‘Tense’ is one of the building blocks of the English language. By learning and understanding the usage of the tenses you are one step nearer to your goal of mastering English. Tense gives you the time of occurrence of the action or incident. It forms the relative timeline on which the verbs take the present tense, past tense or future tense form. Tense is expressed via the action verb.
A verb can be expressed in all three tenses. It is based on the action verb’s tense form that we understand ‘when’ the action happened.
Present tense
Present tense is frequently characterised by the verbs ‘am’, ‘is’ and ‘are’. There is no way these verbs can be used in past or future tense. When these verbs are used, the next immediate action verb comes in a verb+ing form. In a negative sentence the form will be am/are/is + not + verb+ing.
‘Am’ is used to describe your action. ‘Is’ is used to describe another singular person’s actions and ‘are’ is used to describe the actions of more than one person.
I am not working now.
She is getting ready for a party.
They are not going out for lunch.
Past tense
Past tense refers to any incident or action that is over and is no longer happening. Past tense sentences are characterised by verbs ‘was’ and ‘were’. Here again the verb is in verb+ing form.
The ‘am’ and ‘is’ are converted to ‘was’ in a past tense sentence, while the ‘are’ is converted to ‘were’.
I was working a year ago.
We were all having fun at the tour.
Another past tense form of expressing the above sentences is,
I worked a year ago.
We all had fun at the tour.
Here, the action verb is in the past tense form and that verb itself describes what the person did in the past. So another verb+ing form is not required. This understanding will come with practice.
Future tense
Future tense sentences are pretty simple. You add a ‘will’ followed by an action verb in its present tense form OR you add a ‘will be’ followed by a verb+ing form.
I will go to the doctor tomorrow OR I will be going to the doctor tomorrow
They will come to the party OR They will be coming to the party
If you are not sure about your future plans you can rephrase the above sentence using ‘might’ or ‘might be’.
I might go to the doctor tomorrow OR I might be going to the doctor tomorrow.
Improve your grammar and understand the tenses using the formula as explained above. Use them to speak simple yet correct sentences. Once you master the basics, you can work your way through more advanced tense grammar.
Further reading:
To know more on advanced tense forms and usage, visit:
http://esl.about.com/od/englishgrammar/a/tense_resource.htm
To learn more on general use of English tenses and verbs:
http://www.ehow.com/way_5269662_easy-way-learn-english-verbs.html
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