Page 23 - ACADEMIC WRITING

5. The surge of population in Indonesia appears to trigger some social issues.
At this point,

___________________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________________

Do we have to use those two tenses through the whole Literature Review? Can
we use other tenses to indicate different purpose?

To make the literature review comprehensive, good writers often cite various sources
and highlight the gaps of each study. Refuting some contradictive findings or result
frequently works best to strengthen the paper’s proposed-argument.
Simple past tense is therefore used to indicate the following purposes:
1. Statements that are no longer considered true and should remain in the past.
2. To report specific findings and/or specific methods of a previous study (usually
with the author’s names in the sentence) to support general
statement.
3. To report results of the current empirical study.
4. After any past time marker.

Read the excerpts below and analyzed the proper tenses (present tense/present
perfect/simple past) to conjugate the verbs in the bracket.

1. Robert Corey (1988) _______________ that DNA contained three helices, but
subsequent work ___________________ the existence of a double helix structure.
2. After the war, Germany __________________ to face strong reparations from the allied

nations. Nevertheless, many ____________________ during the last decade.
3. Mozart effect _______________ probably the most commonly discussed phenomenon

in music cognition. Rauscher and colleagues first _________________ this effect in
their seminar proposal.
4. Smith and Anderson (2008) _____________ 96 swamps and __________ 156 distinct

dragonfly species.
5. The textbook, English Year 2, ____________________ by Aroo (2012) before. On

average, the first teacher _______________ the textbook 2.90 (upon 4.00) that
_______________ slightly lower than the second’s teacher rating (M = 3.20).

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