Akademické písanie

The tense of the reporting verb

When a year in the past is indicated, the reporting verb should be in the simple past. Most research writing uses this past tense for reporting information from sources. Example:

McGeheeand Kim (2004) claimed that Virginia farm families who owned small farms, utilized farming as a secondaryincome source.

However, you can use the present tense where a previous study is relevant to the present study. Example:

Hegartyand Przezborska (2005) believe that the development of rural tourism directly relates to the extent of diversification.

The present perfect tense is often used,especially when the year is not indicated in the sentence text itself. It describes the current state of the research and its impact, and is often used with the expressions “recently, so far,to date, up to now”, etc. Example:

Recent studies have revealed (Rainey etal., 2010) that state agricultural extension agencies play an important role in the agrotourism industry in Arkansas.

If you use the reporting verb in the past tense, you should shift all the verbs according to the logical system. Example:

Embacher(1994) pointed out that a total of approximately 109,000 rooms, which was one sixth of the total Austrian supply of tourist beds, were offered on 21,000 Austrian farms. (In the original text by Embacher, the verbs described the current situation in present tense.)

However, of course there is an exception in English! You don’t have to do it when a fact is reported which is considered still true. Example:

Fan(2009) stated that agritourism is a complex system, which has attributes of both agriculture andeconomics.