Verb tenses is another biggie that non-native speakers of English struggle with. There are three tenses: past, present, and future. But it gets a bit complicated with tenses like past perfect, present perfect infinitives, future perfect, and more. The main categories of verb tenses are simple, perfect, progressive (or continuous), and perfect progressive.
First, let’s break down the main verb tenses with examples:
- Simple past: Jill went to the zoo yesterday.
The act of going to the zoo happened in the past (yesterday).
- Simple present: Jill goes to the zoo every week.
Here, going to the zoo is a regular activity that is happening in the present.
- Simple future: Jill will go to the zoo tomorrow.
The act of going to the zoo is going to happen in the future (tomorrow).
The simple verb forms are the purest form of the verb that conveys that something happened in the past, is happening in the present, and will happen in the future.
For the perfect tenses, whether you’re dealing with the past perfect, present perfect, or the future perfect tense, will include words like had, has, have, and will have.
- Past perfect: Jill had gone to the zoo at least 100 times in her life.
From the past up until now, the total number of times Jill had gone to the zoo was at least 100 times.
- Present perfect: Jill has been to the zoo without her mother before.
Currently, Jill has the experience of going to the zoo without her mother in a non-specified time in the past. Present perfect describes a state of the present (Jill has the experience of going to the zoo without her mother).
- Future perfect: Jill will have gone to the zoo 130 times by the end of December.
In the future (the end of December), Jill would have gone to the zoo 130 times. You can think of future perfect as prediction of the future based on current event and patterns. Future present describes a state of the future (Jill would have gone to the zoo 130 times in the future).
The perfect tense expresses that the verb happened from the past up until now, a state of the present, and a state of the future.
For the progressive tenses (also called continuous tenses), an easy way you can think of which verb is used for the progressive tense is the verb form ending in -ing, otherwise known as gerund or present participle.
- Past progressive: Jill was getting ready to go to the zoo.
At some time in the past, Jill was getting ready to go to the zoo. Here, “getting” is the gerund verb.
- Present progressive: Jill is heading to the zoo right now.
At the present, Jill is heading (gerund verb) to the zoo. The present progressive tense describes a state that is happening in the current moment.
- Future progressive: Jill will be going to the zoo with her father tomorrow.
The future progressive tense tells us that in some point in the future (tomorrow), Jill will be going (gerund) to the zoo with her father.
The progressive tenses describe what has happened some specific time in the past, what is happening now, and what will happen at some specific point in the future.
The combination of the latter two groups of tenses is perfect progressive tense (also called perfect continuous tense). In perfect progressive tenses, the gerund form of the verb (-ing verb) will be used alongside had, has, have, and will have.
- Past perfect progressive: Jill had been going to the zoo every Saturday.
Up until now, Jill had been going to the zoo every Saturday but stopped. From now on, she will not be going to the zoo every Saturday.
- Present perfect progressive: Jill has been going to the zoo every Saturday.
Up until now, Jill has been going to the zoo every Saturday and will continue to do so in the future.
- Future perfect progressive: Jill will be going to the zoo every Saturday.
Jill had not been going to the zoo every Saturday, but from now, she will be going every week.
The perfect progressive tense expresses a continuous action that stopped, a continuous action that will persist, and an action that will be continuous from some time in the future to the far future.
Knowing which tense to use can be confusing, but if you gain a solid understanding of the verb forms here and supplement that with consuming a plethora of English content, whether it’s TV shows, movies, or books, it will come to you naturally.
Until then, you can get some help from Engram, an AI-powered free grammar checker.
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