Writing: Tenses

Verbs

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Verbs describe an action, an occurrence or a state of being.

 

For example:

• Action:

e.g., “Sam kicks the ball”

 

• Occurrence:

e.g., “The party takes place on Friday”

 

• State of being:

e.g., “Lionel Messi is a footballer”

 

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Present Tense

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The present tense is used to describe something in the current moment.

 

Most verbs follow this present tense pattern:

 

I/you/we/they – play

He/she/it – plays

 

Past Tense

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The past tense is used to describe what has already happened. Most verbs add ‘-ed‘ to the end to turn into the past tense. For example, ‘I play’ in the present becomes ‘I played‘ in the past.

 

If the original verb ends in an ‘e‘, a ‘d‘ is added.

 

However, some verbs are irregular which means they don’t follow this pattern.

 

The following are some of the most common irregular verbs:

• I do –> I did
• I have –> I had
• I see –> I saw
• I go –> I went

 

Future Tense

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The future tense is used to describe something that hasn’t happened yet.

 

There are two ways to structure the future tense:

 

BE + going

For example: ‘I am/he is/they are going to play’

 

Will

For example: ‘I/he/they will play’

Tense Consistency between Verbs

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If there are multiple verbs within the same sentence, they usually need to be in the same tense.

 

For example:

‘When I walked to the shop, I had my coat on’.

 

Both verbs in this sentence are in the same tense when talking about the actions that happened at the same time.

 

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Common Mistakes

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When describing an action in the past, ‘have‘ always needs to be written before:

‘been‘ and ‘done‘

 

For example:

• ‘I have been to the shops’
• ‘I have done the work’

 

= ‘I been to the shops’ and ‘I done the work’ are NOT grammatically correct.

= ‘Could have’ and ‘should have’ are always contracted to ‘could’ve’ and ‘should’ve’ respectively.

= ‘Could of’ and ‘Should of’ are NOT grammatically correct.

 

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