Grammar matters: form and structure
Keep tense consistent
Tense gives a sense of time to your writing.
- Use present tense to express your ideas.
- Essay writing skills are essential in tertiary education writing.
- Essay writing skills are essential in tertiary education writing.
- Use past tense to state facts, make generalisations, to report or describe the work of others, or for research that is not continuing.
- In 2013, many students attended workshops.
- In 2013, many students attended workshops.
- Use future tense to convey assumptions, speculations and predictions.
- By the end of the workshop, students will be familiar with the basic structure of an essay.
- Change tense only when there is a reason to change the time frame, e.g., inserting a scenario, an example or anecdote.
To do
- Tense consistency exercises (Purdue University, OWL)
- Choose the correct tense (Monash University)
More info
- Tense (Purdue University, OWL)