Verb Tenses

Definition: Tenses tell us when an action happened
Simple tenses

·Simple tenses use the past form, the present form, and the present form with the helping verb will.

yesterday I walked home school
Tomorrow I will walk home from school

Perfect tenses
·Perfect tenses show when an action happened in relation to another action. The action in the past perfect began and ended before the event or time it is being related to. The action in the present perfect began in the past and continues up to the present or has ended by the present. The action in the future tense will be finished a particular point in the future.

·The perfect tenses use the helping verb to have (have/has, had) with the past participle of the verb. The verb to have changes to show the tense.

Yesterday I rode to school, but the day before I had walked to school
Most days I walk to school, but for the last two weeks I have walked to school
By the time I get to school tomorrow, I will have walked to school many times

Progressive tenses
Progressives tenses show that an action is or was ongoing or continuing at the same time as something else. The present progressive tense is used to talk about something that is happening right now.

Perfect progressive tenses
·Perfect progressive tenses are a combination of perfect (completed before) and progressive (ongoing) tenses which show that something began, continued, and ended before another action mentioned.

·The perfect progressive tenses combine the perfect (with have) and the progressive (with been) and the present participle of the verb
Yesterday I had been walking to school when it started to rain
Most days I have been walking to school when weather is nice
Tomorrow I will have been walking to school for six weeks straight

Hint: Choosing the correct tense for use in a sentence requires you to pay close attention to the clues in the sentence.

Emphatic form
·Not a tense, but logically included in this section is the emphatic form. The emphatic form emphasizes that an action happened. It is also used in questions and in negative statements


·There is no future emphatic because you can’t emphasize something that hasn’t been done yet.
·The emphatic form uses the verb to do with the present form of the verb.

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