5 Accuracy

T e nses
Choosing the correct tense for the verb in your sentence can be difficult.
There is more about this in Chapter 10. Here, we focus on accuracy.

The following tenses are wrong. R ead the examples and think about why
they are wrong.

1 X According to these documents, the council has considering it

since the 1980s.

2 X They demonstrated that the council had communicating its

intentions before 1982.

3 X Their engineers were draw up the plans as far back as 1984.

4 X Normally, the tourist market will been more affected in an

economic recession.

5 X In this essay, the Hum an Fertilization and Embryology Act 1990

will be consider from different points of view.

The simplest answer is that these forms don’t exist, e.g. ‘has considered’ or
‘has been considering’ are possible combinations, but ‘has considering’ is not.

S u b je c t-v e rb agre e m e n t
A common error is a lack of agreement between the subject and the verb.
The verb needs to ‘match’ or ‘agree with’ its subject, e.g. it is ‘I believe’,
‘the director believes’, ‘they believe’ . Look at the examples. The subjects
are underlined and the verbs are highlighted.

X First of all, the company need to interview the employees who have
been involved in the training programme and gather feedback about
the course from them.

/ First of all, the company needs to interview the employees who

have been involved in the training program m e and gather feedback
about the course from them.

X Sales of sweets and other types of junk food has decreased

throughout the country because of successful national campaigns.

/ Sales of sweets and other types of junk food have decreased

throughout the country because of successful national campaigns.
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