and Objectives: Persia learners of English study English for seven years before joining the university; during these years, they are exposed to English tenses regularly and intensively. Learning English tenses and their uses have an important role in the whole process of communication. Nowadays, learning and using English tenses is the most difficult problem not only for EFL students but also for Persian learners of English. To trace the sources of the problems, this study sets out to

more »

... e the null hypothesis that Persian nursery students have no problem in using English present simple tense. Secondly, the study examines and defines strategies adopted by them in the light of a psycholinguistic analysis. Finally, on the basis of the results, the study gives pedagogical instructions and implications for teaching. Methods: In this study, a quantitative and qualitative approach is used. To achieve the objectives, a multiple-choice test was administered to thirty first year Persian nursing students of North Khorasan University of Medical Sciences in Iran to judge the students' knowledge of rules governing the use of English present simple tense. Results: The statistical analyses of the results in this study indicate that English present simple tense is difficult for Persian learners to learn. The results confirm that both interlingual and intralingual interference strategies account for nursing students' errors in the use of the English present simple tense. The results also show that intralingual interference strategies seemed to be more obvious than those of the interlingual one. Conclusion: In accordance with the findings, using interlingual and intralingual strategies, with more focus on intralingual one, in teaching English tenses in general and the present simple tense in particular might be useful for Persian nursing students. The results also offer a lot of pedagogical recommendation that should be taken into account by lecturers, teachers and syllabus designers to improve the teaching and learning of English present simple tense.