Interlanguage Verb Tense Systems of Indonesian EFL Learners

Abstract

Among aspect of studies on second language acquisition, interlanguage is one of the most important one. To date research on interlanguage features has provided benefits to the study of second language learning in particular to EFL classroom. The present study explored inter language verb tense system to indicate present, past, and future events employed by Indonesian learners of English as a foreign language. Empirical data were 444 ill-formed utterances elicited through free compositions from the EFL learners. Error analysis and interlanguage analysis were used as analytical tools for data analysis. The results indicate the students have developed their own grammatical system to express present, past, and future events. Whilst their interlanguage system was typified by a number of non-targetlike variants, this study provides evidence of the systematicity of interlanguage as well as a model of particular interlanguage systems, i.e. of Indonesian EFL learners.