HOW TO WRITE A SHORT ESSAY

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Making short essay using the
right tenses
1. The Present Tense

a. Present Simple is used for …

General statements that are true for today,
yesterday and tomorrow:
Cont

FORMULA :
S + V1 (s/es) + O

Exampel :
 Australians speak English.
 I don’t eat meat.
Habitual actions:
 The train is often late.
b. Present Progressive (or Continuous) is used for
… Actions that are current and temporary, and
ongoing around the present time:

FORMULA :
S + (is,am,are) + Ving + O

Example :
 It’s spring now. The days are getting warmer.
 I can’t answer the phone now,I’m having a
shower
c. Present Perfect is used for …
Actions that started in the past and have not finished
(link to now – have a present result):
FORMULA :

S + have/has + V3 + O

Example
 I have lived in Melbourne for 2 years.
(I still live here)
When the time period has not finished:
 I have seen three movies this week.
(This week is not finished)
When the time is not important, but the result is:
 He has failed his exam.
(It does not matter when)
Spoken English The Present Tense:
Exceptions to note in the use of the present tense:
1. Some verbs rarely, if ever, use the present
progressive tense:
Mental and emotional states: believe, hate,
know, like, love, prefer, think, understand, want
(e.g. Not ‘I am wanting to meet you.’)
 Senses: hear, see, smell, taste.
 Appearance: appear, look, seem
 Possession: belong, have, own, possess
 Inclusion: comprise, consist, contain, include, involve
cont

2. Present tenses are frequently used to

express the future (See ‘Other ways of
expressing the future’ in this flyer.)
Present tense in essays
In essays, use present tense to:
• Make generalisations about your topic or other authors’ views:
 Two artefacts provide insight into ancient Hindu culture.
 Marxist historians argue that class conflicts shape political affairs.
• Cite an author or to refer to what an author says (even if the author is dead):
 Shakespeare depicts the fight for Troy as a war without glory.
 Pauli’s exclusion principle states that no two electrons can have the same four
quantum numbers.
• Present your interpretations (opinions) and the interpretations of others:
 The “White Australia Policy”, which ended in 1973, represents one of the darkest
periods of European settlement in Australia.
• Describe events in fiction or films:
 In the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Aragon encounters numerous misfortunes
throughout his travels.
 In the Iliad, finally the gods freely intervene on behalf of both the Trojans and the
Greeks.
• Describe an idea or fact that is always true:
Genetic information is encoded in DNA.
• Use present perfect to describe an event in the text previous to main event you are
describing
Convinced that Desdemona has been unfaithful to him, Othello strangles her.
2. The Past Tense
a. Past Simple is used for …
An action started and finished in the past:

 FORMULA :

S + V2 + O S + (was/were) + Adv/Adj/Noun

Example
 I lived in Sydney for two years, then I moved to
Melbourne.
 I was born in Sydney
b. Past Progressive (or Continuous) is used for …
A repeated or continuous action in the past:

FORMULA :

S + was/were + Ving + O
Example :
 I was studying all morning.

An activity which provides background to a single

event:
 Awareness of climate change was already growing
when Gore launched ‘An Inconvenient Truth’.
c. Past Perfect is used for …
A past event that clearly happened before
another past event:
FORMULA :

S + had + V3
Example :
 By the time troops arrived in the country, the
conflict had already ended.
 Past Tense in Essays
In essays, use past tense for:
• Completed actions that occurred in the past
 Hemingway drew on his experiences in World War I in
constructing the character of Jake Barnet.
 Dulay and Burt conducted their studies in the early
seventies.
3. Future Tense
a. Future Simple is used to …
Give information about a future event which is
not obviously about to happen, or to predict a
future event
FORMULA

S + will + V1

Example :
 The weather report says it will rain tomorrow.
 This paper will focus on…
b. Future Progressive (or Continuous) is used to
…
Show that something will be in progress at a
point in the future

FORMULA :
S + will + be + Ving + O

 Example :

 This time tomorrow, I will be lying on the beach

c. Future Perfect is used to …
Say that something will be finished or
complete by a certain time in the future
FORMULA :

S + will + have + V3 + O

Example :
 Next time you see me,I will have finished all my
essays.
 ‘Going to’ is used instead of ‘will’ when there is strong
intention
Tomorrow, I’mgoing togive up smoking. (Strong feeling or
conviction)
 When we can see the evidence of a future event It’s
going to rain. (You can see black clouds in the sky)

 (Note: This form is rather informal, and best avoided

in academic writing.)
 Some possible alternatives: ‘(highly) likely to’, ‘it is a
foregone conclusion’, ‘will very probably’, ‘is destined to’,
‘is certain to’.
 For example:
 Informal: The government is going to hold an election in
September.
 Academic Style: An election is scheduled for September.
 Informal: This model is going to fail.
 Academic Style: This model is likely to fail.
Verb tense consistency
Keep tenses consistent within your text. The
same context or event usually requires the same
tense.
The film Clueless toldtells the story of Cher
Horowitz a good-natured but superficial girl.
Cher is attractive, popular, and extremely
wealthy.
When changing tenses in a paragraph, use
‘signalling words’ or time phrases, e.g. since
then, currently, now, in the past / future
Active or Passive Voice?
 Some uses of the passive voice:
To put the focus of the sentence on the ‘action’
rather than the ‘actor’. This is common in
academic essays and reports.
 Results were analysed using the two-sample t-test.
(TRUE)
 I analysed the results using… (FALSE ) (‘I’ is given too
much importance here.)
 To create emphasis by shifting important
information to the end of a sentence.
The government failed to reduce the conflict. This
issue was finally addressed by the UN.
 To shift wordy expressions to the end of a
sentence.
Tension was heightened by the sinking of a peacekeeping
ship in international waters.
Simple Sentences
Simple sentence is analyzed based on
independent clause that consists of minimally
one subject and one verb, and it expresses a
complete thought. Subject and verb can be
formed to be single or compound subject and
single or compound verb.
CONT
Minimally, this means having a subject and a verb (i.e.
an action word), such as in:
.
.
.
.
Other verbs require an object (these are known as
transitive verbs). A sentence with an object can still
be simple, though, since it remains a single
independent clause:
.
.
.
 CONT
 Not all ‘simple’ sentences are quite this simple,
since we can add extra information to a
sentence without changing the basic structure.
Take the following, for example:

He and I both play the violin badly.

 Here, we have a compound subject (‘He and I’), a

determiner (‘both’), a verb (‘play’), a direct
object (‘the violin’) and an adverb (‘badly’).
Nevertheless, it’s still a simple sentence.
 Compound Sentences
Compound sentence is analyzed based on two or
more independent clauses connected by a
coordinating conjunction, punctuation alone
and sentence connector. If we have more than
one independent clause in a sentence, it
becomes a compound sentence. Usually, this will
involve joining the two clauses with a
coordinating conjunction:
CONT

 And’ is possibly the most common coordinating

conjunction, but you can use the acronym FANBOYS
to help you remember the complete set (i.e. For,
And, Nor, But, Or, Yet, So).
 The important thing is that the statements on either
side of the conjunction in a compound sentence
could work as sentences by themselves. It’s also
worth keeping in mind that you should use a comma
before the conjunction when linking two
independent clauses.
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