Tense Control: The Commonest Reason Scripts Sit at 11 or 12
Accuracy of language is one of the three Language criteria in every writing section of Paper 1. Of all the ways accuracy breaks down in secondary compositions, the most frequent is tense that will not stay put.
What it looks like
A narrative opens in the past. Somewhere around the third paragraph, as the writing gets faster and more involved, it slides into the present.
“I walked into the hall and looked for my name on the list. Everyone is talking. I push through the crowd and I see it. Then I remembered what my mother had said.”
Read quickly, it feels urgent. Marked against the descriptors, it is an accuracy fault running through the middle of the script — and it recurs, which matters more than a one-off slip.
Why it happens where it happens
It almost always begins at the most exciting moment. The writer stops narrating and starts re-living, and the present tense comes naturally to re-living. That is why the climax paragraph is where you should check hardest, not the opening.
It also happens after direct speech. A line of dialogue in the present pulls the narration with it when the writer returns.
The check
- Decide before you write. Past tense is safer for narrative. Choose it deliberately, not by accident.
- Mark your climax paragraph. When you reread, start there. It is the highest-risk paragraph in the script.
- Check the sentence after every piece of dialogue. That is the second-highest-risk position.
- Read the last line against the first. If they are in different tenses, something drifted in between.
The deliberate exception
A composition written entirely in the present tense is a legitimate choice and can be effective. What costs marks is not the present tense — it is inconsistency. Whichever you choose, it has to survive to the last line.
Four minutes at the end
Leave four minutes to reread for one thing only. Not ideas, not vocabulary — tense. Scripts that sit at a middle Language band are rarely short of ideas. They are short of control, and control is what those four minutes buy.
Read next
- Continuous Writing: Content Is 10 Marks. Language Is 20.
- Situational Writing: Where the 30 Marks Actually Go
- Situational Writing Formats
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Mark allocations and assessment criteria are taken from the SEAB GCE O-Level (1184), N(A) Level (1190) and N(T) Level (1195) English Language syllabuses for 2026.
