8 Understanding the use of verb tenses in writing
Among all the aspects of using English well, one of the most important is the correct use of verb tenses. As a college student, you will encounter two dimensions where you will need to understand and apply verb tenses correctly. Both dimensions are important for readers and writers to communicate meaning effectively.
In academic reading, verb tenses express temporal location–the timeline for a particular state or action. As a reader, you need to make sense of the content of the text and understand where on a timeline the situations or actions are located.
To achieve this goal, you need to be familiar with the grammatical use of verb tenses. For example, if these two sentences appear in a text, you should have no problems understanding that the actions take place in different temporal locations:
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- Susan’s children love to play in the park. (timeless, all the time: true yesterday, today, and tomorrow)
- Susan’s children loved to play in the park (in the past, not anymore).
Notice also that only one letter (-d in “love”) is enough to convey a totally different meaning in both sentences.
In academic writing, you should strive to convey the meaning of your ideas using verb tenses correctly. This grammatical usage is very important in English because writers have a responsibility with their readers. Your readers should not bear the communicative burden in writing. It is you who must strive to convey grammatically correct messages. Therefore, choose verb tenses correctly to prevent your readers from getting confused. Always make sure to re-read what you wrote and correct possible misuses of verb tenses. In fact, it is very easy to create confusion in your readers due to erroneous use of verb tenses.
Exercises:
- Watch this video that explains the basics of English verb tense usage in narrations.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nELxxIC0ftw
2. Do these Purdue OWL exercises on verb tense consistency:
https://owl.purdue.edu/owl_exercises/grammar_exercises/tense_consistency/index.html
