Dear Shun:

Actually, more than one tense can be used in a paragraph, even in adjacent
sentences, e.g.,

"Yesterday, I saw a new department store open near my home. I'm going to
visit it tomorow."

Tense is a sentence-level phenomenon; however, I do agree with you that
many grammar texts use too many sentences out of context and should present
more contextualized material.

Rosanne Gangi-Gaertner


>Ex: Yesterday I saw a new department store open around my home. I bought
>many things from it.
>== Simple Past is compulsory, used to connect to the time of the former
>sentence. It is the true use of a tense. Likewise, the true use of a brick
>is seen in the companionship of other bricks. We may argue that a brick can
>be sometimes used as a hammer, or sending messages through windows or
>holding down tarps, but at least we have to state its main use first as you
>do.
>
>Nevertheless, since using many sentences to explain a tense seems
>troublesome, present-day grammars prefer to keep on one-sentence basis. This
>is convenient, but results in more troublesome than they can imagine. They
>obviously miss the true use of tense.
>
>Shun
>englishtense.com

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