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(May I first say it's very welcome to see a practical teaching question on the forum! Why not!? I'm also a plain vanilla practitioner, though I'm only in the classroom once a year these days. So, a few observations from the world of editing (for publishers or for authors) in different fields, ordered according to your question numbers. I hope they'll be useful: 1-3) Some advice on tense use (whether found in journal instructions or in textbooks) reflects the empirical sciences. In contrast, what you're seeing in economics probably reflects the discussion of proposed ideas, the author's own or others'; their texts build up theoretical systems on the page. This explains the use of a "literary" present in citing (so-and-so insists that...), especially if the citing author agrees and plans to take up the same line of argument. We also see the present, by the way, in some engineering disciplines that rely highly on mathematical proofs. Their findings, too, are built up inside the text, shown as they write them down (and we readers re-perceive them as we read, in the present); these epistemic cultures don't report something they "found" in a prior analysis of data that's outside the text. 1-2) Note that the recent trend in editing is toward not doing any copyediting to speak of at all once an article is accepted. (I refer readers to Elsevier's description of what copyediting means nowadays, and I'd even say their account overstates what's actually done on some journals and by some other publishers: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/authorsview.authors/languageediting/copyedi ting). So expect to see articles in print that may or may not have been written by an expert user of the language (no matter whether a native or nonnative speaker); they will be relatively raw, never edited consistently overall according to "received" criteria. Unless a particular journal has hands-on editors on the board or copyeditors hired with the journal's own budget, expect to see true "errors" getting into print nowadays. Something similar happened in publishing at the end of the 70s and beginning of the 80s when restructuring plus adjustments to new technology made editorial quality uneven. There are even journals in some fields now that require the equivalent of "photo-ready" copy from authors, submitted on templates. But even when no templates are used, the editorial work consists of applying heading styles and manuscript ordering, electronically checking certain things in the references, adding tags, and then automatically generating the page proof. 3) As I've said above, I think the tense use you describe is broader than your field. Where authors are reporting or commenting on reports of research events accomplished (whether interventional or planned observations) expect to see the tense use you described at first (use of the past to state their and others' findings if also experimental). There may be a tendency to prefer present perfect when strong agreement is about to be discussed, but the default tense for others' findings (or indeed, one's own) would be past. Yes, this may well be an ideal nowadays, but why teach tense CONFUSion? 5, the first one) In my opinion, we should teach as you have done -- having learners choose exemplary texts in the right field and within the right genre for them. Use what the books/researchers/instructions to authors say to help students interpret what they're seeing in their mini-corpus. 5, the second one) Look at Joy Burrough's thesis for an interesting study of how peer readers perceive tense use (when they do!). Culture <http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=3&ved=0CB4QFjAC&url=http%3A%2F %2Fwww.lotpublications.nl%2Fpublish%2Farticles%2F000141%2Fbookpart.pdf&rct=j &q=Joy%20burrough%20boenisch%20tense%20use&ei=lT0pTvPSIZDssgbbk8ijDA&usg=AFQ jCNFLHG3ur8RwVClLS8NWkCWoFvVY3A&sig2=UZpLjPqNxGoQnDofGOkh9w&cad=rja> and conventions: writing and reading Dutch scientific English <javascript:void(0)> www.lotpublications.nl/publish/articles/000141/bookpart.pdf And this article: Burrough-Boenisch, Joy. 2003. "Examining present tense conventions in scientific writing in the light of reader reactions to three Dutch-authored discussions". English for Specific Purposes 22/1, 5-24. Mary Ellen Kerans Translation & Editing - Writing & Education Barcelona, Spain Tel/Fax: 34 934 080997 [log in to unmask] or [log in to unmask] -----Original Message----- From: European Association for the Teaching of Academic Writing - discussions [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of [log in to unmask] Sent: Friday, July 22, 2011 10:04 AM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Tense use when citing in academic English Dear All Sorry this is only really relevant for teachers of English, but I would be grateful for any comments/information on the following. I mainly teach written academic English in short workshops in Germany. When I started holding these workshops about 4 years ago, I was happy to follow what the books said about using different tenses for reporting verbs when citing other literature in the introduction stage of a paper. In the workshops, this usually meant going into more detail on generalisations, information-prominence, author-prominence and agreement with previous findings and how to use the simple past, present perfect and present tenses in these contexts. However, in recent workshops I have asked participants (the majority with an economics or social science background) to look at native speaker papers and see which tenses are being used in the literature survey - if there is one. Most of the responses I am getting indicate a strong use of the present tense, with little use of past or present perfect. This is not in line with what my books are suggesting. In the two fairly recent papers I currently have on my desk (both from the social science area) I find that one of them subtly uses the implicit differences between the past and the present tense to suggest agreement, the other one only uses the present tense. I know the economist Prof. John Cochrane recommended (2005) using the present tense in Ph.D. papers to show commitment/take responsibility, and I have a paper from 1998 by J. Thurstun and C. Candlin that found the present tense being used in the papers available in a database. This raises several questions for me 1) Are the books suggesting an ideal that isn't being kept to in real papers? 2) Has the use of tense changed with time and the books haven't been able to keep up-to-date? 3) Is what I am finding only true for the areas I am mainly working in (economics in the broader sense and social science)? 4) If the majority of the readers of academic papers are non-native speakers are they getting the messages implicitly portrayed in the use of various tenses as suggested by the books? 5) Related to question 3 - should we be teaching the use of the variety of tenses if we wish to work with or support Global English? 5) Does anyone know of any recent research into the topic using larger databases than my participants/my own observations? Any comments are welcome, but as a teacher (rather than a researcher) I would be particularly interested to know how others are dealing with this issue when teaching. Many thanks Anne Wegner - Freelance teacher (www.ipels.de) p.s. if anyone is interested in the file I have put together with related quotes from the books/papers I have available, send me a mail ([log in to unmask]) and I'll send it to them.