Page 157 - English - Teaching Academic Esl Writing

Teaching Verb Tenses and Voice in Text Cohesion
OVERVIEW
• Tenses and aspects
• Tense and time
• The simple present tense
• The past tense
• The future tense
• Aspect
• Problems with the uses of tenses and aspects
• Active and Passive Voice in Academic Writing
Much earlier research has demonstrated that, in general, English tenses are often difficult for L2 learners to use appropriately (Guiora, 1983; Hinkel, 1992, 1997a; Riddle, 1986; Sharwood Smith & Rutherford, 1988). However, errors in the uses of tenses are considered to be among the most egregious problems in the quality of academic L2 text (Horowitz, 1986a;
Johns, 1981; Ostler, 1980; Reid, 1993; Santos, 1988; Vann et al., 1984, 1991;Vaughan, 1991).
TENSES AND ASPECTS
Although ESL grammar textbooks describe around 12 tenses or more (e.g., the present progressive, the present perfect, or the present perfect progressive), the simplest way to teach tenses is to start by separating tenses and aspects (see also chap. 4). Thus, there are three tenses in Eng- lish: the past, the present, and the future. In addition, there are twoas- pects: the progressive and the perfect. The tenses and aspects can
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