This text is adapted from Swales and Feak (2012).

Swales and Feak (2012: 287) present this table to illustrate that the sections of a paper are often characterised by the frequency of certain linguistic features, here denoted by "High", "Mid" and "Low". Would you say that these patterns are also found in typical papers of your discipline?

	Introduction	Methods	Results	Discussion
Present tense	high	low	low	high
Past tense	mid	high	high	mid
Present perfect*	mid	low	low	mid
Passive	low	high	variable	variable
Citations	high	low	variable	high
Hedges**	mid	low	mid	high
Evaluative comments	high	low	variable	high

*present perfect = the form of the verb with has/have: Previous research has shown that ... We have suggested a novel solution to ...

** hedges = words that soften a claim, e.g. suggests, might, could, probably, likely

Reference

Swales, J. and Feak, C. (2012) Academic writing for graduate students: essential tasks and skills. 3rd Edition. Michigan ELT.