A Comparison of the Usage of English Tenses by Undergraduate Students of Different Levels of Ability Receiving Different Types of Error Treatment Through the Use of Computer-assisted Language Learning

摘要

This study investigated the effects of different error treatments—overt Correction and self-correction-on the usage of English tenes of Thai undergraduate students.Both treatments were given through CALL.Level of the students (High,Moderate,and Low) served as a moderator variable.The study was conducted with 219 first-year undergraduates of Huachiew Chalermprakiet University in a 2×3 factorial design.At the beginning of the study,all subjects were pre-tested by using the Test of English Tenses Usage (TETU) developed by the researcher.After they completed 9 CALL lessons in 3 weeks,the post-test was conducted.Two-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and descriptive statistics were used to analyze and to explain the data.Results showed that the error treatment factor did not have a significant effect on the usage of tenses while the level factor did.The interaction effect between the treatment and the level was not found.The three tenses that showed the highest percentage of correct answers were：Simple Present,Present Continuous,and Past Continuous,while the most difficult tenses for them were Present Perfect and Past Perfect.