Generally, Filipino students find English tense difficult because

• A. They lack exposure to English idioms
• B. They confuse tense with mood
• C. Tense is absent in Philippine languages; they only have aspect
• D. They struggle with article usage

Answer: (C)

The main idea here is that English marks time on the verb with tense, while many Philippine languages express time through aspect rather than tense. Because their first language doesn’t have a grammatical past, present, or future form on the verb, Filipino learners don’t have a ready-built system to map English tense onto. They rely on aspect markers and context to signal time, so English tense endings and auxiliaries can feel unfamiliar and lead to consistent mistakes.

This is why the statement that tense is absent in Philippine languages and they only have aspect best explains the difficulty with English tense. Exposure to idioms helps overall fluency but doesn’t address the tense-specific hurdle. Mood and aspect can be related ideas, but the core mismatch is the lack of tense in the L1. Article usage is a separate challenge unrelated to the verb tense system.