners and 23 FPL learners using a film retell task. Learners exhibit similar patterns of distribution of tense/aspect morphology across target languages, revealing the effects of lexical aspect on the distribution of morphology. Comparison of classroom learners with uninstructed learners shows that environment does not influence the essential acquisitional sequence for tense/aspect. The results suggest that the development of tense/aspect systems may be part of what VanPatten (1990) has called “the core of SLA.”