Lily
Could you help me to decide the suitable tense to use in the journal? My teacher has asked me to write a journal. This is the question: Suppose you fell asleep today and awakened 20 years from now, write a journal to reveal your feelings and attitudes towards the changes around you. (What changes would you expect to happen to the people around you, to the present society, to your life, and so on?) (200-250 words) 1. Is this possible if I use future tense, for example: will, are going to, is likely to...? 2. My teacher use past future "would", Does it mean that I have to use would from the beginning to the end of my journal or I can use other words like "may", "might"..? 3. Could you suggest some structures that I could use to express the correct tense?
Sep 21, 2014 4:48 AM
Answers · 6
2
Hi Tam, if I were to write a journal, I believe I would do it in the same fashion that a diary is usually composed, meaning that I would write my findings after seeing them, so I believe some of below structures would fit well into this exercise: - Today when I woke up, I was surprised to see a device that is able to recognize your voice and type into words what I said.... 20 years ago, I would not have believed such a thing would even be possible! - It has been a month after I woke up and innovations still continue to impress me, today I saw an elevator that takes people to their desired floor by just thinking about it and nodding with the head!.... That is one of the ways I believe you could solve this activity, by writing events after seeing them using structures that speak about past events (though completed or not as I just did, i.e using the past tense, the present perfect tense, etc)... About the future tense, I am not sure if it would be suitable to use it in this example unless you were to say something very punctual like "Ohh everything changed so fast after I feel asleep, I cannot imagine what life will be like in a few more years"... I hope I have given you an idea of one of the ways how you might complete your exercise, I am not sure whether it is the best or not but I think it will work.. let me know how it went :) Regards, Jaime
September 21, 2014
1
He says write a journal as if that day was today. So how would you write about today? Like this: "Today I ate breakfast. I walked to the library. There were many people in the street."
September 21, 2014
Thank you very much, Peachy
October 11, 2014
I agree with Jaime and Philip - write it as a regular entry, in past tenses. I understand what your teacher meant by "would", but we often use that for just imagining things. I don't think it fits the task.
September 21, 2014
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