Things can happen now, in the future or in the past. The tenses show the time of an action or state of being as shown by a verb. The verb ending is changed (conjugated) to show what time it is referring to.
Time can be split into three periods The Present (what you are doing), The Past (what you did)
and The Future (what you are going to do, or hope / plan to do ).
The tenses we use to show what time we are talking about are split into
the Simple, Continuous and Perfect tenses.
In English we use two tenses to talk about the present and six tenses to talk about the past.
There are several ways to talk about the future some of which use the present tenses, these
are:
Present |
Simple Present |
Present Continuous |
|
Past |
Simple Past |
Past Continuous |
|
Present Perfect Simple |
|
Present Perfect Continuous |
|
Past Perfect Simple |
|
Past Perfect Continuous |
|
Future |
Using the Simple Present |
Using the Present Continuous |
|
Using the Present Perfect Simple |
|
Using the Present Perfect Continuous |
|
Using going to |
|
Using shall/will |
Simple Tenses
The simple tenses are used to show permanent characteristics of people and events or what happens regularly, habitually or in a single completed action.