Bilingual scholars of English and French are often torn between reporting research works in the present or the past tense. While scholars of English advocate that, the work is what the researcher has done and it should, therefore, be reported in the past tense, scholars of French hold the view that what the researcher is reporting is the truth or the reality he has found and should, therefore, be done using the present tense. What will the experts advise on the use of 'tense' in a research work?
I think the use of past tense is more suitable since we report our work only after completion of the work.
Thanks, I appreciate. A concise and precise answer. You may be coming from the English point of view. What are the French saying? We want a French authority to also explain to us which tense we should use. The difficulty of choosing the appropriate tense are faced mostly by those of us who are anglophones studying French.
I found medical journals where reporting in present tense is acceptable. Also reporting in present tense can sometimes keep your readers more interested in reading as it is like reading a story and we want to know what happens at the end.
Think should use both depending on the description scenario - past tense when depicting some events / activities had happened in the past e.g. reviewed literature, developed conceptual framework, collected data, performed data analysis etc. Use present tense when describing the result / findings of your research outcome that still hold true when generalize to the entire population e.g. a hypothesis tested significantly e.g. team trust significantly influencing team satisfaction for project teams in a particular country.
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