Page 163 - English - Teaching Academic Esl Writing

TEACHING VERB TENSES AND VOICE 149
the present time adverb is encountered: At present. The present time adverb marks the beginning of the present-tense use and shifts the entire text to the general present.
In academic writing, most contextual uses of the past tense are flagged by past time adverbs and apply to the entire context until the time adverb switches the verb tense to the present.
The consistent usage of a tense in a context framed by adverbial phrases or other types of time switch markers is important to establish textual cohe- sion in the flow of discourse and information. Inconsistent uses of tenses in students' writing is discussed in the section Typical Problems with Tenses later in this chapter.
Case Studies and Specific Past Events
In academic writing, the past tense can be useful in specific and limited con- texts, such as business or environmental case studies, specific experiments in, for instance, psychology or sociology, or examples of specific past-time events employed to provide rhetorical support in argumentation ("the event past"; Quirk et al., 1985, p. 186). For example, the text in (5) refers to a specific event that took place in 1994.
5. In 1994, Hilton Hotels Corp. announced plansfor a reorganization of itsinter- nal operations, including the relocation of somefunctions of Las Vegas. The newcor- porate organization includes five key lines of responsibility.... (Zikmund et al.,
1995, p. 184)
In contextual examples and descriptions of past time events or states, the uses of the past tense are framed by means of adverbs or adverbial preposi- tional phrases that specifically refer switch the time to the past—in 1994. Within the past time context, the discourse iscontinued in the past tense un- til it is switched to the present tense by means of another marker—The new corporate organization.
In another example in (6), the switch marker is not an adverbial phrase of time, but a past time event flagged by the past-tense verb developed:
6. 3M has a strong focus on technology. It developed Post-It note pads and many other unique products. Being a leader in innovation is_one ofBM's primary objectives. (Zikmund et al., 1995, p. 164)
In this excerpt, the discourse switches from a general present statement to a specific past time event (the development of Post-It note pads),which supports the claim that 3M has a technology focus, reverts to a pres- ent-tense general statement Being a leader ... is....
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