Can ESL Students Use Perfect Tenses Perfectly?

This chapter explores the challenges ESL students face in correctly employing perfect tenses in essay writing. The study focuses on Grade 6 students in a Dubai-based private school following an American curriculum. It examines the effectiveness of the “Expert Groups” teaching strategy in imparting perfect tense knowledge. The qualitative analysis includes examining student essays and conducting interviews to understand their linguistic and metalinguistic abilities. The chapter highlights common errors, such as misconceptions about parts of speech and irregular verbs, and discusses the implications of these findings for ESL teaching methods. The study’s outcomes underscore the complexities of acquiring grammatical features in a second language and offer insights for refining ESL teaching practices.