In this article written examinations of 15 returning students, a bilingual control group, are examined with regard to tense error. The control group consisted of Turkish students who were born in Germany and returned to their homeland, Turkey. On average, the participants, German Language Teaching students in Gazi University, were around 15 years old when they returned back home to Turkey. The age of homecoming shows that the parents of these children have consciously opted for this age of return so that the children will find it easier to integrate into the school system of their homeland. Whether or not they have succeeded in integrating into a country that is different to them, or they are still living with the thoughts of the country they were born in will be determined by analyzing the results of the present investigation. This study is based on a grammar exam, which was conducted in the first semester of German studies. In written examinations, investigators can determine language as well as content-related achievements, whereby the linguistic achievements can be determined with the help of certain criteria. This article is mainly about tense errors made by returning students in the written exam. For this purpose, the written examinations of 15 returning students were examined and the mistakes on lexical, orthographic and grammatical basis were analyzed. The results of the present research provide us with valuable information on what kind of errors that returning students generally make.