Tenses

When we talk about tense, we also talk about verb. Therefore, if you want to learn about the tense easily, you have to understand about the verb first. Because tense is a changing of the verb. The verb can be ‘base form/V1, past simple/V2, past participle/V3, and present participle/V-ing. To make you easier to understand the verb, please read part of speech in the previous posting. Look at the examples below!

John plays football every afternoon.

Henry is playing football right now.

Benn and Henry have played football recently.

Herman has been playing football for forty minutes.

Brown played football with his friends yesterday.

John, Henry, Benn, Herman and Brown will play football tomorrow.

The bold words above are called as verbs. The verb ‘play’ is base form/V1 while ‘playing’ is a present participle/V-ing. But the verb ‘played’ in the example above can be a past simple/V2 and a past participle/V3 because it is a regular verb. They change based on the time and the characteristic they are used. When we talk about the changing of the verbs, it means that we study about the tense.

There are twelve tenses that we will discuss here. First of all, I will give you a map of tense that will help you understand tenses easier. Then I will continue with the table.

It is clear that tense is a changing of the verb that is influenced by the time and the character. Look at the map above! English has three times/eras-past, present and future, and each time/era is influenced by four characters-simple, continuous, perfect and perfect continuous.  It is easy to memorize. We just need to combine between the time and the character. Therefore, they will be;

Before I continue to the table of tense, I want to ask you. Can you memorize it easily? Can you combine between the time and the character easily?

Give me your answer immediately!

Now let’s go on to the table of tense. This table will help you to memorize the patterns of tenses. I suggest you printing it out and put it in you wall. So, you can read it everyday.

 

The table above is really important to know. However, the tense is not just like this. It is just a basic thing that you should know before you learn further. There are still many things that you will learn after knowing this. For example, you will know about the functions of each tense. But, don’t worry. I will explain all about it later.

That’s all for now