Question

Look for shifts in verb tense. Tell if the sentence is correct or incorrect.

Answer 1

As you may know, verb tense has three basic forms—past, present, and future.  When constructing sentences, you’ll always want to use the same verb tense within a sentence when describing actions that are/were/will be concurrent.  As such, let’s look at the sentences:

1. The soccer team was good and is still improving.

Sentence 1 is incorrect because “still” implies that the state of the soccer team and its improvement exist at the same time.  Thus, the team is good and is still improving is how things should correctly be presented.  

2.  The singer is singing songs he performed last year.  

Sentence 2 is correct because the actions mentioned are not concurrent.  The singer singing is in the present, and the songs were performed in the past.  As such, both actions are represented accurately with the correct tense.