Shaping Who You Are Study Guide

For my grammar summary from Grammar Moves: Shaping Who You Are, I read chapter fourteen. This chapter is about past tense. I chose to read this chapter because I feel like past, present, and future tense can easily be a confusing topic and I wanted to be able to properly tell which tense is which. I was also curious about the why past tense was referred to as “grammar for being forgiving” (Finn and Weinstein 79). I also want to be able to write different tenses when I need to.

Past tense is when you use a tense that expresses something that happened in the past. The words that commonly indicate past tense include was, were, had, and verbs ending with the suffix ed; there are also other words that can indicate past tense, but not as common.

This is because when past tense is used, it gives off a less critical tone than using present tense is some stitutions. A sentence like “You cheat” can be considered harsh since it is a direct attack on the person who is being addressed, while the sentence “You cheated” only attacks the action that the person committed instead of the person themselves. Finn and Weinstein state that due to the less judgemental tone of using past tense, it makes it more likely that the person being addressed will listen to you (82). This can help people in argumentative essays due to the fact that the forgiving and less judgemental tone of past tense makes it more likely that people will listen to you (Finn and Weinstein

Present perfect tense is when you combine have or has with a past tense verb like in “I have wondered why I keep fighting” (Finn and Weinstein 79). Present perfect progressive tense is when you combine have been or has been with a verb that ends with ing like in “I have been going to college for you” (Finn and Weinstein 79). Simple past tense is when you only use a past tense verb alone like in “I went to the store” (Finn and Weinstein 80). Past perfect tense is when you put had with a simple past like in “I had eaten the dish” (Finn and Weinstein 80). Past perfect progressive tense is when you combine had been with a verb that ends with ing like in “Max had been crying about it for years” (Finn and Weinstein 80). Last, there is past progressive tense that is combining was or were with a verb that ends with ing like in “She was sobbing” (Finn and Weinstein