3.1.1 Linguistic descriptions of tense-aspect in ISLA studies

The first question, ‘Do instructional effect studies with tense-aspect as the target of investigation provide a linguistic description of the tense-aspect target?’ asked whether the reports in our collection describe the form-meaning association of targeted tense-aspect form. We recognize that any published research report must move along quickly, that word limits require that authors make choices, and that the purpose of the studies examined here is not a deep exploration into the semantics of tense-aspect systems. However, we also recognize that definitions and descriptions with examples enhance the clarity of reports and inform readers as to what the target of instruction is and why it is interesting. Brief definitions or descriptions suffice, but whereas some articles provide a paragraph about the target form and the target meaning, others provide extensive descriptions of the tense-aspect target.

We evaluated both brief and extended descriptions of the target as providing a linguistic description of the target. In Tables 4–8, a ‘Yes’ is entered in the column labeled ‘Linguistic description’ for a continuum of responses from a brief description in a footnote to an elaborated description. Some articles only name the target, for example ‘past,’ ‘present perfect,’ or ‘imparfait’ but provide no further information. Others give a very short gloss using terms that may not be accessible to all readers; for example, ‘Preterite is perfective and imperfect is imperfective.’ This treatment of the target is entered as ‘No’ in the tables. Articles that only give examples but have no description are indicated as ‘examples only,’ and articles that only provide a description of the form without meaning are indicated by ‘form only.’ If a study concerned itself exclusively with accuracy of form (and not use) it was not included in this review. Overall, 55% of the studies provide a linguistic description of the instructional target (Table 3).

The more concerned an instructional approach is with providing learners with explicit information about the form-meaning association of the tense-aspect target, the more likely the article reporting the study is to include a linguistic description. The cognitive-linguistics based studies cite a range of cognitive linguistics sources and describe the target of instruction in some detail, providing a description of how the targeted tense-aspect form is used, and in cases where two or more form-meaning associations are considered, how they differ from each other and what their functions are in meaning or text construction. The cognitive-linguistics based studies also report explicit approaches to instruction and five articles report drawing on cognitive-linguistics and implementing CBI (Table 6). Two additional studies that employ CBI without reference to cognitive linguistics are also listed in Table 6.

Like the cognitive-linguistics studies, two of the collaborations that describe themselves as providing explicit information to learners also provide linguistic descriptions of the target and cite linguistic sources (Table 8). These include both McManus and Marsden (Reference McManus and Marsden2017, and by extension its replication, Reference McManus and Marsden2018, and expansion, Reference McManus and Marsden2019) and Nishi and Shirai (Reference Nishi, Shirai, Benati and Yamashita2016); Castañeda (Reference Castañeda2011) also provides a linguistic description of the instructional targets; namely, preterite and imperfect in Spanish. An additional study that tests a multimedia approach to instruction (Izquierdo, Reference Izquierdo2014) also provides a linguistic description of the target (Table 8). Carver and Kim (Reference Carver and Kim2020) limit their linguistic description to form.

Studies investigating the effect of textual enhancement (input enhancement studies) are split on providing a linguistic description (Table 4). Izquierdo (Reference Izquierdo2014) incorporates textual enhancement as one component of instruction and also provides a linguistic description of the target. Likewise, studies exploring the effect of corrective feedback on tense-aspect are equally split on providing a linguistic description of the target (Table 7). Ellis (Reference Ellis and Mackey2007), McDonough (Reference McDonough and Mackey2007), and Mifka-Profozic (Reference Mifka-Profozic2015) all provide linguistic descriptions of the instructional targets. In contrast, in studies of the effect of processing instruction on tense-aspect, linguistic descriptions of the target are often not given, but examples are sometimes given (Table 5).

3.1.2 Engagement of ISLA research with tense-aspect SLA literature

Question 2, ‘Do instructional effect studies with tense-aspect as the target of instruction engage with the SLA literature on tense-aspect acquisition?’ exclusively addressed engagement with SLA research on tense-aspect, not SLA more broadly. By ‘engaged with’ we mean, for instance, that the studies went beyond citing an SLA tense-aspect study to support the claim that learning tense-aspect is ‘hard.’ If they did, the study received a ‘Yes’ in the column labeled ‘engaged with SLA tense-aspect’ in its respective table. Most of the studies in this review cited general findings from SLA research in their review of the literature and all cited previous literature within their particular empirical frameworks. However, only 17 (30%) of the 56 studies that identified tense-aspect as the target of instruction cite SLA research on tense-aspect.Footnote ¹⁰ Seven of these studies come from the articles that fall into the ‘other’ approaches group (Table 8). For example, Nishi and Shirai (Reference Nishi, Shirai, Benati and Yamashita2016, Table 8) orient to the linguistic literature, introducing both grammatical and lexical aspect, and then discuss the different readings of the target of instruction, the Japanese imperfective –teiru, which has resultative, progressive, and habitual readings. Following that, they introduce the basic findings of acquisitional studies in Japanese, and they relate them to tense-aspect acquisition. Nishi and Shirai identify a difficulty in acquisition and a corresponding absence of information in textbooks and instruction: (a) Previous research on tense-aspect acquisition concerning the acquisition of Japanese –teiru suggests that even advanced learners have difficulties in correctly rejecting aspectual combinations that are not possible in L2 as a result of L1 (first language)–L2 differences in lexical aspect (that is, achievements in Japanese break down into three categories that can be understood as states, activities, and achievements in English); and (b) verb semantics and its relation to the interpretation of tense-aspect morphology is not addressed in textbooks or in classroom instruction. They then identify the target of instruction as imperfective –teiru with a focus on verb semantics and the means of delivery as explicit instruction.

The articles in the ‘other’ category are also divided on engagement with the SLA tense-aspect literature (Table 8). Jesús Izquierdo, Kevin McManus, and Yasuhiro Shirai have worked extensively over the years on questions of acquisition of L2 tense-aspect and their studies cite SLA studies on tense-aspect (Table 8). Castañeda (Reference Castañeda2011) cites the SLA tense-aspect literature, and information on narrative structure (grounding) is additionally implemented in the instruction. Leeser (Reference Leeser2008) cites L2 tense-aspect acquisition briefly in his review, but returns to it in interpreting the results of his study.

Four of the 12 corrective feedback studies engage with research reports on the L2 acquisition of tense-aspect (Ayoun, Reference Ayoun2004; Ishida, Reference Ishida2004; McDonough, Reference McDonough and Mackey2007; Mifka-Profozic, Reference Mifka-Profozic2015). For example, McDonough (Reference McDonough and Mackey2007) uses the tense-aspect literature to identify the instructional target: activities have been repeatedly demonstrated to be the last of the dynamic verbs to occur with the preterite (or perfective past), and thus she identifies activities in the past tense in English as her instructional target. Jahan and Kormos (Reference Jahan and Kormos2015), a textual enhancement study, similarly used the acquisition literature to identify the instructional target (will and going to) and interpret the results; and the SLA literature on tense-aspect bolsters Loewen and Inceoglu's (Reference Loewen and Inceoglu2016) choice of target (preterite and imperfect in Spanish) in another textual enhancement study.

In contrast to the diligent reporting of cognitive-linguistic descriptions of tense-aspect, studies based in cognitive linguistics neglect research on the L2 acquisition of tense-aspect. Similarly, processing instruction seems to cite input processing as the sole reference for SLA research. Thus, these articles do not refer to more specific findings that describe the acquisition of tense and aspect. The one exception is the first study included in Table 4, Benati (Reference Benati2001), who cites Klein (Reference Klein1986) and Bardovi-Harlig (Reference Bardovi-Harlig1992) on the function of lexical reference—and in particular time adverbials—in the acquisition of tense-aspect systems.Footnote ¹¹ These results are all the more surprising in light of the fact that functional approaches to SLA tense-aspect research and input processing agree on the role of adverbials in the acquisition of temporal reference (Bardovi-Harlig, Reference Bardovi-Harlig2000, Reference Bardovi-Harlig, VanPatten, Keating and Wulff2020).

Input processing research focuses on processing rather than production, which was the basis for the summary presented in Section 2.2.Footnote ¹² At the time of Benati's (Reference Benati2001) article, the contribution of adverbials in the acquisition of tense-aspect from a processing perspective was captured by the Lexical Processing Strategy that states that ‘learners prefer processing lexical items to grammatical items for semantic information’ (VanPatten, Reference VanPatten1996, p. 21). The Lexical Processing Strategy has been reformulated as the Lexical Preference Principle stating that ‘learners will process lexical items for meaning before grammatical forms when both encode the same semantic (real world) information’ (VanPatten, Reference VanPatten, VanPatten, Keating and Wulff2020, p. 108). An alternative processing analysis from Ellis and Wulff (Reference Ellis, Wulff, VanPatten, Keating and Wulff2020) attributes this to the associative learning phenomenon of ‘blocking,’ whereby redundant cues are overshadowed by more salient ones and suggests that adverbs may block the learning of tense-aspect morphology. Thus, the field seems to converge in its interest in adverbials, but processing instruction studies cite no sources outside input processing, and consequently exclude tense-aspect studies.

In sum, citing tense-aspect acquisition studies may lead to using the results to plan instruction, input, corrective feedback, interpretation tasks, or output, but it does not guarantee that researchers will use the findings to design a study or pedagogy. We explore implementation of results in design in the following section.

3.1.3 Integration of SLA research

Question 3, ‘Do instructional effect studies with tense-aspect as the target of investigation use results from SLA literature on tense-aspect to design instruction?,’ asked if the findings of L2 tense-aspect acquisition studies play a role in designing the tasks, the analysis, or the instruction of a study, or in determining the target of instruction, at what level of proficiency learners might be receptive to instruction, or what type of input addresses the problem that has been identified. The number of studies that implement findings from SLA research in the study design or instructional materials or activities is a subset of those that engage with L2 tense-aspect research. Thirteen studies out of 56 (23%) use SLA tense-aspect research findings in the design of the study or instructional materials and activities, and often in the analysis of the instructional outcomes (Table 3). All the studies in this section are also included in the previous section (citing the SLA literature on tense-aspect), and they take the extra step of using the literature in the design of the study and/or instruction.

Ten main studies designed their investigations using the results of SLA tense-aspect research in a range of ways. As a researcher who works on the acquisition of tense-aspect in French, Ayoun (Reference Ayoun2004) implemented a research-based reanalysis of the data from an earlier study (Ayoun, Reference Ayoun2001). In the 2004 article, she addressed two questions from the literature: Were lexical aspectual classes (of predicates) differentially affected by corrective feedback? And were meanings of the imperfect (imperfective, durative, and iterative) differentially affected? (The durative reading made the greatest gains, and the use of imperfective was greatest with states, then activities, and then achievements.) Following evidence that lexical aspect affects L2 acquisition of verbal morphology, Finger and de Oliveira (Reference Finger and de Oliveira2010) recorded the lexical aspect class of the verbs used. Benati (Reference Benati2001) used research on the processing and use of adverbials to design studies that eliminated adverbs from input to focus learners’ attention on tense-aspect morphology. The absence of adverbs in input is a hallmark of all the processing instruction studies with tense-aspect targets that followed (Table 5).

McDonough (Reference McDonough and Mackey2007) implemented a feedback study that identified activity predicates with the simple past as the instructional target, based on documentation that past is used less frequently with activities than with accomplishments and achievements by lower level and intermediate learners. Using that information, she established a ‘readiness’ inclusion criterion: in order to be included in the study, learners had to demonstrate higher use of past with achievements and accomplishments than with activities (which follows the documented acquisition sequence). Corrective feedback was given exclusively on activities, and it addressed both form and use. In a post hoc analysis, McDonough also evaluated whether corrective feedback encouraged learners to move from the use of present to the use of past progressive with activities rather than the targeted simple past. Past progressive with activities would indicate an earlier acquisitional stage compared with the use of simple past, but a later stage compared with present (or nonpast). Thus, using the acquisitional sequence, McDonough was able to show that recasts (but not clarification requests) increase the use of past progressive, thereby helping the learners to advance one acquisitional stage, even if they did not reach the instructional target.

Nishi and Shirai (Reference Nishi, Shirai, Benati and Yamashita2016) investigated the effect of explicit linguistic instruction that focused on verb semantics on the learning of resultative –teiru. The instruction included three components hypothesized in the literature to influence acquisition: (a) different meanings of –teiru, (b) predicate types (lexical categories of predicates), and (c) how to express action-in-progress and resultative meanings.

McManus and Marsden (Reference McManus and Marsden2017, Reference McManus and Marsden2018, Reference McManus and Marsden2019) took SLA results into account in the design of their instructional component. McManus and Marsden (Reference McManus and Marsden2017) provided an appendix that shows that in their instructional material predicates were balanced by lexical aspectual categories; namely, states, activities, accomplishments, and achievements. In addition, video clips and images demonstrated the multiple meanings of the imperfect, including ongoingness and habituality (in both present and past) and then the contrast of these meanings with completion. Castañeda (Reference Castañeda2011) took his pretest and posttest recognition task from the research literature (Salaberry, Reference Salaberry1999, Reference Salaberry2000), as well as the use of different types of narrative tasks during instruction, acknowledging task-sensitivity in the use of tense-aspect morphology.

Other studies (Ishida, Reference Ishida2004; Izquierdo, Reference Izquierdo2014; Mifka-Profozic, Reference Mifka-Profozic2015) reflected the SLA research on tense-aspect in their research questions. Ishida (Reference Ishida2004) addressed three research questions, the second of which addresses the literature in tense-aspect acquisition on Japanese. Regarding the variable use of –teiru Ishida asked: (a) How does the accuracy in the use of –teiru with verbs of different lexical aspect classes change over time?, (b) How does the accuracy in the use of –teiru for different aspectual meanings change over time?, and (c) Are the changes in accuracy in the use of –teiru for different aspectual meanings related to the total number of recasts provided for each (lexical-aspectual) category? Ishida additionally balanced the instructional materials for three possible parings of aspectual classes in L2 Japanese and L1 English; namely, fall-type predicates (achievement-achievement), know-type (stative- achievement), and ride-type (activity-achievement).

Izquierdo (Reference Izquierdo2014) tested the effect of multimedia instruction on prototypical and nonprototypical combinations of grammatical aspect and lexical aspectual categories, where the prototypical combinations were operationalized as preterite with telic predicates and imperfective with atelic predicates, and nonprototypical combinations as preterite with atelic predicates and imperfective with telic predicates. Prototypical and nonprototypical contexts and uses were balanced throughout the input and the tests.

Finally, Mifka-Profozic (Reference Mifka-Profozic2015) conducted a corrective feedback study whose second research question specifically addressed whether instruction can facilitate progress through acquisitional sequences: ‘Do recasts and clarification requests have an effect on L2 acquisition of the passé composé and the imparfait in terms of use with respect to the lexical aspect of verbs in relation to the Aspect Hypothesis, where it was hypothesized that the effects of corrective feedback might be observed through accelerated progression across the predicted stages of acquisition?’ (p. 151). Although the results showed that both passé composé and the imparfait benefited from recasts, corrective feedback did not accelerate the stages; that is, passé compose was used primarily with achievements (and did not spread to accomplishments and activities) and imparfait was associated primarily with statives (with a few activities) and did not spread to activities and accomplishments in the amount of time allotted.

In sum, as McDonough (Reference McDonough and Mackey2007, p. 324), speaking of the Aspect Hypothesis, observed, ‘despite the predictive hierarchy [of the Aspect Hypothesis] few interaction researchers have adopted this framework to assess the impact of interactional feedback on the emergence of past tense forms.’ McDonough's description of the state of affairs is as true today as it was in 2007, and it applies not only to interactional approaches, but to other instructional approaches as well.

3.1.4 ISLA, description of instruction, and pedagogy

Whereas Questions 1–3 probed the relation of ISLA to SLA research (and linguistics) as instantiated through published research reports, Question 4 explores the relation of ISLA to pedagogy. By asking ‘Do instructional effect studies with tense-aspect as the target of investigation include an elaborated description of the instruction provided to learners (i.e., can the studies be replicated based on the published account?) and do they consider pedagogical implications?,’ we not only ask whether the experimental pedagogy is conveyed to the reader (i.e., is instruction given the same weight as other elements in the report?), but we also ask whether all parts of the experiment are reported (i.e., could the studies be replicated based on the published account?). The length of instruction in these studies ranged on the low end from 10 minutes in one textual enhancement study (LaBrozzi, Reference LaBrozzi2016) and 20 minutes for individual study (Nishi & Shirai, Reference Nishi, Shirai, Benati and Yamashita2016) to a high of 300 minutes or more (Benati, Reference Benati2005; Benati & Lee, Reference Benati, Lee, Benati and Lee2010; Modirkhamene et al., Reference Modirkhamene, Pouyan and Alavinia2018; Rubio & Doquin de Saint Preux, Reference Rubio and Doquin de Saint Preux2018); in the middle range, most instruction took an hour or more. Some studies delivered instruction in consecutive sessions and others distributed instruction over 2–4 weeks with as much as 9–10 weeks (and one study over 16 weeks).

Even though the length of instruction may prohibit some studies from providing a full set of instructional materials, the level of detail in reporting the instructional component varied greatly across studies. Where examples of materials were provided, a ‘Yes’ was entered into the penultimate column of Tables 4–8. Detailed information was often found in appendices and more recently as online supplemental materials at the publisher's website or a repository (IRIS). Studies that did not supply examples of instructional materials received a ‘No.’ For cases where some materials were provided but not others, this was noted. Overall, 63% of the studies provided examples of instructional materials.

Regarding the first part of Question 4, examining whether studies included a sufficiently elaborated description of the instruction provided to learners, as was the case with the answers to the first three questions, the answers seem to cluster around approaches. Nearly all the processing instruction reports provide instructional documentation (Table 5). Benati (Reference Benati2005) provided two items for each of three activities from three different instructional conditions that included processing instruction, meaning output instruction, and traditional instruction and for the English past tense. Benati et al. (Reference Benati, Lee, Houghton, Benati and Lee2008a) provided full activities for teaching English past for processing instruction (Appendix A) and traditional instruction (Appendix B). Benati et al. (Reference Benati, Lee, Laval, Benati and Lee2008b) similarly provided full activities for processing instruction for the French imparfait.

Instruction using cognitive linguistics has the expressed goal of demonstrating that detailed explanations and activities that lead learners to understand their own role as perspective-takers and text-builders in using tense-aspect morphology is superior to traditional ‘rules of thumb,’ which simplify the tense-aspect system. Consistent with that goal, the cognitive-linguistics- based studies provided elaborated instructional components that often include descriptions of the flowcharts, visuals, and slides (called tools in CBI) that were given to the learners (Table 6). For instance, using different styles of presentation, both Alonso-Aparicio and Llopis-García (Reference Alonso-Aparicio, Llopis-García, Ibarretxe-Antuñano, Cadierno and Castañeda2019) and Bielak and Pawlak (Reference Bielak and Pawlak2011) provided elaborated examples of their instructional components. Alonso-Aparicio and Llopis-García (Reference Alonso-Aparicio, Llopis-García, Ibarretxe-Antuñano, Cadierno and Castañeda2019) described the instruction of the Spanish preterite and imperfect in detail and supplied samples of their slides and the interpretation activities for both the cognitive linguistics instruction and the traditional grammar instruction. Bielak and Pawlak (Reference Bielak and Pawlak2011; see also Bielak & Pawlak, Reference Bielak and Pawlak2013) provided figures depicting the semantics of the perfective past and -ing with a step-by-step description of the cognitive linguistics presentation illustrated by figures depicting various predicates in different tenses in English.

Among the ‘other’ approaches, providing elaborated descriptions falls considerably (Table 8). McManus and Marsden (Reference McManus and Marsden2017) posted their L2 French instructional materials in online supplemental materials on the publisher's website and subsequently in a digital repository (IRIS). These materials were used in a replication by the same authors (McManus & Marsden, Reference McManus and Marsden2018) and in a follow-up study (McManus & Marsden, Reference McManus and Marsden2019). Carver and Kim (Reference Carver and Kim2020) studied the effect of task repetition, where task type or task outcome varied. They provided an example of one of the collaborative writing tasks they used in an appendix, and a list of the French verbs given to the students with the tasks. Castañeda (Reference Castañeda2011) described the classroom activities, writing activities, writing assignment topics, and video clips in the main text, and he additionally provided examples of the blogs and wikis that the learners wrote in Spanish. Examples of written feedback and sample topics were also provided.

Somewhat surprisingly, studies reporting on the effects of textual enhancement generally did not provide the texts that were used, which would be the main component of instruction (Table 4). The exception is the study reported by Loewen and Inceoglu (Reference Loewen and Inceoglu2016), who supplied the text.

Studies that explore the effects of corrective feedback are more difficult to evaluate, because the main component of instruction is the interaction rather than a specific type of presentation. Instead, we answered Question 4 with answers to two different questions better suited to the approach: (a) Did the article provide examples of the tasks or activities used to generate learner language (and thus create opportunities for corrective feedback)? and (b) Was there an articulated plan for feedback? Most studies of corrective feedback provided at least one of these, and several studies provided both (Table 7). Benson and DeKeyser (Reference Benson and DeKeyser2019) provided all four of the writing prompts that generated occasions for written feedback on English past and present perfect, as well as examples of the feedback in Appendices 3 and 1, respectively. Ishida (Reference Ishida2004) provided the topics she used to generate oral language by learners that could lead to corrective feedback on L2 Japanese use of progressive and resultative uses of –teiru.

Thus, at least some studies in each approach provided examples relevant to their approach. In addition, six studies provided information on how their instruction fit into their existing curriculum or pedagogy by giving more information than typically reported in studies of this type. Fazilatfar et al. (Reference Fazilatfar, Jabbari and Harsij2017), Loewen and Inceoglu (Reference Loewen and Inceoglu2016), Ishida (Reference Ishida2004), Mifka-Profozic (Reference Mifka-Profozic2015), Lee et al. (Reference Lee, Benati, Aguilar-Sánchez, McNulty, Benati and Lee2007), and Nishi and Shirai (Reference Nishi, Shirai, Benati and Yamashita2016) gave information on order of instruction, duration of instruction, textbooks, or instructional approaches used in the programs in which the studies took place.

The focus of the second part of Question 4 is whether the articles provide pedagogical implications. The rightmost column in Tables 3–8, labeled ‘Pedagogical implications,’ refers to whether the studies included pedagogical implications for the study results or not. References to pedagogical implications in the introduction or the literature review of the studies were not considered. The articles that include pedagogical implications mention them in the discussion section or at the end of the article either listing them together with limitations and further research or, less commonly, including a separate section dealing with pedagogy specifically. The information contained in such sections tends not to be very detailed or classroom-oriented, but rather it emphasizes possible connections of the research results to L2 language pedagogy more generally. The most common connection between the results and pedagogy is the link between the approach (input enhancement, processing instruction, cognitive linguistics, and corrective feedback) and the effectiveness of explicit language (grammar) teaching when teaching L2 tense-aspect.

In spite of the difficulty of conducting a count because the style of the articles differs, we nevertheless attempted to determine how many of the articles included references to pedagogical implications. There are clear cases of inclusion, but in other cases the references to pedagogy are so general that they could barely be considered relevant. In still other cases, such as articles on CBI and input processing, the articles include detailed classroom practices but they seem to be implemented for the sake of the experiment and not as an instance of classroom practice. The count in Tables 3–8 is liberal toward the inclusion of pedagogical implications; that is, a study was marked as a ‘Yes’ even though the connections between the results and pedagogy may have been very loose. Even so, less than half of the studies (43%) (Table 3) contained pedagogical implications, and the proportion of those that included them varied according to the orientation of the articles. Ordered from most to least frequent inclusion of pedagogical implications, we found input enhancement, cognitive linguistics and related approaches, ‘other' approaches, processing instruction, and corrective feedback.

Our inventory of detailed accounts of instruction shows that instructional effect studies do not always provide full accounts of the very variable that they investigated. Reporting the instructional component of an instructional effect study is as important to the research as reporting the tasks used to evaluate the instructional effect because not including a full account of instruction limits the interpretability of the study, which in turn affects replicability, relevance of results, and potential for application. The lack of a detailed account of the experimental pedagogy may also reflect the stance of ISLA toward language instruction, which we discuss in Section 4.

3.2.1 Linguistic description of the tense-aspect target

The linguistic descriptions included in the pedagogical proposals typically provided background and detailed linguistic information that establish the difficulty of learning the tense-aspect target. The linguistic descriptions in the pedagogical proposals were based on three main theoretical frameworks: structuralist linguistics, discursive linguistics, and cognitive linguistics.

Most of the proposals included a review of structuralist descriptions of tense-aspect to introduce the so-called ‘traditional’ description of tense-aspect and oppose it to other linguistic approaches, mostly discursive and cognitive. The structuralist approach to the teaching of tense-aspect is closely related to what has been called the ‘aspect’ approach (e.g., Gündüz, Reference Gündüz2005); that is, one that focuses on whether events are presented as bounded or unbounded (often oversimplified in teaching materials as finished vs. unfinished) or the duration of the event and the role of adverbials. The chronological evolution from sentence-level (structuralist) accounts of tense-aspect toward discursive accounts is cited by Gündüz (Reference Gündüz2005), who observed that L2 French textbooks privileged two main linguistic approaches at different times: whereas the ‘aspectual’ approach was common in communicative methods up until the end of the 1980s, the ‘textual’ or ‘discursive’ approach became more prevalent in the 1990s and beyond.

Proposals following a structuralist approach focus on the sentence level (subject + main verb + arguments), with little reference to the role of discourse in the use of tense-aspect specific forms or the role of different types of predicates and arguments (i.e., lexical semantics). They often include contrasts of minimal-pair-style sentences with perfective and imperfective forms (e.g., Spanish vivió en el bosque vs. vivía en el bosque; ‘lived-perfective in the forest’ vs. ‘was living-imperfective in the forest’) and emphasize the role of adverbials and adverbial expressions in the choice of specific verbal forms (e.g., adverbs and adverbial expressions of frequency for imperfective forms).

In pedagogical proposals, the citations of structuralist descriptions of tense-aspect are closely connected to critiques of textbooks for providing simplified descriptions of tense-aspect, especially in the beginner and intermediate levels (Comajoan-Colomé, Reference Comajoan-Colomé2015; Crespí & Llop, Reference Crespí and Llop2021; Frantzen, Reference Frantzen2013; Real Espinosa, Reference Real Espinosa2013; Soler, Reference Soler and Ainciburu2017, Reference Soler2020). In fact, criticism of textbook rules has been a constant in applied linguistics publications, and two works—published before the beginning year for our review but often cited later— stand out in their critical accounts of traditional descriptions of tense-aspect (Dansereau, Reference Dansereau1987, for L2 French; Frantzen, Reference Frantzen1995, for L2 Spanish).

Dansereau (Reference Dansereau1987) examined how 12 beginner and intermediate French college textbooks in the United States presented the meanings of French passé composé (perfective) and imparfait (imperfective), and she argued that there were two main problems with the traditional explanations: they are ambiguous (i.e., there were too many exceptions to the provided rule), and they mislead the learner when the explanations give the idea that aspectual meanings are in reality tense meanings (e.g., they associate past forms with passé composé exclusively). Dansereau (Reference Dansereau1987) expanded on the two problems and proposed an ‘aspectual explanation’ (p. 36), which is mostly a discursive explanation: ‘The imparfait is used to relate what the conditions were / what was going (‘Quelles étaient les conditions?’), and the passé composé to relate what happened / what happened next (‘Qu'est-ce qui s'est passé’)’ (p. 37).Footnote ¹³

Frantzen (Reference Frantzen1995) analyzed 30 college Spanish textbooks and grammar reference books in use in the United States (11 beginning-level, nine intermediate, and ten advanced) and found that they often resorted to problematic rules of thumb. More specifically, she examined the following six rules: (a) the imperfect describes emotional or mental activity, (b) the imperfect is used to express repeated or habitual past action, (c) would + infinitive signals use of the imperfect, (d) certain words and expressions are frequently associated with the preterite, others with the imperfect, (e) some verbs take on a special meaning in the preterite tense, and (f) when two actions occur simultaneously in the past, the imperfect is used. Her results showed that most of the textbooks included one or more of such rules of thumb, and she proposed a simplified overarching explanation for teachers teaching the L2 Spanish preterite-imperfect distinction:

1. (1) The imperfect is used for (a) actions and states in progress at some focused point in the past, (b) habitual past actions, (c) repetitious past actions, d) anticipated/planned past actions.

2. (2) The preterite is used to focus on (a) the completion of past actions or states, (b) the beginning of past actions or states. (Frantzen,Reference Frantzen1995, p. 147)

In the period between 2000 and 2021, the examination of how textbooks taught tense-aspect continued and several proposals showed that textbooks continued to provide ambiguous and misleading rules (Comajoan-Colomé, Reference Comajoan-Colomé2015; Gezundhajt, Reference Gezundhajt2000; Gündüz, Reference Gündüz2005; Samu, Reference Samu2020). The long-term effect of such rules was documented by Rothman (Reference Rothman2008) in a study of instructed and uninstructed near-native speakers of Spanish. (Near-native speakers are L2 speakers whose linguistic competence allows them to be mistaken for native speakers). Rothman showed that although instructed near-native speakers showed high congruence with native performance on both a production and forced-choice selection task, they differed from native speakers in exactly the cases that are covered by ad hoc rules in traditional Spanish tense-aspect instruction. In contrast, the uninstructed learners who were not exposed to such rules did not differ from native-speaker performance.

Most of the pedagogical proposals that are critical of traditional descriptions of tense-aspect provide an alternative account, focusing on discursive linguistics, cognitive linguistics, or a combination of approaches. Those following a discursive approach focus on the use of tense-aspect in narratives (Wallace, Reference Wallace and Hopper1982; Weinrich, Reference Weinrich1964; see Gündüz, Reference Gündüz2005 for a review on L2 French). The centrality of narrative discourse in pedagogical proposals is warranted, considering that narratives are frequently the target of learner production, and that learner interaction in the classroom often includes narratives in the past (e.g., ‘What did you do last weekend?’ or ‘What did you do during the break?’). Granda (Reference Granda2008) and Soulé and Granda (Reference Soulé, Granda, Muñoz Molina and Cuadra Arance2015) provided a summary of tense and aspect in narrative discourse in Spanish reviewing the notions of foreground and background and connecting them to the development of preterite and imperfect forms in L2 Spanish and their teaching.

The linguistic descriptions of tense-aspect in the pedagogical proposals are anchored in specific linguistic traditions for each of the languages being taught. For instance, tense-aspect descriptions of French in pedagogical proposals refer to the development of specific trends in French linguistic theories in the 1970s and 1980s and the greater or lesser emphasis on the discursive nature of tense-aspect (Gündüz, Reference Gündüz2005; Renoud, Reference Renoud2019). In the case of the linguistic descriptions of Spanish tense-aspect in the pedagogical proposals, there are common references to the linguistic debate regarding the theoretical description of imperfect as a tense or an aspectual form (Castañeda, Reference Castañeda2006; Real Espinosa, Reference Real Espinosa2009).Footnote ¹⁴

Beginning in the 2000s, there was an increase in interest in cognitive linguistics and its application to the teaching of L2 grammar, and more specifically to the teaching of tense-aspect in different L2s (cf. applied cognitive linguistics, Achard, Reference Achard, Robinson and Ellis2008; Castañeda, Reference Castañeda2014; Comajoan-Colomé & Llop Naya, Reference Comajoan-Colomé and Llop Naya2021; Ibarretxe-Antuñano et al., Reference Ibarretxe-Antuñano, Cadierno and Castañeda2019; Kermer, Reference Kermer2016; Niemeier, Reference Niemeier2017; Pütz, Reference Pütz, Geeraerts and Cuyckens2007; Reif, Reference Reif2012; Samu, Reference Samu2020; Tyler, Reference Tyler2012). The cognitive pedagogical proposals included in this review adopt a cognitive framework to teach grammar that centers around motivation for grammar (i.e., emergence of grammar out of communicative needs), speaker perspective as the main factor in the choice of perfective or imperfective (as opposed to rules of thumb), and prototypical and non-prototypical meanings of perfective/imperfective morphology and meanings. Cognitive proposals emphasize the use of visual aids to convey the meaning of perfective and imperfective morphology to learners in the classroom or in textbooks and grammar books.

The interest in cognitive linguistics and its application to language pedagogy has been particularly relevant for the teaching of Spanish in Europe. In this case, the linguistic debate revolves around the opposition between the cognitive account for the teaching of L2 Spanish past perfective and imperfective morphology, based on one single operative rule, and the so-called ‘traditional’ account, which is based on lists of specific functions and adverbial expressions for each aspectual form (e.g., Llopis-García et al., Reference Llopis-García, Real Espinosa and Ruiz Campillo2012; Palacio Alegre, Reference Palacio Alegre2009; Real Espinosa, Reference Real Espinosa2009; Ruiz Campillo, Reference Ruiz Campillo2005, Reference Ruiz Campillo2017). The single operative rule for past tense aspect (perfective vs. imperfective) from cognitive accounts is based on the spatial distinction between the inside perspective (for perfective morphology) and the outside perspective (imperfective), and is argued to have a cognitive advantage for learners and to be motivated by current research in cognitive linguistics (Ruiz Campillo, Reference Ruiz Campillo2005). Finding one single operational rule that can account for the prototypical meaning of perfective and imperfective as well as for the nonprototypical meanings may prove difficult for three main reasons. First, tense-aspect meanings can be quite nuanced, and thus it may not prove fruitful to find one single principle that can account for all of them. Second, when such a principle (e.g., preterite morphology is for the inside perspective; imperfect for outside) is introduced to learners, the new terminology may not be clear enough both for learners and teachers. Third, even though the single principle is supposed to replace the long lists of meanings or functions, teaching materials implementing the single operating principle may have to ultimately resort to some lists.

The development of cognitive linguistics for L2 Spanish teaching is closely connected to the development of research in cognitive linguistics in Europe. More specifically, since the early 2000s, the research group led by Alejandro Castañeda at the University of Granada (Spain) has conducted research projects regarding tense-aspect descriptions based on cognitive linguistics and their application to the L2 classroom. The results of the studies were used to design specific teaching materials, such as the influential Gramática básica del estudiante de español (Alonso et al., Reference Alonso, Castañeda, Martínez, Miquel, Ortega and Ruiz Campillo2011, Reference Alonso, Castañeda, Martínez, Miquel, Ortega and Ruiz Campillo2021), which has had a considerable impact in how tense-aspect is described and taught in L2 Spanish classrooms in Europe.Footnote ¹⁵ Furthermore, some of the authors of the grammar are researchers and teacher trainers and have contributed to making the cognitive-based descriptions almost mainstream in Spanish L2 teaching in Europe.

3.2.2 Pedagogical proposals and engagement with tense-aspect SLA research

The second question addressed by the pedagogical review was whether the pedagogical proposals showed evidence of engagement with research by citing and using SLA literature focused on tense-aspect acquisition. We refer specifically to research and teaching of tense-aspect and not general L2 teaching and learning. This means that when a pedagogical source included references to L2 research or teaching, not focused on tense-aspect, a ‘No’ was entered in the fifth column of Tables 10–14.

Table 10.

Pedagogical proposals for L2 Spanish tense and aspect

Table 11.

Pedagogical proposals for L2 English tense and aspect

Table 12.

Pedagogical proposals for L2 French tense and aspect

Table 13.

Pedagogical proposals for L2 Italian tense and aspect

Table 14.

Pedagogical proposals to teach L2 Catalan tense and aspect

Out of the 38 pedagogical proposals, more than half (58%) cited SLA research in their references. The cited SLA research on tense-aspect was closely related to the theoretical and teaching framework of the pedagogical proposals and focused on lexicosemantic features of tense-aspect (i.e., references to research on the Aspect Hypothesis) and on discursive or cognitive linguistic topics. The most cited research studies on the acquisition of tense-aspect were those about interlanguage development and the role of lexical semantics by Roger Andersen, Yasuhiro Shirai, and Kathleen Bardovi-Harlig.Footnote ¹⁶ SLA research on tense-aspect was cited in the pedagogical proposals for all the L2s under study, although the Italian proposals exclusively cited the tense-aspect acquisition research of L2 Italian researchers Anna Giacalone Ramat or Maria Chini. L2 Spanish pedagogical proposals cited research on the acquisition of tense-aspect least often. This may be due to the fact that the Spanish pedagogical proposals included a large number of proposals based on cognitive linguistics, which tend to focus on description rather than on the acquisition of tense-aspect.

Surprisingly, very few pedagogical proposals cited the two book chapters that most clearly integrate SLA tense-aspect research and language pedagogy—Blyth (Reference Blyth, Ayoun and R. Salaberry2005) and Ayoun (Reference Ayoun and Ayoun2013)—discussed in the next section.

3.2.3 Integration of SLA research into pedagogical proposals for the teaching of tense-aspect

The integration of SLA research into the teaching of tense-aspect is closely related to discussions of application of research, relevance of research, and engagement with research (Marsden & Kasprowicz, Reference Marsden and Kasprowicz2017). In this respect, the pedagogical proposals that engage with research may do so for four main reasons: (a) research can inform teachers of what to expect in learners’ tense-aspect interlanguage (e.g., non-linear learning), (b) it can help teachers decide on the sequence of teaching tense-aspect forms (e.g., based on difficulty, prototypicality, and so on), (c) it can provide evidence of what works best and what does not in the classroom when teaching tense-aspect, and (d) it can contribute to the design of teaching materials that more closely reflects how tense-aspect functions in the target language.

The third question for the review of the pedagogical proposals went beyond citation practices and asked whether proposals used results from SLA literature on tense-aspect to design instruction. The percentage of pedagogical proposals in the review that used SLA research (47%) was slightly lower than the percentage that cited SLA research (58%) (Table 9). Even though there has been a large number of studies in the last 20 years that focus on instruction of tense-aspect in the classroom, the specific integration of such findings into pedagogical proposals has not been robust. Integration by 47% of the proposals also means that half of the pedagogical proposals are not informed by SLA research on tense-aspect. Some pedagogical proposals connect linguistics and language teaching without SLA research, providing instruction that is closer to a linguistic description of the tense-aspect system than finding ways to teach tense-aspect. For instance, the approaches to teaching tense-aspect identified by Llopis-García et al. (Reference Llopis-García, Real Espinosa and Ruiz Campillo2012) (taxonomic, formalist, discursive, and cognitive) are closer to linguistic foundations than to providing acquisitionally-informed input, activities, or tasks that can be used in language classrooms.

The pedagogical proposals in Review 2 integrate findings from SLA research by providing two types of content: most of them give information on designing teaching materials for the classroom, the focus of the fourth question of this review (Section 3.2.4), whereas a few provide grammar explanations for the L2 classroom that go beyond the often-criticized rules of thumb in textbooks. For instance, some proposals provided script-like grammar explanations for teachers (e.g., Frantzen, Reference Frantzen2013) or descriptions that provide more nuanced accounts of tense-aspect for classroom use (e.g., Castañeda & Alhmoud, Reference Castañeda, Alhmoud and Castañeda2014; Cowan, Reference Cowan2008).

Two references regarding the integration of research and pedagogy stand out for their in-depth discussion of the topic, both focusing on L2 French but with clear connections to the acquisition of Romance languages more generally. As early as 2005, Blyth provided a thorough account of the connection between SLA research and the teaching of tense-aspect. He reviewed the complexity of Romance aspect and derived a list of pedagogical principles from SLA research, described as ‘central organizing principles to guide teachers’ classroom practice’ (p. 218). Table 15 displays the major findings from SLA research reviewed by Blyth (Reference Blyth, Ayoun and R. Salaberry2005) and his derived pedagogical principles.Footnote ¹⁷ After discussing each of the results and principles, Blyth (Reference Blyth, Ayoun and R. Salaberry2005) provided a list of focus-on-form activities that integrate the results and principles, exemplified with the teaching of French passé composé and imparfait.

Table 15.

Summary of Blyth's (Reference Blyth, Ayoun and R. Salaberry2005) SLA-based instructional recommendations

Ayoun (Reference Ayoun and Ayoun2013, p. 187) also reviewed research on the acquisition of L2 French tense-aspect and approaches to teaching tense-aspect, and she provided the following list of ‘general guiding principles that should inform instructional approaches to TAM [tense, aspect, and modality]’: (a) provide clear explanations of tense-aspect concepts with appropriate terminology, (b) take into account universal concepts (e.g., time, temporality, aspect), (c) be aware of how the universal tempoaspectual concepts are expressed in the learners’ L1, and (d) use metalinguistics to establish connections with the L2. Ayoun (Reference Ayoun and Ayoun2013) further expanded the principles into a roadmap for teaching the perfective-imperfective contrast in French (p. 188; Appendix D, p. 212) (Table 16 was constructed by the present authors from Ayoun's proposal).

Table 16.

Ayoun's (Reference Ayoun and Ayoun2013) roadmap for the instruction of L2 French tense-aspect

Ayoun's principles and roadmap for the teaching of perfective and imperfective forms in L2 French and Blyth's review of tense-aspect research and teaching are a step toward linking research and classroom practice because they take into account important matters related to the timing of the presentation of tense-aspect forms and meanings in the classroom and address the mapping of forms to meanings. Such an integration of SLA research into language teaching can be the starting point for the design of instructional materials to be used in the classroom, which was the focus of the fourth question of the review.

3.2.4 Pedagogical proposals and the design of classroom instructional materials

When we examine whether pedagogical proposals provide examples of teaching materials for the classroom, the answer is that they partially do so, since 63% of the proposals include teaching materials (Table 9). The amount of detail in the teaching materials provided in the proposals differed both by individual proposal and by language (Tables 10–14). The review of the proposals showed that the teaching materials included therein were of three types: suggestions for the teaching of L2 tense-aspect in a specific language, updated explanations of tense-aspect use, and activities to be used in the L2 classroom.

Some of the pedagogical proposals included suggestions for teaching tense-aspect in general. This was clearly the case of the grammar books targeted to language teachers that integrate findings from SLA research. For instance, Cowan (Reference Cowan2008) included ‘suggestions for teaching tense and aspect’ (p. 397), which clearly integrate SLA research findings:

In addition to general suggestions for teaching tense-aspect, Cowan (Reference Cowan2008) referred to results from studies by Collins (Reference Collins2002) and Bardovi-Harlig and Reynolds (Reference Bardovi-Harlig and Reynolds1995) to suggest specific exercises for teachers in training programs as well as for teachers in the classroom. For instance, following Collins’ (Reference Collins2002) results regarding the inaccurate use of stative verbs used in the present progressive because they are inflected as such when used as activities (e.g., ‘look’, ‘smell,’ and ‘think’), Cowan (Reference Cowan2008) suggested a metalinguistic awareness activity in which intermediate learners are exposed to short texts and have to identify the statives that are used incorrectly in the progressive. He suggested using a text such as the following:

Most of the pedagogical proposals that implemented instruction based on findings from tense-aspect research suggest grammar explanations of tense-aspect for the classroom that are deemed more effective than those provided in textbooks. The grammar explanations often appeal to descriptive and discursive linguistics and include examples and counterexamples to textbook explanations, focusing on explanations for difficult cases of tense-aspect use. For instance, Frantzen (Reference Frantzen2013) gave 23 examples of tense-aspect uses in literary texts that could not be accounted for by simplified textbook rules, and she gave specific grammar explanations that could account for such contextually rich uses.

Pedagogical proposals based on cognitive linguistics provide numerous examples of how visual aids may contribute to grammar explanations based on a unified account of tense-aspect for learners in the classroom. For instance, Samu (Reference Samu2020, pp. 28–29) (Figure 2) provided images based on Llopis-García (Reference Llopis-García2016, p. 40) to illustrate the use of Italian passato prossimo (perfective past) when viewing bounded events (the solid line in the box) from the outside (indicated by the human figure with a telescope) and imperfetto (imperfective past) when viewing events from the inside.

Figure 2.

Pedagogical illustration of the difference between perfective (passato prossimo) and imperfective (imperfetto) in Italian. From ‘La grammatica cognitiva e l'insegnamento del tempo e dell'aspetto in italiano L2’ by B. Samu, Reference Samu2020, Italiano LinguaDue, 12(1), p. 229. Reproduced with permission

Finally, some pedagogical proposals provide L2 activities for the classroom, which take the shape of individual classroom activities, or whole teaching units (several activities in a sequence). Explanations based on cognitive linguistics are often paired with interpretation activities found in input processing (although production activities are also common). In these teaching materials, learners are provided a communicative situation that includes a choice of preterite or imperfect forms, and learners are asked to select the appropriate interpretation for each of the forms, as in the following excerpt from Ruiz Campillo (Reference Ruiz Campillo2005, p. 13):

1. 1) Ayer iba yo a la farmacia y, cuando cruzaba / crucé la calle, escuché una voz que me llamaba…

   1. a) _____________ → Ya estaba al otro lado de la calle.

   2. b) _____________ → No había terminado de cruzar.

2. 2) Yesterday I was going to the pharmacy and, when I crossed (imperfect) / crossed (preterite) the street, I heard a voice that was calling me…

   1. a) _____________ → I was already at the other side of the street. (expected: crucé, preterite)

   2. b) _____________ → I had not finished crossing. (expected: cruzaba, imperfect)

Collins’ pedagogical proposals developed from her research into the acquisition of tense-aspect and the influence of first language (Collins, Reference Collins2002). Collins (Reference Collins2007) provided an activity to help learners of English to understand how context influences tense-aspect use and to show that one verb can occur with different tense-aspect forms (namely, present, past, and present perfect). In addition, although all learners of English will benefit from understanding the differences in form and meaning between simple past and present perfect, the research shows that learners from L1s that have a compound past that looks like the present perfect in form—such as French, German, and Peninsular Spanish—may need extra attention to the contrast.Footnote ¹⁸

Interpreting contexts (Collins, Reference Collins2007, pp. 301–302)

Read the following three sentences. Then read the contexts that follow, and insert each sentence into the most appropriate contexts.

• • Somebody was in the apartment.

• • Somebody has been in the apartment.

• • Somebody is in the apartment.

Context 1: Two people living in the same apartment wake up at 3 in the morning:

• Wake up! The dog just barked and I hear footsteps downstairs. ______________. There's a light on too. I'm going to call the police. [Target: Somebody is in the apartment]

Context 2: Two people arrive home from a 2-week vacation:

• Look at this! My dresser drawer is open and the shoes in my closet are scattered all over the floor. I know they weren't like that when we left. _________________. I'm going to call the police. [Target: Somebody has been in the apartment]

Context 3: A person arrives home from a 2-week vacation and goes back to work. She is talking to a co-worker:

• It's good to be home. Florence is a lovely city and we'd love to go back. The only problem with the vacation is that now we have to replace all the locks on the doors to our apartment. We didn't have anything stolen, but we know that ___________. The police think changing the locks is a good idea. [Target: Somebody was in the apartment]

Now compare your answers with a partner. For each context, explain what motivated your decision. What information in the context made you reject the other two sentences?

Soulé and Granda (Reference Soulé, Granda, Muñoz Molina and Cuadra Arance2015) reviewed the Aspect Hypothesis and the Discourse Hypothesis (Bardovi-Harlig, Reference Bardovi-Harlig2000) and designed a teaching sequence, expanding Granda's (Reference Granda2008) proposal, for introducing narrative texts in the A2-B2 CEFR levels for L2 Spanish (Table 17). The sequence takes into account both lexical aspect and discourse grounding. It presents first prototypical combinations of grounding and lexical aspect for the preterite and imperfect separately (A2 level), later in combination (A2–B1 levels), and later in nonprototypical combinations (B2 level).

Table 17.

Sequence of teaching of verbal tenses and types of predicates in L2 Spanish according to textual typology and CEFR levels (translation of Table 2, Soulé & Granda, Reference Soulé, Granda, Muñoz Molina and Cuadra Arance2015, p. 51)

Similar to Soulé and Granda's (Reference Soulé, Granda, Muñoz Molina and Cuadra Arance2015) progression of instruction for Spanish, Comajoan-Colomé and Llop Naya (Reference Comajoan-Colomé and Llop Naya2021), working with L2 Catalan, introduced nonprototypical combinations of lexical category, grounding, and morphology earlier (at the A2 level), partly because their learners already knew other Romance languages. Comajoan-Colomé and Llop Naya (Reference Comajoan-Colomé and Llop Naya2021) advocated for an SLA-informed approach to the teaching of L2 Catalan tense-aspect based on cognitive linguistics and included a detailed sequence of classroom activities for the A1-B1 levels that took into account lexicoaspectual categories and narrative grounding. For instance, for the introduction of grounding, they designed an activity in which learners were asked to say what they saw in Image 1 in Figure 3. Next, in Image 2, students were given unbounded predicates in the background (in gray) marked in the imperfect and bounded predicates in the foreground (in color) in the preterite. After the presentation, classroom activities were provided for practicing the use of preterite and imperfect in different combinations of lexicoaspectual predicates and grounding.

Figure 3.

Illustrations for teaching materials to teach perfective and imperfective meanings in L2 Catalan based on narrative grounding. From ‘An SLA-informed and cognitive linguistic approach to the teaching of L2 Catalan tense-aspect’ by Comajoan-Colomé & Llop Naya, Reference Comajoan-Colomé and Llop Naya2021, Círculo de Lingüística Aplicada a la Comunicación, p. 108. Artwork by Trevor Mitchell (Reproduced with permission from Gibsons Games)

In sum, in the last 20 years, one can observe that there has been a growing interest in the integration of SLA research findings into the teaching of tense-aspect, as witnessed in the citation of SLA studies in the pedagogical proposals and the design of classroom teaching materials. However, one may still wonder whether the calls for the integration of SLA research findings on tense-aspect and language pedagogy, present at least since Blyth (Reference Blyth, Ayoun and R. Salaberry2005) and Ayoun (Reference Ayoun and Ayoun2013), have been fulfilled. The final section of this article addresses this matter and provides some thoughts for advancing the connections between SLA, ISLA, and language teaching.