Page 168 - English - Teaching Academic Esl Writing

154 CHAPTER 7
ture. To this end, instruction in the present perfect may be moreworthwhile than teaching the past or future perfect.
The Progressive Aspect
Progressive verb phrases consist of at least two elements: the auxiliary verb be and the main verb + -ing. The tense of the verb phrase is reflected in the form of the auxiliary verb (e.g., is/are [present] and was/were [past]). The us- age of the progressive aspect is predominately in conversational and infor- mal registers and can be encountered in personal and/or expressive narratives (Chafe, 1994).
The progressive aspect is used to refer to action and events that are in progress during a particular specified period of time or at the time of an- other specific action and event. When the progressive aspect is combined with the present tense, the activity takes place at the present moment, and this meaning is implicit. For example,
• •
•
The students are conducting an experiment [at the present moment] The water was boiling steadily from 1:05 to 1:10 [past progressive; time duration/period specified]
The technician was mixing the solvents when the chemical reaction took
place [past progressive; the time of another event overtly specified]
As mentioned, progressive tenses rarely occur in academic prose, and the number of verbs that are useful in the teaching of L2 academic writing isac- tually quite small.
Verbs That Tend to Occur in Progressive Tenses
bring carry hold lock move stand wait buy do listen make say take watch
A large class of stative and other types of nonprogressive verbs, however, is practically never used with the progressive aspect in any tense. Broadly defined, progressive verbs can refer to actions and events that, by virtue of their meaning, can take place in progression. Conversely, the meanings of nonprogressive verbs fall into three groups (Quirk et al., 1985):
1. states rather than actions (e.g., believe, know, understand, possess)
2. actions that are momentary (and, therefore, cannot have progres-
1 sion [e.g., doubt, note, notice, realize])
'Some verbs that denote momentary actions (e.g., blink, bounce, explode) are used in the pro- gressive aspect to refer to a succession of momentary actions.
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