Grammar: Verb Tenses




In this section you will find some basic explanation of the the verb tenses in English. We have decided to include this section due to its importance in the English grammar. It is intended to serve as a reference. It is essential to note that not all the tenses are included in this page. Nevertheless, what we have considered the most useful ones are included. There are also some exercises that can be accessed by clicking on the title below each explanation. We hope this page contributes in some way to your process of learning English.

The Present Simple Tense
The Present Progressive Tense
The Past Simple Tense
The Present Perfect Tense
The Future Tenses
Conditionals








The Present Simple Tense

The Simple Present Tense is used in English to express habitual or repetitive actions, customs, and universal truth. It is important to remember that tense is not the same as time and that the actions started in the past, continue now and will go on in the future. To conjugate verbs in this tense we have to make a difference between all the verbs and the verb "to be". This is how the verb "to be" is conjugated since it is an irregular verb:

The verb to be is mainly used to express states or feelings, descriptions, definitions or general truth. To make questions using the verb "to be" you simply place it in front of the sentence. For example the sentence:
She is a happy person.------> would be ------> Is she a happy person?

To make the verb "to be" negative simply add "not"to the verb and you have:

Go to the exercise page: Exercises

Now you know how the verb to be changes in different situations. The other verbs in English, however, have a completely different form. Let's look at these sentences:

Notice that when you are using the third person (he, she, it) you have to add -s or -es at the end of the verb.

This change applies for all the verbs in English.

To make questions with these verbs you have to use an auxiliary word. In this case the words are: DOES for the third person and DO for the other persons. You place this word at the beginning of the sentence:

Another change you might have noticed is that in interrogative form our verbs appear in infinitive. That's right! When you use an auxiliary word, the verb goes in infinitive form. And that's all you need, you are ready to build your own interrogative sentences in present simple.

Finally, if you want to write a negative sentence you use again the auxiliary words DO or DOES, but this time you just place them after the subject and add the negative word NOT. Look at the examples:

When you use this structure in spoken language it is common that the words DO + NOT becomes DON'T and DOES + NOT becomes DOESN'T. The meaning remains the same.

Go to the exercise page: Exercises

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The Present Progressive Tense

This tense is used to describe actions that are happening in this moment. In other situations it can also be used to express future actions. The structure of this tense is simple. You only need the verb to be and the -ing ending for the main verb. Let's see the examples:

These examples illustrate the sense of future:

As you can see, the structure is the same in both situations. Time expressions like tonight or right now help you differentiate the use of the tense.
Let's see what happens when you want to change these sentences into interrogative ones:

The verb to be is found in the sentences right? Now, do you remember how to change to interrogative form the sentences with the verb to be? Correct! You have to move the verb to be to the beginning of the sentence and the rest of the sentence does not change.

Finally, to form negative sentences, add the negative word not after the verb to be:

Always remember to add the -ing particle at the end of the main verb.

Go to the exercise page: Exercises

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The Past Simple Tense

The simple past is a tense used to describe complete actions or events that took place in some time before now. The time can be specified by using some adverbs, for example: yesterday, last night, last week, last month, last year, and so on. It is important to keep in mind that the formation of this tense is different if you are working with the verb to be or if you are working with the rest of the verbs. Let's begin then with the verb To Be. Although the past form of the verbs is the same for all the personal pronouns, the verb "to be" has two forms:

WAS for I, he, she, it and WERE for we, you , they. Look at these examples:

Remember that the past tense of "to be" follows the same structure we explained before. So, when you want to turn these sentences into questions you have to do the same changes you do for the present tense. Look:

In the same way, if you want to change an affirmative sentence to negative you just have to add the negative particle not after the verb "to be":

Remember that the contractions of the verb "to be" and the negative word not are common in spoken language.

The past tense for the other verbs in English is a little more complicated. Some are regular verbs and follow one rule. Others are irregular verbs and their forms are very different from the infinitive.
It requires that you learn the past form of every verb.
Let's begin with the regular verbs:

These verbs form their past by adding the particle -ed at the end of the infinitive. For example:


Now, see the verbs in context:

You already know that to make interrogative sentences we need an auxiliary. In the present we used DO and DOES For the past tense we use DID:

Just apply the structure of the present tense to the past to form negative sentences:

Do not forget that when you use an auxiliary the main verb remains unchanged.

It is time now to see what happens to irregular verbs. Basically, they follow the same structure of the regular verbs, but you cannot just add -ed to the infinitive. These verbs have their own form for the past:

These examples illustrate the changes:

  • Monica wrote a nice article.
  • We did not see your parents yesterday.
  • I brought many presents from Australia.
  • Ana's brother did not take a difficult test.
  • That boy sang awfully in school.
  • Did they come home late last night?

    Go to the exercise page: Exercises

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    The Present Perfect Tense

    This tense is used to describe actions that began in the past, still go on in the present and possibly in the future. The structure of this tense needs the auxiliary "have" and the past participle of the verb. Let's look at the examples:

    Let's check the interrogative form of this tense. Up to now we have tried to show you the use of auxiliaries; in this case the verb "to have" is also needed to produce interrogative and negative sentences:

    As you can see you only need to invert the order of the pronoun and the auxiliary. English is easy, don't you think?
    Probably you have already figured out the structure of negative sentences.
    Here are the precedent sentences in negative form:

    Go to the exercise page: Exercises

    Contrasting Present Perfect with Simple Past: Exercises

    Contrasting Present Perfect with Simple Present: Exercises

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    The Future Tenses

    There are basically two forms of the future tense in English. Both forms are used to express actions or states in the future.

    The first form is made up by the verb "to be" plus "going to" plus the verb in base form.

    To construct an interrogative sentence in this tense you simply place the verb to be in front of the pronoun. Like this:

    To form the negative structure of this tense add the word not to the verb to be.

    The other tense used to express future in English is formed with the auxiliary "will" followed by a verb in the infinitive form of the main verb. The difference between these two tenses is understood in every day communication. We use will as the auxiliary for this tense. Here is the structure of the affirmative sentences:

    To form a negative sentence in this tense won't is used. Like this:

    Go to the exercise page: Exercises

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