VEJOH - VERITAS JOURNAL OF HUMANITIES

Tense choice is one notable feature of academic writing in some sections of the research paper. This study investigates tense choice in the undergraduate projects of Veritas University, Abuja drawn from the Faculty of Humanities (FH), and the Faculty of Natural and Applied Sciences (FNAS). Ten undergraduate projects were randomly selected from four departments in the two faculties. Comrie’s (1985) theory of tense was used to analyse the data from the literature review section (LRS) with an approximate number of 23,877 words of the research projects. The results show that the simple present (53.13%) and simple past (25.99%) occurred more frequently in the LRS of undergraduate research projects in the samples analysed, while the present perfect (8.82%), modal (7.42%), past perfect (2.09%), simple future (1.39%) and present continuous (1.16%) occurred less frequently in that order. The performance suggests that even though any verb tense could be used in the LRS, Veritas University undergraduates used more simple present and simple past forms of verbs in academic citation. The paper concludes that simple and past tense of verbs are used frequently in the LRS among Nigerian undergraduate students. This agrees with the fact that where a more general claim is being made about the information presented in the form of supporting facts, the present tense is selected whereas where no claim to a generality for the facts is given in support of a core idea, the information is presented in the past tense.

Open Full Text (PDF)