JClic as a Pedagogical Tool to Increase Students’ Mastery of ‘Present Perfect Simple’ in English

Abstract

As several studies suggest (Celce-Murcia & Larsen-Freeman 1999; Larsen-Freeman, Kuehn & Haccius 2002; Riddell 2014) the present perfect simple continues to be a challenge for many English language learners. In particular, high school students often find it difficult to discriminate between the simple past and the present perfect simple in English. Then, in order to help students improve their mastery of the present perfect simple we have designed and developed fifteen computer-based activities with the JClic software as an innovative approach to address the research problem. Furthermore, we consider that the present investigation may be helpful for teachers to update their teaching techniques and materials to better support students’ academic success and to gain more insight into the types and causes of students’ errors in using these two troublesome tenses. Accordingly, this small-scale quasi-experimental study sought to answer two research questions. Concerning the first research question, the results have shown that students’ initial knowledge level in the use of present perfect simple was very low. About the second research question, the data analysis showed evidence that the educational software JClic has proved to be an effective tool for teaching and training the correct use of the present perfect simple. In addition, the paired two samples Student’s t-test was used when comparing pre-test (2nd end-of-term exam) and post-test (3rd end-of-term exam) scores to test the first hypothesis and the results indicated statistical significant difference in the population scores. Then, we can assert that the use of JClic in the English classroom was a good strategy to enhance the language learning process.