Developing Computer-Based Timeline Media To Teach English Tenses

In English, verbs have several forms: infinitive, present participle, preterite, and past participle. The tense and mode used to express an activity in English determines which verb form is used. Unlike English, Indonesian does not recognize these changes. This difference is one of the factors causing problems to Indonesian learners in mastering English Tenses, one of the important grammatical aspects to master in English learning. Teopilus (2008) in her previous research “Problems in Applying English Tenses Faced by the Students of the English Education Study Program as Shown by Their Thinking Aloud Protocols” found out that the students of the English Education Study Program still made mistakes in using English Tenses. The findings show that one of the causes of these problems is the students’ inability of understanding the time concept of the English Tenses. To overcome the problems, in this research, the researchers develop computer-based timeline media to teach the first six English Tenses and analyze their effectiveness. A number of subjects are given the instruction using the developed computer-based timeline media. The data analyses yield the following findings: (1) There is a significant increase from the average of the subjects’ pre test scores to their post test scores; and (2) The 3 t-tests conducted prove that there is a significant difference in the obtained gain scores of the subjects. These findings prove that the subjects’ knowledge of the six English Tenses improves after they have been taught these tenses using the developed media. This implies that the computer-based timeline media developed in this research are able to help Indonesian learners comprehend the six English Tenses more effectively