Difficulties of students of the French department of Hanoi National University of Education while distinguishing between present participle and verbal adjective

DOI: 10.18173/2354-1075.2021-0016

Abstract

Present participle and verbal adjective are basic and relatively common grammatical phenomena of the French language. However, in the teaching process, we find that students often encounter many difficulties when learning this grammar phenomenon. The purpose of the article is to find out the difficulties of students of the French department of Hanoi National University of Education in learning this grammatical phenomenon. To that end, we surveyed 50 students of the French department of Hanoi National University of Education. We have distributed a survey and a test on the usage of present participle and verbal adjective. Survey results showed that students could not distinguish present participle and verbal adjective, confusing the spelling of present participle and verbal adjective for present participle and verbal adjective with different spelling, misidentifying the components of the sentence leading to the incorrect use of present participle and verbal. From the results of the survey, we have given some pedagogical recommendations in teaching and learning present participle and verbal adjective.