Tense, aspect and narrative structure in oral narratives of students and native speakers of French: A comparative study

Abstract

This study aims to comparatively examine features of tense, aspect and narrative structure in oral narratives of Turkish L1 learners of French as a foreign language and native speakers of French. The sample of the study included 93 students enrolling in first, second, third and fourth years of French Language Teaching Department at Çukurova University as well as 16 native speakers of French. Participants were first asked to watch French dubbed versions of Lion King and A Christmas Carol, both Walt Disney productions, then to orally retell these movies. Data were analyzed in terms of the aspect and discourse hypotheses. Results indicated that both students and native speakers of French highly structured their oral narratives by présent. Oral narratives with high use of présent indicate that students began to dispose of the effects of both narrative structure and inherent semantic properties of verbs. However, students did not have same levels of getting rid of the effects of narrative structure and lexical aspect. Namely, junior and senior students found to be more influenced by narrative structure and lexical aspect compared with freshman and sophomore ones.