Tense Consistency Practice

Activity 1

Now that we know how to avoid unnecessary tense shifts when writing, let’s put our knowledge into practice.

These activities give you the opportunity to find out how well you can maintain tense consistency in sentences and paragraphs. If you have a difficult time identifying and correcting unnecessary tense shifts, you may review and then try these practice activities again.

Read these sentences. Pick the one that uses inconsistent verb tense.

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Source: Rebekah Bennetch; Corey Owen; and Zachary Keesey, https://openpress.usask.ca/rcm200/chapter/verb-tense/
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 License.

Activity 2

Edit this paragraph by correcting the inconsistent verb tense.

In the Middle Ages, most people lived in villages and work as agricultural laborer's, or peasants. Every village has a "lord," and the peasants worked on his land. Much of what they produce go to the lord and his family. What little food was left over goes to support the peasants' families. In return for their labor, the lord offers them protection. A peasant's day usually began before sunrise and involves long hours of backbreaking work, which includes plowing the land, planting seeds, and cutting crops for harvesting. The working life of a peasant in the Middle Ages is usually demanding and exhausting.

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Source: Otago Polytechnic, https://studentsupport.op.ac.nz/learning-support/grammar/incorrect-verb-tense/
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 License.

Activity 3

Read these sentences and identify any errors in verb tense.

1. Whenever Maudeline goes to the grocery store, she made a list and stick to it.
2. This experiment turned out to be much more complicated than Felipe thought it would be. It ended up being a procedure that was seventeen steps long, instead of the original eight that he had planned.
3. I applied to some of the most prestigious medical schools. I hope the essays I write get me in!
   
   

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Source: Lumen Learning, https://s3.amazonaws.com/lumenlearning/success/Master+PDFs/Guide-to-Writing_8-18-16.pdf
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.