Tense is a grammatical category that expresses time. The tense of a verb is the time in which an action takes place. It can be used to express the time of an event or state of being relative to the time of the speech or writing.
There are three main types of tenses in English: the past tense, the present tense, and the future tense. In addition, we have conditional, perfect, and progressive which can be used in advance.
In short,
The present tense is used to talk about things happening now.
The past tense is used to talk about things that happened in the past.
The future tense talks about things that will happen in the future.
The conditional tense talks about what would happen if certain conditions were met.
Perfect tense talks about something that has already happened and has an effect on the present or future.
Progressive tense talks about something happening now or at some point in the past or future.
Examples of simple present tense:
The simple present tense is a verb tense that is used for actions happening in the present time. The action can be habitual, continuous, or a general truth. It can also be used to talk about the future as well as the present. This is especially true when talking about plans or predictions.
In some cases, it can also be used to talk about the past. For example, if you are telling a story from your childhood and want to emphasize that it happened in the past, you may use this tense instead of the past perfect tense.
1. I go to school every day.
2. He understands me very well.
3. She enjoys playing guitar so much.
4. Wilson is a good doctor.
5. My brother lives in London with his classmate.
Examples of past tense:
In English, the past tense is used to talk about events that have already happened. It is also used to talk about future events which are going to happen. There are two types of past tenses in English: simple and continuous. A simple past tense is just a basic form of the verb that has been completed in the past. Continuous past tense talks about an incomplete event that has been going on for a specific time frame in the past.
Simple past tense is a verb tense that denotes an event that occurred in the past, but not too long ago. It is formed with the verb “to have” and a past participle.
1) I went to the store yesterday.
2) Did you eat my snack?
3) Susan lost her cat.
4) I wrote a love letter to her.
5) We watched the movie together at home last night.
Examples of present perfect tense:
The present perfect tense is the most complicated of the six tenses. It’s used to show an action that started in the past and continues to have effects in the present. The most common use of present perfect tense is when we want to say that something happened before a certain point in time without being specific about what that time is. Usually, this type of sentence starts with “since” or “for.”
The present perfect tense is made up of two parts:
1) The past participle of the verb (e.g. “seen”)
2) The auxiliary verb “have” or “has” (e.g. “have seen”)
Examples:
I have seen this movie before
I have seen this symbol before, but I don’t remember it very well.
More examples
1) I have already eaten dinner.
2) I have never driven a car before.
3) I have been waiting for you for hours!
4) Peter has never seen anything like this before!
5) My mother has cooked food.
