A Comparative Study on Sri Lankan University Students’ Ability to Learn Tenses of English Language

English language has turned out to be such a crucial aspect of higher education, as it has become a global language to teach numerous subjects at the university level. It could understandably have a major impact on the education in a country like Sri Lanka, which includes very few native speakers of English. However, one of the issues faced by university students in Sri Lanka is not being able to understand English tenses. Hence, this study attempts to investigate student’s ability to learn English tenses. A case study was put in place to analyze the data collected through cluster sampling from three government universities of Sri Lanka, and it was discovered that most of the students struggle to understand the past tense while they tend to produce reasonably better sentences in present and future tense. Another notable finding was the students’ lack of knowledge on verb forms, which is instrumental in mastering past tense. Students also seem to find ways to produce accurate future tense sentences using the helping verbs ‘will’ or ‘would’ along with the base form of verbs. The study has provided sufficient evidence to conclude that it is necessary to focus more on the past tense in comparison to present tense and future tense in order to improve the English writing skills of university students in Sri Lanka.