EXAMINATION CARD 18

1) What tenses should you use in academic writing?

2) How do you write a good abstract?

3) Paraphrase the following text

1)There are three tenses in English: the past, presentand future.Past tenses describe events, states and activities which have already finished while future tenses predict what will happen in time to come. Present tenses have a connection to the present, whether in a general long-term way (e.g., I wait for the bus every day) or a specific, short-term manner (e.g., I am waiting for the bus now).

Aspectis the form of a verb that shows, for example, whether the action is completed or still continuing. There are four aspects in the English verb system: the continuous, simple, perfectand perfect continuous.The elements used to show aspect in English are often misunderstood, or ignored, because students think they have no meaning. However, aspect indicates very important information about the verb. These four aspects are explained below, accompanied by an example. The continuousaspect is used to describe unfinished activity.... the detailed study of verbs in academic writing is becomingmore popular. The simpleaspect is used to describe statesand events.Verbs area difficult and challenging aspect of language for students. ® The perfectaspect is used to describe what happens before a point in time.This difference has been notedby many scholars in the field. ® The perfect continuousaspect is used to describe unfinished activity before a point in time.These advances have made it easier for those academics who have been analyzingsuch texts manually .

2)In simple terms, an abstract is a short passage which appears at the beginning of your essay, usually just after the title. The primary function of an abstract is to be a ‘shopwindow’ - to provide the reader (or the potential reader) with an overview of the piece of writing which follows, and to indicate its key characteristics. At the student level, abstracts are generally associated with longer pieces of writing, namely dissertations and theses. There is no specific length for an abstract. Very often, they

will be 100-150 words long. However, a PhD abstract can be in excess of 300 words, and an abstract for a paper given at a conference may only be 50-80 words.

The following numbers refer to the order of the abstract sections. 1. Establish the context of the research 2. Establish the topic of the research/research problem 3.Indicate the methodology 4. Present the main findings 5. Indicate the main conclusion 6. Keywords. The following list represents some of the main problems. Problem 1: The abstract is too long/overly detailed. Problem 2: The abstract is poorly written/not well edited. Problem 3: The abstract sounds like the introduction. Problem 4: The abstract misjudges its audience.