The Ineffectiveness of Overt Input on the Problematic Grammatical Features of Tense Usage and Verb Conjugation for Native Arabic Speaking Learners of English for Academic Purposes (EAP)

This study examines the effectiveness of the provision of specific input on the use of verb conjugation and tenses to preparatory students at Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University, Dammam, Saudi Arabia. This is a well-documented grammatical issue for native Arabic speakers, and was undertaken due to this factor, as well as the students under instruction having made numerous errors in their initial written work. Consequently, it was focused on in the classroom, with the students' post-input formal writing compared with the production of students from another class, at the same level, who, in contrast, had not received specific input on this grammatical feature. The results conclude that such overt input has no discernible effect, due to the errors produced by both groups being extremely similar with reference to both quantity and cause, with verb conjugation and missing verbs featuring prominently for both groups, particularly the inability to use third person's. As a result, despite language acquisition being a gradual process, I will desist from focusing on this grammatical feature due to the lack of effect of the input, but, will continue to germane errors when providing feedback on student writing in order to provide a less explicit and time-consuming focus on this issue, while attempting to improve grammatical accuracy.