Posted by pakguru on April 17th, 2019 | 0 comments | grammar, IELTS, present continuous, present perfect, present simple, speaking, tenses, writing
Bali’s unique culture and traditions lead to an enormous increase in tourism. As a result, the number of job opportunities grows significantly.
This is grammatically correct, but the choice of present simple tense has – I think – resulted in meanings quite different from those intended by the writer.
When you’re deciding which tenses to use, first of all you need to consider time frames. I would argue that in the example above there are two time frames, and neither of these are communicated using present simple tense!
What can we say about the timing of the increase in tourism?
To communicate these four meanings, you need present perfect tense:
What can we say about the growth of job opportunities?
To communicate these meanings, you need present continuous tense:
In our opening example (above), the writer uses present simple tense only. This is fine, as long as the writer is trying to communicate one or more of the following meanings:
I think you’ll agree that our writer did not want to communicate any of these meanings!
The use of present tenses is explained further in this animated introduction.
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