Please check this paragraph for me

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Egyptian2007  #494873  Mon, 31 Mar 08 12:45 PM

 Would you please correct this paragraph for me? I'm more concerned with tenses. Thanks.

Having considered the importance of piloting my interview schedules, and bearing in mind the issue of time limitations, I decided to allocate the first week of my fieldwork to the pilot phase. The piloting site was the school where I used to be a teacher more than ten years ago. I chose this school because it was located in my hometown, at a reasonable walking distance from my house. My choice was also encouraged by the fact that I had good personal relationships with the head teacher as well as a large number of the school faculty, including administration staff. The head teacher used to be a deputy head at the same school when I was a teacher, while three of the deputies used to be senior teachers. We had worked together for five years and have always had good relationships that continued even after I have left the school. Although I was equipped with a formal approval to visit the school, I relied heavily on the good rapport that I had established with those people. Such a good rapport facilitated my task considerably as it guaranteed me easy access to the school site and made people therein easily approachable.

  
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Spides  #495048  Mon, 31 Mar 08 08:48 PM

This is a good paragraph and the tenses of your verbs are consistent.  The only sentence that has a problem is, "We had worked together...and have always had good relationships...even after I have left...  That first verb, had worked, is past perfect tense.  The rest of the paragraph is simple past tense so this one should be, too.  That is, "We worked together..."  The second and third verbshave always had and have left--are present perfect, and should also be just simple past tense.  That is, "...always had..."and "...left..."  So the sentence should read, "We worked together...and always had...even after I left the school."

  
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Egyptian2007  #495244  Tue, 01 Apr 08 11:17 AM

Thanks very much Spides.

  
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