Narrating the Past in Different Contexts: C-BI Approach to the Present Perfect and Past Simple

Abstract Concept-based instruction (C-BI) has proven to be effective in improving students’ command of grammar items used out of context by offering the students revision lessons, but its effect in teaching newly-introduced grammar items in a complex context of a specific genre remains unclear. To probe C-BI’s effect on students’ use of the past simple and present perfect tenses out of context and in the context of a narrative by its description of the grammar concept in its materialization, that is, the Schemas of a Complete Orienting Basis of an Action (SCOBAs), we taught the two tenses to 40 eighth-graders in a Chinese middle school in our three-week teaching experiment. The qualitative and quantitative analysis of the results shows that i) in both out-of-context use and in-context use, accuracy of using the target tenses is higher after C-BI intervention; ii) by improving their conceptual knowledge through C-BI, the students are helped to pin down reference time and are hence more certain in using the target tenses. Moreover, they are encouraged to use the newly-introduced tenses in the complex context of the narrative genre; iii) both in simple contexts or complex contexts, the SCOBAs are effective in helping students navigate the learning task and determine their intended meaning by establishing temporal reference in the context.