AN EXPLORATION OF THE SYSTEM OF TENSE AND ASPECT IN ENGLISH FOR EFFECTIVE USAGE

This study explores the system of Tense and Aspect in the Grammar of English with the purpose of bringing out the perception of linguists and the two grammatical categories. Views and perspectives of teachers of English as a second language in Secondary Schools were sought, while questionnaire was administered on some teachers in order to ascertain the level of compliance with the rules of grammar while deploying tense and aspect in sentence construction. Two research questions guided the study. The study adopted a descriptive research design which was carried in the study. The simple random sampling technique was used to select 40 teachers which were selected randomly from the four senior secondary schools. Simple random sampling technique was used to select ten (10) teachers from randomly selected schools. Questionnaire was the instrument used to collect data. Data collected were collated and analysed using frequency and simple percentile method. The findings of the study revealed that there are areas of ambiguity and confusion particularly in differentiating between tense and aspect and in understanding the nuances of aspectual distinctions. It was therefore recommended that teachers should provide clear and concise explanations to differentiate between tense and aspect in language instruction materials and offer specific examples to illustrate the differences between tense categories and aspectual distinctions. KEYS WORDS: System, language, grammar, grammatical categories, sentence construction