A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Award of the degree of "Licencié en Pédagogie Appliquée, Agrégé de l'Enseignement secondaire en Anglais"

Résumé,

This study assessed learners' performance in using simple present through their naturel productions. Learners of basic schools proved the shortcomings towards the use of tenses in general and present simple in particular. Therefore, a great focus went in the regular assessment of how learners use tenses so as to achieve English learning process. To conduct this research we had focused on the following research questions : (1). To what extent learners used simple present in their spoken language (2) what are the frequent errors made by learners in using simple present (3) what are the main causes of learners' misuse of simple present. In order to get the reliable findings two kinds of research instruments were used, i.e, written and oral test and classroom observation assigned to learners, Thus, the findings which are overgeneralization, interference had proved with us that learners misused simple present in the field of overgeneralization learners often confused the use of simple present with other tenses for instance present continuous and simple past. As far as the interference was concerned learners had tendency to refer to French and Kirundi knowledge while using simple tense in different contexts all those proved with us the misuse of simple present. The work ends with general conclusion and recommendations going to the teachers and learners. As far as teachers were concerned, the researcher recommended them to integrate learners to the use of simple present in their spoken English. Equally, learners should do more grammatical exercises especially those related to present tense.