A CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS OF ENGLISH AND ARABIC TENSES

Abstract

The study deals with the similarities and differences of Tenses in English and
Arabic Tenses. The application to the language teaching and learning process. In
this study the researcher focuses on the three main tenses of both languages
namely simple Present Tense, simple Past Tense, and Future Tense, that is
describing the verb systems of both languages based on to each tense. The data
that support this study are obtained by applying a documentary technique that
selected by reading some references related to the subject matters. The data are
analyzed by using the theory of Contrastive Analysis to found out the similarities
and differences of tenses in English and Arabic. The findings show some aspects
of tenses in English are similar to those in Arabic. The differences are both
English and Arabic has different number of pronoun. English consists of seven
pronouns while Arabic pronouns are fourteen which influence the verb formation.