PLease help me with grammar issue

Dear All,

I have a grammar issue when i read the below paragraph:
" As you read the paragraph above, your thinking probably went through several stages: first, you noticed the unusual words and felt a certain uneasiness about the language; it seemed to be English, but not quite right. Then, you probably noticed that several of the unusual words had ending that you recognized or were surrounded by familiar words. Finally, having guessed at the meaning of those unusual words from context clues in that paragraph, you could reread the paragraph more easily. In other words, you were acting as a grammarian already: you "

I don't understand the way author uses simple present and past here.
PLease help me.
Thank you very much.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by banhnuong

Dear All,

I have a grammar issue when i read the below paragraph:
" As you read the paragraph above, your thinking probably went through several stages: first, you noticed the unusual words and felt a certain uneasiness about the language; it seemed to be English, but not quite right. Then, you probably noticed that several of the unusual words had ending that you recognized or were surrounded by familiar words. Finally, having guessed at the meaning of those unusual words from context clues in that paragraph, you could reread the paragraph more easily. In other words, you were acting as a grammarian already: you "

I don't understand the way author uses simple present and past here.
PLease help me.
Thank you very much.

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He's using the simple past because he's describing something which happened in the past. He's obviously assuming that you've read the previous paragraph and that you did so at some time prior to reading the current paragraph - in the past.
There's no present tense here.

Thank you very much for your useful reply.