practice / IELTS Writing Task 2 / Grammatical Range & Accuracy
#GR4
Tense shift without reason
Pick one timeline and stay on it. Our mainframes flag this as #GR4 when a verb drifts to a different tense with no reason in the sentence to justify it — and in IELTS Writing Task 2 it counts against Grammatical Range & Accuracy every single time.
In the examples: forms in blue are the anchor tense (the story's main timeline) · forms in orange are a real, justified shift away from it. The verb is always bold.
Exam result
Step 1 Decide the story's main tense before you write a single sentence.
Step 2 Check every verb against that anchor.
Step 3 No "since", "by the time", quoted speech, or lasting truth in sight? Keep the anchor.
In your next essay, do one dedicated pass that checks only verb tense against your opening sentence — and watch this error's count drop in your writing passport.