EFL Learning in Indonesia
42 Yoshimura, et al. 2014, there are other studies in second language acquisition
showing that L2 learners meeting difficulties in acquiring the English tenses and aspects properties due to morphosemantic inconsistency between their first
language and second language. Learners who are already exposed with L1 will tend to use their L1 rules over the L2 rules.
Upor 2009 in his research on the acquisition of tense-aspect morphology among Tanzanian EFL learners finds that there is a strong relationship between
lexical aspects and morphological marking of verbs. Another study by Muños and Gilabert 2011 on the acquisition of the English progressive aspects by Catalan-
Spanish instructed-learners reveals that learners’ L1 influences their acquisition of progressive forms of the target language.
Related to the developmental pattern on English language acquisitions there are some previous studies conducted by Indonesian researchers. Anita
2016 in her study on the developmental pattern of the acquisition of English noun phrases in 157 students of the English Language Education Department
finds that there is no significant development of the acquisition of the noun phrases of three groups of students. She also states that the acquisition process of
noun phrase with the noun modification takes a very slow process. According to her, the developmental pattern of noun phrase acquisitions is a shape of a
gradually increasing line that indicates “the acquisition of noun phrase by three groups of students is increased as proficiency group increased”.
Another study on the developmental pattern by Wulandari 2016 shows that the developmental pattern of word stress acquisition by three groups of
students of English Letters Department is like an inverted V. It indicates that the
43 development is increasing on the second semester to the fourth semester students
and from the fourth semester students to the sixth semester students the development is slightly increasing.
Referring to previous studies mentioned on the previous paragraph, it is noticeable that previous studies on grammatical aspect only focused on the
influence of L1 in the acquisition of L2 without any further analysis on more detailed grammatical aspects. Although there was a study focusing a grammatical
aspect that focused on the Indonesian EFL learners but the aspect being investigated was only the progressive aspect and there was no further
investigation on the other three aspects. Given that fact, there is a gap of study to be filled. There should be as study focusing on the developmental pattern of those
four aspects: the simple, perfect, continuous, and perfect continuous aspect in the context of Indonesian EFL learners. Hence, this study is significant to be carried
out to provide beneficial information related to grammatical aspects acquisition, particularly for the Indonesian EFL learners.