English Tenses – English Grammar

In English language, the word ‘tense’ is used to signify a feature of the verb in a sentence. The tense of a verb is used to depict the specific time in which a particular event is taking place.

Definition of Tense

According to the Oxford Learner’s Dictionary, the term ‘tense’ is defined as “any of the forms of a verb that may be used to show the time of the action or state expressed by the verb.” The Merriam-Webster Dictionary provides a slightly different definition. According to it, the word ‘tense’ is defined as “a distinction of form in a verb to express distinctions of time or duration of the action or state it denotes.”

“The tense of a verb group is its form, which usually shows whether you are referring to past, present, or future time”, according to the Collins Dictionary, and the Cambridge Dictionary defines ‘tense’ as ”any of the forms of a verb which show the time at which an action happened.”

How Important Is It to Know about Tenses?

Tenses are often well-thought-out to be the backbone and the most fundamental element of the English language. Without tense, everything seems to be absurd. Tenses help you describe actions that take place at different times. It helps to give clarity to your context and the information you are trying to convey. It also allows you to build complex sentence structures. So, if you want to be able to convey information clearly and promptly, you should know all the twelve tenses and how they are used.

Different Tenses in English

In English grammar, there are three main tenses, and they are each further classified into four different forms, which sum up to twelve tenses in total. The three tenses in English are:

• Present Tense
• Past Tense
• Future Tense
• The four different forms are:
• Simple Tense Form
• Continuous Tense Form
• Perfect Tense Form
• Perfect Continuous Tense Form
• So, the twelve tenses in English are as follows:
• Simple Present Tense
• Present Continuous Tense
• Present Perfect Tense
• Present Perfect Continuous Tense
• Simple Past Tense
• Past Continuous Tense
• Past Perfect Tense
• Past Perfect Continuous Tense
• Simple Future Tense
• Future Continuous Tense
• Future Perfect Tense
• Future Perfect Continuous Tense
• Tips and Techniques to Master English Tenses

To improve your knowledge and usage of tenses, there are just a few things you have to keep in mind. Take a look at the following points.

Keep a clear mind. Be ready to unlearn and relearn.

Understand what tenses are and how they are used.

There are particular patterns in which each tense is conjugated. The whole process would become a lot easier if you try to identify the patterns and understand them. For example, the continuous tense takes a helping verb and verb in the present participle form (verb+ ing).

Go through as many examples as you can find. Practice as much as you can, and you will know how exactly each tense works out in different contexts.

There are, of course, a few exceptions. You just have to go through them keenly and apply them. It will surely take time, but you will be able to master it with your determination and continuous effort.

Above all, there is one thing that you should add to your list of to-do things. Read books (anything that is informative and interests you), watch movies, videos or even series. Without even your knowledge, you will be able to develop your vocabulary and learn so many different sentence structures that use various tense forms.

Frequently Asked Questions on Verb Tenses in English

What is tense?

In the English language, the word ‘tense’ is used to denote a characteristic of the verb in a sentence. The tense of a verb is used to depict the particular time in which a specific or event is taking place.

What is the definition of a tense?

According to the Oxford Learner’s Dictionary, the term ‘tense’ is defined as “any of the forms of a verb that may be used to show the time of the action or state expressed by the verb.” The Merriam-Webster Dictionary provides a slightly different definition. According to it, the word ‘tense’ is defined as “a distinction of form in a verb to express distinctions of time or duration of the action or state it denotes.” “The tense of a verb group is its form, which usually shows whether you are referring to past, present, or future time”, according to the Collins Dictionary, and the Cambridge Dictionary defines ‘tense’ as ”any of the forms of a verb which show the time at which an action happened.”

What are the 12 different English tenses?

The twelve tenses in English are as follows:

• Simple Present Tense
• Present Continuous Tense
• Present Perfect Tense
• Present Perfect Continuous Tense
• Simple Past Tense
• Past Continuous Tense
• Past Perfect Tense
• Past Perfect Continuous Tense
• Simple Future Tense
• Future Continuous Tense
• Future Perfect Tense
• Future Perfect Continuous Tense

 

Present Simple

Learn about the present simple and do the exercises to practise using it.

Level: beginner

• The present tense is the base form of the verb:
• I work in London.
• But with the third person singular (she/he/it), we add an –s:
• She works in London.

Present simple questions

Look at these questions:

• Do you play the piano?
• Where do you live?
• Does Jack play football?
• Where does he come from?
• Do Rita and Angela live in Manchester?
• Where do they work?

We use do and does to make with the present simple. We use does for the third person singular (she/he/it) and do for the others.

We use do and does with question words like where, what and when:

Where do Angela and Rita live?
What does Angela do?
When does Rita usually get up?

But questions with who often don’t use do or does:

Who lives in London?
Who plays football at the weekend?
Who works at Liverpool City Hospital?

Here are some useful questions. Try to remember them:

Where do you come from? Do you come from …? Where do you live? Do you live in …?

What work do you do? Do you like …? Do you know …?

 

Present Continuous Tense

The present continuous (also called present progressive) is a verb tense which is used to show that an ongoing action is happening now, either at the moment of speech or now in a larger sense. The present continuous can also be used to show that an action is going to take place in the near future.

 

The present continuous is made from the present tense of the verb be and the –ing form of a verb:

I am	working
You are	playing
He is	talking
She is	living
It is	eating
We are	staying
They are	sleeping

 

The Present Perfect tense is a rather important tense in English, but it gives speakers of some languages a difficult time. That is because it uses concepts or ideas that do not exist in those languages. In fact, the structure of the Present Perfect is very simple. The problems come with the use of the tense. In addition, there are some differences in usage between British and American English.

 

In this lesson we look at the structure and use of the Present Perfect tense, as well as the use of for and since, followed by a quiz to check your understanding.

 

How do we make the Present Perfect tense?

 

The structure of the Present Perfect is:

subject	+	auxiliary have	+	main verb
		conjugated in Present Simple
		have, has		past participle

 

The auxiliary verb (have) is conjugated in the Present Simple: have, has

The main verb is invariable in past participle form: -ed (or irregular)

For negative sentences we insert not between the auxiliary verb and the main verb.

For question sentences, we exchange the subject and the auxiliary verb.

 

Look at these example sentences with the Present Perfect tense:

		subject	auxiliary verb		main verb
+		I	have		seen	ET.
+		You	have		eaten	mine.
–		She	has	not	been	to Rome.
–		We	have	not	played	football.
?		Have	you		finished?
?		Have	they		done	it?

 

Contraction with Present Perfect

When we use the Present Perfect in speaking, we often contract the subject and auxiliary verb. We also sometimes do this in informal writing.

 

I have	I’ve
You have	You’ve
He has She has It has John has The car has	He’s She’s It’s John’s The car’s
We have	We’ve
They have	They’ve

 

• You’ve told me that before.
• John’s seen Harry Potter.
• In negative sentences, we may contract the auxiliary verb and “not”:
• You haven’t won the contest.
• She hasn’t heard from him.

 

Present Perfect Continuous Tense

The present perfect continuous tense (also known as the present perfect progressive tense) shows that something started in the past and is continuing at the present time. The present perfect continuous is formed using the construction has/have been + the present participle (root + -ing).

• I have been reading War and Peace for a month now.

 

In this sentence, using the present perfect continuous verb tense conveys that reading War and Peace is an activity that began sometime in the past and is not yet finished in the present (which is understandable in this case, given the length of Tolstoy’s weighty tome).

Recently and lately are words that we often find with verbs in the present perfect continuous tense.

• Mia has been competing in flute competitions recently. (And she will continue to do so.)
• I haven’t been feeling well lately. (And I am still sick now.)
• Recently, I’ve been misplacing my wallet and keys. (Because I sure don’t know where they are.)

Of course, not all verbs are compatible with continuous action. Some examples of such verbs are to be, to arrive, and to own.

• Incorrect: I have been owning my Mazda since 2007.
• Correct: I have owned my Mazda since 2007. (present perfect tense)
• Incorrect: Gus has been being late for work recently.
• Correct: Gus has been late for work recently. (present perfect tense)

 

Present Simple Tense

You just need to add -ed to the base form or infinitive verb, (or -d if the root form already ends in an e). The infinitive or base form of the verb is how the verb appears in the dictionary, for example, “walk.”

• [ verb] + [ed] = regular past tense verb

For example:

• To walk → walk + ed = walked

I walked into town

• To paint → paint + ed = painted

I painted a picture

• To love → love + d = loved

I loved my ex-wife

Additionally, verbs in the simple past do not change depending on the subject, they always stay the same. For example:

I smile, she smiled, he smiled, you smiled, we smiled, they smiled.

If you want to put this theory into practice, try this free online exercise sheet.

Irregular verbs

Of course, there are some exceptions to the English grammar rules around simple past.  Irregular verbs, like “to be” for example, don’t follow a pattern or rule like regular verbs and so just have to be memorized.

That might seem like a big task, but to learn English you only need to focus on the most important ones. Here are fifty of the most common irregular verbs to get you started:

Infinitive verb	Past simple verb
To be	was (I/he/she) were (you/we/they)
To go	went
To do	did
To have	had
To get	got
To eat	ate
To fall	fell
To feel	felt
To dream	dreamt
To speak	spoke
To give	gave
To take	took
To find	found
To draw	drew
Can	could
To drink	drank
To choose	chose
To buy	bought
To grow	grew
To hear	heard
To know	knew
To make	made
To pay	paid
To read	read (in the past tense, this word is pronounced “red”)
To let	let
To meet	met
To lose	lost
To say	said
To sell	sold
To run	ran
To shut	shut
To sleep	slept
To smell	smelt
To sing	sang
To tell	told
To understand	understood
To write	wrote
To teach	taught
To swim	swam
To win	won
To think	thought
To sit	sat
To send	sent
To see	saw
To keep	kept
To leave	left
To drive	drove
To cut	cut
To cost	cost
To fly	flew

 

Irregular verbs are used in sentences in the same way as regular ones. For example:

• I flew to Spain in an airplane last week
• You paid for our lunch yesterday
• He won a prize for his poetry a few years ago
• We sold our house recently
• The doctor sent me home at midday.

You can use past simple with time expressions that refer to a point of time in the past, for example, “earlier today”, “yesterday”, “last week”, “last month” or “last Tuesday”.

• I married Steve last year

You can also use phrases that refer to an indefinite period of time in the past, often marked by the word “ago”. For example,  “a long time ago”, “a month ago”, “several years ago”.

• The old lady died fifty years ago

Or phrases that suggest frequency, for things which happened multiple times in the past: “often”, “sometimes”, “never”, “every”.

• I often jogged home after work

Pronunciation

A quick note on pronunciation! Not all regular past tense verbs with “ed” at the end are pronounced the same way. Most of the time, the “ed” is pronounced like a soft “d”.

• Hoped
• Placed
• Closed

Sometimes, the ending of the word is pronounced like an “id” to rhyme with “lid”.

• Painted
• Corrected
• Erected

Other times, the “ed” sounds more like the soft “t” sound, like at the end of “paint.”

• Liked
• Walked
• Picked

Pronunciation will become easier the more you practice speaking and listening to English. Watching TV in English with subtitles is a great way to practice listening and you can hear how native speakers pronounce words.

How to form negative statements in the past simple tense

To make negative sentences in the past tense, add the auxiliary verb “did not” (can be shortened to “didn’t”) before the present verb tense. “Did not” is the past tense of “do not.”

[Subject]+ [did not / didn’t] + [present tense verb form]

He did not come home for Christmas

I did not walk to work yesterday

We did not play football last Tuesday

If you want to practice making negative simple past tense statements, check out this online exercise.

Exceptions

There are only a few exceptions when forming negative statements in the simple past, but they are important. The first is the verb “to be.” In the past tense, “to be” becomes “was” or “were” depending on the subject.

Subject	Verb (To be)
I	Was
You	Were
He/She/It	Was
We	Were
They	Were

The negative of “was” is “was not” or “wasn’t” for short. The negative of “were” is “were not” or “weren’t”. For example:

He was not too busy to help

I wasn’t ready to move on

You weren’t eating healthy food.

His parents (they) were not playing games

We weren’t going to school

The other exception is modal verbs. Modal verbs describe whether something is certain, possible, or impossible: they are: “could,” “might,” “should,” and “would.”

To make a modal verb into a negative, you write the verb + “not”. For example:

• Should not – shouldn’t
• Could not – couldn’t
• Would not – wouldn’t
• Might not – mightn’t
• Must not – mustn’t

Here are some examples of negative statements using modal verbs:

• I could not remember his name
• He should not worry too much
• You mustn’t spend too much time watching TV
• They wouldn’t eat my spicy curry
• Turn theory into practice

This article is a starting point for understanding the past simple tense in English. Don’t worry if it doesn’t “stick” straight away. Learning English grammar rules is 5% theory and 95% practice, so the next step is to try and use what you’ve learned.

Book some lessons with a Preply English tutor — prices start from just $5 per hour, and you can put the past simple tense theory into conversations. If you get stuck or have any questions, there is a native-speaking tutor on hand to help you out, so you’ll soon be a master of the past simple tense.

Frequently asked questions

Which sentences contain a verb in the simple past tense?

Many sentences contain verbs in the simple past tense. An example of a simple past sentence is “I walked home last night.” The verb walk (present tense) adds “ed” to become walked (past tense).

What is simple past tense?

Simple past tense is one of four types of past tense in English. It describes an action, event, or state of being that both started and finished in the past. For example, “I ate this morning.”

What is the function of simple past tense?

The function of the simple past tense is to indicate an action, event, or state that began and concluded in the past, for example, “I was happy last night.” It allows you to describe things that have happened in the past and differentiate them from the present or future.

What are simple past and past continuous tenses?

The simple past tense describes something that started and finished in the past, for example, ‘We talked yesterday”. The past continuous tense is a bit more complicated and can describe multiple things, including conditions in the past. For example, “The sun was shining when we left the house”. It can also describe habitual action, for example, “He was constantly running last year”.