The English tenses are a bit of a nightmare.
It scares them so much that they put too much focus on it OR ignore it completely!
For teachers and frustrated students, grammar gives a structure for teaching or learning. It’s easy to teach a lesson on how to write sentences using the present simple. It’s also easy to open a grammar book and do some exercises on your favourite English tenses.
Basically, they focus on grammar too much. (Note: grammar exercises are useful for practicing form)
On the other hand, some teachers say: “you don’t need grammar – ignore it!” (– I’ve had both of these types of teacher, but that’s a story for another time) They usually support their argument with something like:
“Children don’t learn grammar rules when they learn how to speak their first language.”
Yes, that is true. But children are immersed in their first language for years before they speak. Babies receive constant input AND they need that language to survive.
When you’re learning a second language, you don’t have that luxury.
The truth is that if you want to learn a language effectively, you will need to think about grammar at some point. My friend Julian from Doing English has a good video about that.
But the amount of time that you need to spend studying grammar varies on what you plan to do with the language.
For example, if you’re learning English because you want to travel, then it would be better to learn patterns of language or vocabulary rather than grammar rules.
However, if you are learning English because you are going to study at an English speaking university, then you will need to know how to communicate your message effectively. And you do that by using language in the correct context (context means situation).
Communicating your message effectively is important – it’s usually a part of the grading criteria that examiners use.
That’s why in this article I’ve made it really easy for you to know which English tenses to use in different academic contexts.
So, if you’re a busy student who wants to know which tense to use in your writing, read on!
What should you use it for?
The present simple tense has a few different functions in academic writing:
As you can see… most of the uses are related to talking about things that are (or aren’t) true/factual.
Examples in use:
What should you use it for?
The present continuous is a useful tense for showing temporary changes and fluctuations. Use it if you’re commenting on a graph, chart or statistics.
Examples in use:
What should you use it for?
The present perfect allows you to show the relationship between a past action and the present:
Examples in use:
Quick tip: If there’s a specific time in the past when it happened, use the past simple tense!
What should you use it for?
The past simple is quite useful because it is the easiest way to talk about actions and events that have already happened. This is what it’s used for:
Examples in use:
Will is used much more than ‘going to’ when referring to the future in academic contexts. However, it might be better to use other modals (see the next section) if you’re not sure about the future.
What should you use it for?
Examples in use:
What should you use them for?
Modals aren’t English tenses, but they fit into this post quite well, so I’m including them. Modals (such as could and should) have different uses in academic writing:
Could:
Should:
Examples in use:
Could
Should
Well, that was a quick run-through of the most used Academic English tenses. Other English tenses (such as past perfect and past continuous) are used, but not often.
This information is good for you because if you want to review tenses, you know which ones to focus on.
Oh and one more thing. The three most common Academic English tenses are: Present simple, past simple and present perfect.
Leave your answer in the comments below.
Share on Facebook!Sam is the founder and creator of English For Study. He's also lecturer in EAP/Academic English. Apart from making Academic English easy, he likes learning languages, lifting weights and eating good food.