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THE ATHENIAN STUDY
By: Von Ray
Edited by: Susan Gross

The 2004 Athenian Study examines the effectiveness of
teaching both present and past tenses simultaneously.
At the onset of the experiment, my hypothesis was that
teaching the two tenses at the same time would yield
better acquisition and production of the two tenses.
This study compares two groups of students from the
Athenian Middle School of Danville, California. The
control group consists of 32 7th graders who all took
Spanish as 6th graders at our school. As 6th graders,
they were taught by my colleague Diane Grieman, who
uses TPRS, Teaching Proficiency through Reading and
Stories. Throughout the course of the year they
received roughly 100 hours of comprehensible input in
the present tense by acting out stories, answering
questions about those stories, and reading
(translating) a number of novels and stories in
Spanish. During their 7th grade year, they received
another 100 hours of comprehensible input from me.
The students acted out stories in the past tense on
even days and read (translated) stories in the present
tense and had class discussions in Spanish on odd
days. The experimental group consists of 13 6th
graders, all of which were true beginners at the start
of the year. I taught the 6th graders exactly like
the 7th graders, acting out stories in the past tense
and reading (translating) stories and discussing the
material in the present tense. Therefore the only
differences between the two groups were the total
number of hours of instruction by year’s end (200
hours to 100 hours) and the fact that the first 100
hours for the 7th graders were all in the present
tense.
Throughout the year, both groups appeared to be
acquiring both tenses well. However, I observed an
interesting pattern among the 7th graders. From time
to time, I would have the students give a 2-3 minute
retell of the story at the end of a given class
period. During these retells, I noticed that 7th
graders would strongly favor the present tense in
speech, even though they had heard and understood
those same verbs in the past tense throughout the
year. For example, when students were trying to say,
“he said to her”, they would often say (in Spanish),
“he says to her”. I saw this pattern among almost all
of my 7th graders.
One on occasion, a boy was retelling a story and he
said “le dice” (he says to her) 5 or 6 times in a row.
I reminded him, “That means “he SAYS to her”, how do
you say “he SAID to her?” After a moment, the student
said, “Oh yes! I meant to say le dijo.” As he
continued to retell the story, he said “le dice” many
more times when he should have said “le dijo”. I
attribute this to their 100 hours of present tense
input from the previous year. Because they heard “le
dice” thousands of times as 6th graders, that’s what
they acquired. That’s what had stuck. They had not
only acquired “le dice”, it had become ingrained.
Even though they understood “le dijo”, they reverted
to “le dice” during retells because they hadn’t
acquired “le dijo” like they had “le dice.”
My 6th graders, in contrast, were much more accurate
in their production of past tense stories. They were
able to say “le dijo” for “he said to her”. The
reason, I believe, is because they had not heard “le
dice” exclusively. They learned simultaneously that
“le dice” means “he SAYS to her” and that “le dijo”
means “he SAID to her”. On days that we acted stories
in the past tense, the 6th graders were hearing “le
dijo” and understanding “he said to her” and on days
that we read stories they read “le dice” and
understood “he says to her”. As a result, they seemed
to have a better feeling for the two tenses because
they were acquiring them at the same time. They were
much more likely to say “le dijo” for “he said to her”
than the 7th graders.
At the end of the academic year, I gave both groups a
short paragraph to verbally translate into English.
They had never seen the paragraph before, but they had
learned all of the words throughout the year. I made
a video recording of each student translating the
paragraph. I gave each student roughly 30-45 seconds
to first read the passage to him/herself before
recording. I did not answer any of their questions if
they asked. The objective was to assess which group
was more accurate in production. Here’s the passage I
gave them:
There is a sad boy. He is sad because he had an
elephant but now he doesn’t have it. The boy was
walking in the park when a girl saw the boy and his
elephant. She said to him, “I want to play soccer
with the elephant.” The girl grabbed the elephant.
Now the girl is playing soccer with the elephant. How
sad!

The paragraph contains five verbs or combination of
verbs in the present: there is, is sad, doesn’t have,
I want to play, and is playing. It also contains five
verbs in the past: had, was walking, saw, said to
him, grabbed. In grading the students, I only graded
them on whether they got the sense of present versus
past correct. Because I was not grading for any other
grammatical accuracy other than correct tense, I gave
students credit for saying “es juega”, “es triste”,
“quiero juega”, etc. They didn’t have to produce it
100% correctly in order to get a point for accuracy.
If they needed to use the present and they used the
present, then I gave them a point. If they needed to
use the past and they used the past but missed
something else, then I gave it to them. I also did
not mark them wrong if they did not distinguish
between the preterite and imperfect tenses. Some of
my students said “caminó” instead of “caminaba” or
“andaba.” A few said “veía” instead of “vio”. I
counted it right because my interest was in
discovering their awareness of present versus past.
This study was not about whether they could
distinguish between the preterite and imperfect
tenses; it was about whether they could distinguish
between the past and the present. With that in mind,
here are the results of the video assessment:
Numbers are listed for both the whole group and the
top half. The percentages are given for overall
accuracy (their accuracy out of the 10 verbs), present
tense accuracy (their accuracy for just the 5 present
tense verbs), and past tense accuracy (their accuracy
for just the 5 past tense verbs).
7th Grade (32 students) 6th Grade (13 students)
(After 200 hours) (After 100 hours)
Oral Accuracy
Overall ALL = 58% Overall ALL = 67%
Overall TOP HALF = 71% Overall TOP HALF = 74%
Present Tense Accuracy
Present tense ALL = 89% Present tense ALL = 84%
Present tense TOP HALF = 100% Present tense TOP HALF =
89%
Past Tense Accuracy
Past tense ALL = 27% Past tense ALL = 49%
Past tense TOP HALF = 48% Past tense TOP HALF = 68%

The following week, I had the students translate the
story in writing. Here are the results of their
writings:
7th Grade (32 students) 6th Grade (13 students)
Written Accuracy
Overall ALL = 65% Overall ALL = 79%
Overall TOP HALF = 80% Overall TOP HALF = 88%
Present Tense Accuracy
Present tense ALL = 92% Present tense ALL = 83%
Present tense TOP HALF = 100% Present tense TOP HALF =
99%
Past Tense Accuracy
Past Tense ALL = 39% Past Tense ALL = 72%
Past Tense TOP HALF = 63% Past Tense TOP HALF = 86%

I have a few conclusions from this data. My first
conclusion is that the present tense is more easily
acquired than the past tense. Maybe it’s the more
complex verb endings of the past tense, maybe the idea
of “past tense” is more abstract for 6th and 7th
graders. The 6th graders received more repetitions of
the past tense verbs throughout the year because there
is more input on days that we act stories than on days
that we read stories. However, they were
significantly more accurate in the present than the
past in both writing and speech
The most important conclusion is that the tenses are
optimally acquired when they are taught
simultaneously. The current model suggests that we
start with the present tense, teach it for a year, and
then move on to past tense and other tenses. Based on
this data, I believe that the past and present (as
well as other tenses) should be taught simultaneously
starting with Level 1. Interestingly, this approach
mirrors first language acquisition. We all acquired
our first language by hearing the tenses mixed. What
would happen if we spoke to babies only in the present
tense for the first 3 years of their lives, the next 2
in the past tense, and the next 2 review the present
and past and then add other tenses? I believe that we
would not acquire the tenses nearly as well than when
they’re naturally mixed. This study suggests that
second language acquisition should mirror first
language acquisition.
Lastly, by observing both groups produce language
throughout the year and in this assessment, I believe
that the 100 hours of present tense comprehensible
input that the 7th graders received as 6th graders
resulted in a less than optimal acquisition rate of
the two tenses. By teaching the two tenses
simultaneously, I believe that the 6th graders
acquired the two tenses at a more efficient rate than
the 7th graders.