A Contrast of Present Simple Tense and Past Simple Tense in English and Equivalent Expression
in Chinese
A Contrast of Present Simple Tense and Past Simple Tense in English and Equivalent Expression
in Chinese
Instructor: Nguyễn Ngọc Vũ
Student: Nguyễn Thị Ái Phương
Ho Chi Minh City University of Pedagogy
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A Contrast of Present Simple Tense and Past Simple Tense in English and Equivalent Expression
in Chinese
Introduction
There are many factors that help Chinese language becomes the most popular language all
over the world after English. The factors that help Chinese language so popular are China
is known as one of the world’s oldest and richest continuous cultures, over 500 years old.
China is the most populous nation in the world, with 1.28 billion people. One fifth of the
planet speaks Chinese because of its populous country in the world. It’s easy for us to find
Chinese people because they live everywhere on the earth such as in The United States,
Canada, and Vietnam, etc. Besides, there are varieties of languages in China such as
Cantonese, Mandarin, Teochew, etc. but Mandarin is the mother tongue. Many people
thinks that if you learn Chinese, you can communicate to more people than ever before
because the percentage of Chinese people who live in the world are more crowded than the
population of other countries. Furthermore, China is very well- known for its history and
tradition, so if we learn Chinese we can have a good opportunity to know more about this
traditional country and about the people’s lives as well as its history. Furthermore, you can
Moreover, since China has joined the WTO- China’s economy is growing, so interacting
with China is more and more important- to the benefit to everybody and China becomes the
second largest economy in the world. Furthermore, China is not only the factory of the
world, producing many of our daily goods, it’s also a fast growing market with more than a
billion consumers- foreign companies rush into the Chinese market in the hope of huge
benefits. With Asian economies growing significantly, learning Chinese greatly improves
your chances of success in job markets dealing with these economies. That is the reason
why Chinese language is getting more and more popular.
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A Contrast of Present Simple Tense and Past Simple Tense in English and Equivalent Expression
in Chinese
Therefore, today my assignment discusses about Chinese language and English language,
but my assignment is not talking about how important Chinese language is or the usage of
its language but about its grammatical structure, so I want to compare English grammar and
Chinese grammar for I think that this factor is very important for language learners. As far
as I know, English grammar and Chinese grammar are completely different. They are
different about alphabet, phonology, new words and grammar structures. Because in
English, it uses alphabet in order to form a word, but in Chinese, it does not have alphabet,
it uses a logographic system for its written language, so English learners find it rather
difficult when they are learning Chinese for they have to remember all the logographic and
they have also have difficulty in reading texts. Furthermore, in Chinese, words do not have
preposition like English; for example: take part in, look up, look after, etc. Therefore, it is
completely difficult for Chinese learners when they choose to learn English as their second
language, because they not only remember new words, but also remember the preposition
of that word too, so some Chinese learners tend to miss these prepositions when using
English. For example:
In English: I am waiting for you at the cafeteria.
In Chinese: 我在食堂等你。/wo zai shi tang deng ni/
In English: My mother puts the book on the table.
In Chinese: 书在桌子上。/shu zai zhuozi shang/
From the examples above, we can clearly see that when you say, you are waiting for
someone; you are not allowed to omit the preposition ‘for’. But in Chinese, they simply use
the word ‘等’ without any preposition after it and in the second example, we can see that in
English preposition “on” is put in front of noun phrase “the table”; whereas, in Chinese
preposition “上” has the same meaning “on” in English put the end of the sentence.
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A Contrast of Present Simple Tense and Past Simple Tense in English and Equivalent Expression
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Therefore, Chinese learners are not familiar to it, and they tend to make lots of mistakes.
Talking about tenses, in English, there are twelve tenses which are used in different
situation based on the mentioned time. Whereas in Chinese, it does not have tenses like
English; Chinese learners use some adverbs like 现在，昨天，明天，过，了，。。。so as
to express something which is happening, or something happened, or something will
happen. However, today my assignment is going to discuss about “A contrast of Present
Simple Tense and Past Simple Tense in English and equivalent expression in Chinese”.
Therefore, I would like to choose the two most basic, necessary and important tenses for
my assignment that is Simple Present tense and Past Simple tense. There are three main
Forms that I mention in my essay are Positive Form, Negative Form and Interrogative Form
for each tense.
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A Contrast of Present Simple Tense and Past Simple Tense in English and Equivalent Expression
in Chinese
A contrast of Present Simple Tense and Past Simple Tense in English and equivalent
expression in Chinese.
Positive Form:
In Chinese, word order for a basic declarative sentence is S – V – O just like English; for
example: 我吃饭。/wo chi fan./ (I eat dinner.), 我喝水。/wo he shui./ (I drink water.). as we
can see the two examples above English grammar and Chinese grammar have the same
word order for a basic declarative S- V- O. However, when we mention a particular time in
which the situation or the event happens, we will see the total difference about verbs in
Chinese and in English.
In English, when we say something which is done regularly, repeatedly, and fact, we will
use Present Simple tense. For example:

I usually go to school by motorbike.(1)

She always gets up at 6:00. (2)
Moreover, in English, we have to take consideration when we put the verb form because in
English we have subject- verb agreement. When subject pronoun is singular; we have to
put –s or –esafter main verb. For example,

She has breakfast with her mother. (1)

He goes to the post office. (2)

My father usually smokes after dinner. (3)

She speaks English fluently. (4)
On the other hand, if subject pronoun is plural, we do not use –s or –es after main verb. For
example:

My friends usually have lunch at the cafeteria. (1)

They often eat out on weekend. (2)
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A Contrast of Present Simple Tense and Past Simple Tense in English and Equivalent Expression
in Chinese

My grandparents like growing vegetable. (3)

Trees grow more quickly in summer than in winter. (4)

They walk their children to school in every morning. (5)
Although Chinese is similar to English in the structure Subject – Verb- Object, it is totally
different in some cases for the verb does not change even if subject is singular. For
instance:

我的妈妈去商店买东西。/wo de mama qu shang dian mai dongxi./ (1)

每天，他骑自行车上课。/meitian, ta qi zi xing che shang ke./ (2)

我学习汉语很努力。/wo xue xi han yu hen nu li./ (3)

每天，我们八点上课。/mei tian, women ba dian shang ke./ (4)

她跟她妈妈吃早饭。/ta gen ta mama chi zao fan./ (5)

她说英语很好。/ta shuo ying yu hen hao./ (6)
From those examples have been mentioned above, we can see that English and Chinese
are totally different. Chinese and English share the same structure S – V – O, but the only
different between these two languages are that Chinese does not have subject verb
agreement like English, or we can say that Chinese structure is somehow much easier than
English. In English, if we want to put –s or –es or without –s, -es after verb, we have to
consider whether the subject is singular or plural. However, in Chinese, we do not need to
do that for all verbs will stay the same, the verbs do not remain –s or –es even if the subject
pronoun is singular.
In English, when talking about a situation or an event which happened in the past, we tend
to put verb in Past form (V2/ -ed). For instance:

I went to supermarket with my mom last weekend. (1)
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A Contrast of Present Simple Tense and Past Simple Tense in English and Equivalent Expression
in Chinese

Yesterday evening, Mary gave me a phone call. (2)

When I was 16, my mom bought an MP3 player for me. (3)

When last met him, he was very thin. (4)
From the fourth examples above, we realize that in English, when we want to talk about an
event or an action which we did in the past, we have to put verb in Simple Past or we add –
ed after it. However, can we do the same for verb in Chinese? in Chinese, it does not have
verb which is called V2/ -ed, the verb will stay the same but in Chinese, people use Adverb
like 昨天，了，过 to express situation happened in the past. Let’s see those examples
below.

昨天，我跟妈妈去商店买东西。/zuotian, wo gen mama qu shang dian mai dong xi./
(1)

老师，我们学三十四课了。/laoshi, women xue san shi si ke le./ (2)

玛丽吃过面条了。/mali chi guo mian tiao le./ (3)

他吃过两次烤鸭。/ta chi guo liang ci kao ya./ (4)

来北京以后，我去过香山和长城。/lai Beijing yi hou, wo qu guo Xiangshan he
Changchen./ (5)
As we can see, verbs do not change at all but people use words like “昨天，了，过” instead.
In the first example, the verb “去，学，吃”stay the same even if the situation or event which
is mentioned was in the past. Because, Chinese does not have V2/ -ed like English, in
Chinese we just use Adverb of time like “昨天，了，过”.
Negative Form
From what I have mentioned above, English and Chinese are somehow totally different
from each other and now I’d like to discuss further their differences. From what we have
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A Contrast of Present Simple Tense and Past Simple Tense in English and Equivalent Expression
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learnt since we was in high school, there are three basic forms in each tense in English
such as Positive form, Negative form and Interrogative form, and I have mentioned about
the differences between English Positive form and Chinese Positive form. How about their
Negative form? Do these two languages have any difference? So in English, when we want
to say something which we do not do it regularly or something we do not like to do, we tend
to borrow “helping verbs” like do, and does for Simple Present tense and main verb after
“helping verbs” will stay the same, it does not remain –s or –es. For instance:

I don’t know what he is talking about. (1)

She doesn’t like eating banana. (2)

My father doesn’t like listening to rock music. (3)

I’ve got a computer, but I don’t use it much. (4)
As you can see, the first and the fourth example verb is the same, it just like the Positive
Form because the subject is plural noun. But in the second and third example, we can see
that the verb completely changes when it stands behind the “helping verbs”. If these two
examples are in Positive Form, these verbs will add an –s because the subject is singular
noun. But in this situation, these two sentences are in Negative Form, so we borrow the
“helping verbs” do and does and the main verb after the “do and does” will not remain –s or
–es even if the subject of verb is singular.
How about Chinese language? Does it have “helping verbs” like English when the situation
we are talking about is in Negative Form. The answer for these two questions are NO,
because it does not have such a verb which is called “helping verb”. They tend to borrow
some words like “不，还没” because these words play the role like “helping verb” when we
want to talk about Negative Form. For instance:

我还没做功课。/wo hai mei zuo gong ke./ (1)
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A Contrast of Present Simple Tense and Past Simple Tense in English and Equivalent Expression
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
他没看见我，我叫他，他也没听见。/ta mei kan jian wo, wo jiao ta, ta ye mei ting
jian./ (2)

我看不懂这本书。/wo kan bu dong zhe ben shu./ (3)

我不喜欢跳舞。/wo bu xi huan tiao wu./ (4)
Compared with the fourth examples in English and the fourth example in Chinese language,
we can see how different these two languages are. From the examples (1) to (4) in Chinese
Negative Form, we can clearly see that the verb after “不，还没” stays the same, though its
previous word is in Negative form. They do not have the “don’t” or “doesn’t” word like
English. Therefore, as far as I am concerned, Chinese learners will find it rather
complicated when learning English.
When talking about Past event in Negative form, we have to borrow “the helping verb” “did”
plus “not” and the main verb after “did not” stays the same. In Negative form for past event,
the word “did” is used for both Plural and Singular Noun. In this case, it is not similar to the
Negative form in Present tense because there are two different kind of helping verbs “do
and does” in Present Simple tense and what we have to do is to decide when to use do and
does, these bases on the Subject of the sentence. But the Negative form in Past Simple
tense, we just use “did” for both Singular and Plural. For example:

I didn’t go to his birthday party yesterday evening. (1)

She didn’t eat that cake which I bought for her last night. (2)

My dad didn’t watch the football match last night. (3)
But in Chinese, even if the situation was in the past, the verb in the sentence will not
change. Moreover, when the situation or event was in Negative form, we do not borrow
“helping verb” like “did” for there is no such a word “did” like English for us to borrow. In
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A Contrast of Present Simple Tense and Past Simple Tense in English and Equivalent Expression
in Chinese
Chinese, we borrow words “不，还没”; moreover, we have to add the adverbs of time like
“昨天，过。。。” in order to express the situation occurred in the past.

昨天，我还没做我的功课。/zuotian, wo hai mei zuo wo de gong ke./ (1)

昨天，他不上课。/zuotian, ta bu shang ke./ (2)

我很累，我不吃饭。/ wo hen lei, wo bu chi fan./ (3)
All in all, Chinese language does not have a distinction between Past Simple and Present
Simple tense, whether the sentence is Positive or Negative form, all the verbs will stay the
same even if the situation or event which is mentioned is in Negative form. That is the
reason why Chinese learners are confused when learning English because they have to
remember a lot of grammatical structures and their form.
Interrogative Form
Interrogative form in English is similar to the Negative form, both Negative and Interrogative
will borrow “helping verbs” “do and does” and the main verb does not remain –s or –es.
However, in Interrogative form, we have to put the “helping verbs” in front of Subject “Do/
Does + S + V?” for Present tense and “Did + S + V?” for Past tense, for examples:

Did she phone you last night? (1)

Does her father drive her to school every day? (2)

Do you like listening to classical music? (3)

Did you meet her on Tuesday? (4)
In English, we have to follow the strict structure, the Subject of the sentence will stand
between the “helping verbs” like do, does, or did and the main verb. Therefore, the
Interrogative form in English is completely different from Chinese. Because in Chinese there
are many words which are used in Interrogative form such as “吗，吧，有没有，了，A 不
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A Contrast of Present Simple Tense and Past Simple Tense in English and Equivalent Expression
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A”, most of these words are put at the end of the sentence instead of at the beginning of the
sentence like English. For instance:

你知道他去哪儿了吗？/ni zhi dao ta qu nar le ma?/ (1)

A：喂，我找玛丽。/wei, wo zhao Mali./
B：我就是，你是保罗吧？/wo jiu shi, ni shi Bao luo ba?/ (2)

你有没有钱？/ni you mei you qian?/ (3)

你听懂不懂？/ni ting dong bu dong?/ (4)
From the fourth examples have mentioned above, we have a clear view about how different
between English and Chinese are. When we use the Interrogative form in English, all the
“helping verbs” such as “do, does, and did” have to put in front of the sentence, in other
word, these words have to put before the Subject of the sentence and the verb does not
remain –s or –es. Whereas, in Chinese, words are used to express the Interrogative form
will be put at the end of the sentence. However, there are also some words will be put in the
middle of the sentence. This is dramatically different from English.
Teaching implication
When I first learnt Contrastive Analysis course, I thought it was boring and there was
nothing to learn. However, since I do this research, I realize how important and interesting
this course is. Why? Because Contrastive Analysis helps us to find out the difference and
similarity between our mother tongue and foreign language, we can learn foreign language
more easily. Many people say that learning takes lots of time but learning a foreign
language will take us a lot of time may be a whole life, it requires us lots of things such as
time- consuming, patient, hard- working, etc. However, these factors are not enough to help
us much to improve our language. It would better if we know how to link the differences and
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A Contrast of Present Simple Tense and Past Simple Tense in English and Equivalent Expression
in Chinese
the similarities in our mother tongue and the language which are learning so that we can
remember it for a long time and we can use both languages perfectly. Therefore,
Contrastive Analysis was born in order to help people to learn foreign language without any
difficulties.
Contrastive Analysis is considered as a very useful technique to help foreign learners to
learn their second language more easily. Because students can make a link between their
mother tongue and their second language, they can remember easily and without making
any mistakes and they can overcome the difficulties when learning second language.
Moreover, Contrastive Analysis gives lots of advantages for teachers; teachers can apply it
when teaching foreign language in order to make their students understand the lesson in
the easiest and the most quickly way. It would be great if the teacher apply it in their
teaching so that students can find it more interesting and they will remember it for a long
time. What is my purpose when I make the contrast of Present Simple tense and Past
Simple tense in English and equivalent expression in Chinese? As we may know that
Chinese learners have a lot of difficulties in learning English, they not only have a difficulty
in learning new words, pronunciation, but they also have great difficulty in grammar
structure. That is the reason why most Chinese learners face with when they study English.
Therefore, I would like to choose the two most important grammar points that foreign
language learners need to know when they first study English as their second language.
Furthermore, it is very helpful for those students who are studying translation course
because they can be flexible when translating from English to Chinese or from Chinese to
English not only in spoken but also in written instead of translating word- by- word for what I
have mentioned above Chinese language and English language are totally different from
each other. Therefore, when Chinese learners want to translate Chinese into English, they
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A Contrast of Present Simple Tense and Past Simple Tense in English and Equivalent Expression
in Chinese
need to take into consideration that their language does not have tenses like English, so
they need to look carefully when the situation or the event is happening in order to use the
correct tenses in English. For example: in Chinese when they are asked to translate this
sentence: “昨天，我不吃早饭” into English, they should take into consideration that in this
situation, the action happened in the past, so they have to put the verb into Past tense like
“I did not have breakfast yesterday.” From this example, we can see that although Chinese
does not have the Past Simple tense in Chinese, Chinese learners still speak and use
English language very easily without any difficulties. Through my assignment, I hope
Chinese learners will find it easy to learn English as their second language, besides, they
can avoid translating word- by- word and having natural translation in their mother tongue.
Conclusion
To sum up, learning a foreign language is not as easy as we think, because it takes us a lot
of time and we need to be patient and we have to spend lots of time to practice for there is
a saying in English: “Practice makes perfect”, so if you want to speak like a foreigner, you
have to force yourself to practice as much as you can. Thanks to the Contrastive Analysis,
we can learn second language more easily by comparing with our mother tongue.
Before ending up this assignment, I want to say thank you Mr. Vu again for your interesting
course, because I have learnt a lot from your course.
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A Contrast of Present Simple Tense and Past Simple Tense in English and Equivalent Expression
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References
Ngữ Pháp Tiếng Hán. (n.d.). Retrieved from diendanhanngu: http://www.diendanhanngu.com
Li, Charles N., and Thompson, Sandra A. (1981). Chinese Grammar. Retrieved from Wikipedia:
en.wikipedia.org
Trương Văn Giới & Lê Khắc Kiều Lục. Giáo Trình Hán Ngữ, Tập 1- Quyển 2. Nhà Xuất Bản Khoa
học Xã Hội.
Trương Văn Giới & Lê Khắc Kiều Lục. Giáo Trình Hán Ngữ, Tập 1- Quyển 2. Nhà Xuất Bản Khoa
học Xã Hội.
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