The Use of Tenses in the Interlanguage of Intermediate Iranian Language Learners

This study presents an analysis of errors made by intermediate EFL learners in Velayat University. Four students majoring in English language took participate in this study. Data were collected on the base of unstructured interview containing various questions about different topics. The focus of the study was on wrong use of tenses as it was the most common error which the learners made. After finding wrong productions the participants were asked to give their reasons of producing those structures (stimuli recall). The findings revealed that making errors is not merely due to interference of mother tongue but they can be related to students’ interlanguage influence. These findings may help the teachers to view the errors as indication of a learner’s attempt to figure out some system, which is imposing regularity on the language she/he is exposed to

Keywords:

interlanguage , errors , verb tenses , English-like , non- English like