Tense consistency in a recount about migrating to Australia
Simran is writing a 200-word recount in Punjabi about her mother's migration: leaving Ludhiana in 1998, arriving in Perth, first winter, first job in a warehouse, and now running a small business. Simran's draft mixes past and present forms inconsistently: 'ਉਹ ਆਉਂਦੀ ਹੈ' (she comes) in one clause about 1998, then 'ਉਹ ਨੇ ਕੰਮ ਕੀਤਾ' (she did work) later, and ends with 'ਉਹ ਅੱਜ ਵੀ ਉੱਥੇ ਕੰਮ ਕਰਦੀ ਸੀ' (she still works there) for the present-day business. Her teacher says the events are correct but the timeline is confusing.
1. Diagnose the tense and aspect errors and describe how Simran should structure the recount.
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There are three separate problems. First, the 1998 arrival is narrated in the present ('ਆਉਂਦੀ ਹੈ'); a past event needs a past form such as 'ਆਈ' or 'ਆਈ ਸੀ'. Second, the perfective 'ਕੰਮ ਕੀਤਾ' is acceptable for a completed past action but reads abruptly without a time anchor; 'ਕੰਮ ਕੀਤਾ ਸੀ' or a clear time phrase fits a recount better. Third, the present-day business is described with 'ਕੰਮ ਕਰਦੀ ਸੀ', a past habitual, which wrongly places the ongoing situation in the past; it should be 'ਕੰਮ ਕਰਦੀ ਹੈ'.
Structure: anchor each time period explicitly (1998, the first winter, then, now), keep past forms for completed events, and switch to present only for the current business. The judgement is that tense is a discourse-level choice tied to time anchoring, so consistency matters more than any single verb form.
2. A classmate says Simran should write the whole recount in the present tense because it 'feels more alive'. Assess this advice.
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The advice is partly defensible but risky here. Historical present is a real narrative strategy and can make a recount vivid, but it works only if applied consistently and if the temporal anchors make the sequence clear. Simran's draft is not consistent historical present; it mixes present, perfective past, and past habitual, which is what confuses the reader.
So the classmate's advice could work if Simran converted every event to present and marked time with phrases like '1998 ਵਿੱਚ' and 'ਹੁਣ'. But the final clause about the current business would then be indistinguishable from the historical events, which is a real cost. The safer judgement is: past for completed events, present for the ongoing situation, with explicit time markers. The criterion is clarity of timeline, not liveliness alone.