The Use of the Literary Present Tense in Literary Analyses Written by Undergraduates of English Literature in Sri Lanka: An Error Analysis

Abstract

In literary analyses, the literary present tense is used to discuss certain events that take place in literary works. In other words, in literary analyses, writers sometimes use the present tense in reference to works of literature written in the past. Literature students for whom English is a second language can find it daunting to grasp the concept of using the simple present to discuss past events. Apart from this confusion, undergraduate students of English literature can face difficulty in distinguishing between the creative and academic writing styles, especially as they are exposed to both styles of writing and are expected to write academically about creative writing. Against this backdrop, this study analyzed errors related to the use of present tense that occurred in academic writing samples of 21 undergraduate students studying English literature at a Sri Lankan nonstate higher education institute. The causes of these errors too were determined. The error analysis was conducted according to the five steps suggested by S. Pit Corder (1967). A total of 32 present tense-related errors were identified. Of them, 12 were instances of when the literary present tense was not used where necessary. The remaining 20 errors were examples of students’ usage of the simple present tense instead of the simple past. These two types of errors indicate that the students lack knowledge and/ or practice in determining when (and when not) to use the literary present tense in their literary analyses. Furthermore, a reporting sentence which could be written in either the simple present or simple past tense was identified; such reporting sentences can be construed as increasing the difficulty that students would face in the selection of tenses. Therefore, it can be concluded that literature undergraduates should be introduced to the concept of the literary present tense, which is not a term that is frequently discussed in books written about the pedagogy of academic writing, according to the researcher’s knowledge.