| Teaching English Tense and Aspect Using the TV Series, Suits and The Newsroom |
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Hyung Sun Kim, Baeg seung Kim |
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| Abstract |
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Seeking a better way to teach the English tense-aspect system, this study started by identifying problems in a class and ended with reflections that would lead to further identification of issues to work on. The class was an English conversation course targeting students who had basic communication skills in English. It focused on teaching (a) tense-aspect skills to be extended to actual communication; and (b) the skills as a whole from which learners choose appropriate forms without overusing one form at the cost of another. The activities were made according to the three stages of the skill-learning approach, i.e. declarative- and procedural-knowledge development and automation, using the TV series Suits (Korsh, 2011) and The Newsroom (Sorkin, 2012). The participants’ open-ended responses were overall positive in that they were in favor of TV-series-assisted learning and perceived their grammar had been enhanced. However, the pre- and post-test comparison showed only marginal enhancement or even backslides for several constructions. While the possibility of the U-shaped learning was assumed to be circumstantial, the fact that the learners had difficulties in developing skills in the whole tense-aspect to the fullest within a limited time was duly acknowledged. An alternative integrated teaching method was suggested for a future study. |
| Key Words:
communicative grammar;skill-learning approach;tense and aspect |
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