A study of the improvement of verb recognition produced by exposing students to the explicit teaching of verbs in simple Present and Present Perfect Continuous tense in Spanish within English classes in students of tenth grade A and D of Instituto Cumbre de Condores Poniente

Abstract

This thesis work was made with the objective of demonstrating that teaching verbs explicitly in L1 (Spanish) is effective and beneficial in teaching a foreign language in Simple Present and Present Continuous tense. This research was carried out in a state school, Instituto Cumbres de Condores Poniente (ICCP) and two classes of the same grade were chosen (10th grade A and D) to apply a Spanish and English Pre-test with the intention to find out about students’ previous knowledge related to verbs in both languages, in that way one group was selected to be the experimental group where the intervention classes were carried out. After the four intervention classes in the experimental group, students took a Spanish and English Post-test in order to compare it with the Pre-test and evidence students’ improvement in the recognition and identification of verbs. The results showed that the experimental group (10th grade A), learnt how to use verbs in Simple Present and Present Continuous tense in their mother tongue and also in the target language. Students obtained better results in the Post-test than the Pre-test. It is expected that, if students recognize what a verb is in their mother tongue they will be able to recognize what a verb is in the target language and thus knowing how to use it in a grammatical structure mentioned before