A Corpus-based Study of Present Tense Distribution in Chinese Students' English Writings

In this paper the use of present tenses in Chinese students' writings in CLEC is compared with that of their counterparts in BAWE. First the overall distribution of all present tenses in the two corpora is described respectively; then the distribution feature of each tense is summarized; at last the causes for the distribution features in Chinese students' writings are analyzed. The major findings are: in Chinese students' writings, simple present tense and present progressive tense are overused, while present perfect tense and present perfect progressive tense are underused. Some pedagogical implications based on the research findings are discussed at the end of the paper.