Analyzing Verb Tenses Error Patterns of Bachelor of Secondary Education Major in English

This study aimed to analyze the patterns of verb tense errors committed by Bachelor of Secondary Education (BSED) majoring in English students and to determine their proficiency level in using the twelve verb tenses through a 48-item sentence-completion test. Using Pit Corder’s Linguistic Category Taxonomy, all error types were classified into one of four categories; addition, omission, misordering, or misinformation. A quantitative descriptive research design was used to survey one hundred eighteen (118) BSED English students attending a private institution of higher education in Pagadian City during academic year 2025 - 2026. Data collection was achieved through administration of a researcher-developed 48 item sentence completion test measuring student proficiency of using all twelve English verb tenses in their past, present, and future forms (simple, continuous, perfect and perfect continuous). Descriptive statistics (frequency, percentage, mean, and standard deviation) were used to analyze the data and the overall proficiency level of students. It was discovered that BSED English students were most proficient at using simple tenses, while they demonstrated the least level of proficiency when utilizing perfect and perfect continuous tenses. The most frequently occurring type of error was addition errors, followed by misordering errors, omission errors and misinformation errors. Based upon these findings an action plan designed to improve the students’ overall verb tense proficiency was developed.

Verb Tenses Proficiency, Error Analysis, BSED English Students

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