Contraintes morphosyntaxiques d’emploi des temps verbaux en discours rapport. Le cas des étudiants en fle à UEW, Winneba.

Abstract

The research examines the difficulties encountered by students of French as a Foreign Language (FFL) in the Department of French Education of the University of Education, Winneba, in identifying and using appropriately verbal tenses in reported speech. Doubtlessly, students’ have deficiencies regarding the identification and the use of appropriated verbs in reported speech in French that are common place in their oral and written productions. Indeed, both oral and written productions of students’ raises significant deficiencies of quoted speeches without the needed grammatical adjustments required by standard French or as required by syntactic approaches. The study focuses on the complex nature of the French verbal tenses in particular, which makes its identification and usage very problematic. We have adopted syntactic theories as propounded by Riegel et al. (2018) and Grevisse (2011), because our investigation is foundered on morphosyntax aspect of the language. Data collected through questionnaires and test were analysed using quantitative and qualitative approaches. The findings related to students’ difficulties revealed that most of them were not able to identify and use verbal tenses correctly in reported speech in French. Again, the analysis showed that students inability to identify and use verbal tenses in sentences, is the outcome of two main reasons, namely the complex nature of the French language and the different forms the verbs take in relation to the pronouns, tenses, modals in sentences.