Their uses are very clear but when in practice I find it difficult to put the firms in their correct tense I have an important exam in English tenses and I'm lost .
So if anyone has a website or a video or something to help me understand please help me.
3 comments
Acceptable-Panic2626•
I can't really answer how but I can give you a tip.
Draw a line. Put present in the middle. Then, pick a side for past tenses and future tenses.
Much like an integer scale in maths.
Put all the tenses where they belong in relation to the present. This will help you visualize and make a kinetic connection in your mind so you can recall it easily.
If you try it out, please update me.
Upvotes always welcome 🤗.
iamcarlgauss•
You're going to need to be more specific. Entire books could be written about this topic.
dontknowwhattomakeit•
English technically has only two tenses: past and non-past. Everything else is an aspect (simple, continuous/progressive, perfect, perfect continuous/progressive) or a mood (like most of the ways we talk about the future). This is an important distinction because tenses tell you *when* something happened in relation to a reference point (the present moment usually), whereas aspects and moods tell you *how* an action moves through time and how the speaker feels about the action, respectively.
Tense and aspect are inextricably connected in English, though. All sentences must be assigned a tense (past or non-past) and an aspect (simple, continuous/progressive, perfect, perfect continuous/progressive), based on when they happened and how they happened.
Past actions happen in the past and non-past actions happen in the present or future. The simple looks at the action as completed, repeated, and/or as a general truth. The continuous/progressive looks at an action as it is in progress, as a temporary situation, or actions that are occurring at a specific time. The perfect emphasizes the completion or relevance of an action to another point in time, or it talks about life experience (for the living). The perfect continuous/progressive is essentially a combinations of its namesakes. It emphasizes the duration and completedness of an action relative to another point in time.
Examples with signal words and phrases to help understanding:
Simple:
Pa: I saw a movie *yesterday*.
Pr: They *never* eat fish.
Conintious/progressive:
Pa: She was walking down the street *when she saw a black bear*.
Pr: We are driving to the beach *right now*
Perfect:
Pa: He had left *before* I had a chance to invite him to come with us.
Pr: Have you eaten *already*?
Perfect continuous/progressive:
Pa: The fridge had been making an irritating buzzing noise *for days* by the time they fixed it
Pr: She has been stressing out *since Monday* about the test.
———
Not all sentences have signal words; in fact many don’t (many still do as well though). They are being used here to help show what some of the underlying meanings of the aspects are. I also left out the future because that opens the can of worms about mood, which is a complex topic. Almost all future sentences add mood into the mix. For example, “will” is a modal verb that implies spontaneity, predictions (non-evidence-based), promises, and/or officiality. So instead of aspect being linked with tense like in the past and present, it is heavily intertwined with mood into the future. This makes discussing it difficult because there are so many ways to talk about the future.
Verbs are a complicated topic in English and may be one of the hardest, if not *the* hardest, things about the language to many learners. It may help to look up videos on YouTube about verbs in English because this is generally not a system learners are familiar with and it can be confusing or seem convoluted. Aspect is a necessary element of English grammar, though, so it’s important to learn.
If you have any follow-up questions, feel free to ask, but I do really recommend checking YouTube for videos!