Verb Tenses

   

Very often we can hear the students'  about difficulty in using verb tenses in English. And they are right. English language has got a lot of verb forms. But we shouldn't memorise all of them. We just have to understand the system of verb forms. Let's look at this table:

! Nowadays we use only Will for future tenses !

In the first line you can see the formulas for making the verb forms (to be Ving, to have V3, to have beenVing) and you have to memorise them. Changing the forms of the auxiliary verbs (to be,to have) you'll get all the tense forms.

It's really easy!

NOTE     In this table V is a symbol  for a verb.

                 V2 and V3 are the forms of the irregular verbs.

In our example they are   drink (V)- drank (V2)- drunk (V3)

He drinks./ he drank. /he will drink

He is drinking ./ he was drinking./ He will be drinking.

He has drunk. / He had drunk. / He will have drunk.

He has been drinking./ He had been drinking./ He will have been drinking.

Meanings of the groups

• The  Simple verbs just  name the action in present, past or future,
•  The Continuous verbs express unfinished action in present ,past or future
• The Perfect verbs ,conversely, express the finished action in present,past and future and show its result.
• Perfect-Continuous emphasises the duration of an  action which started in the past and continues till the moment in present, past or future.

Hope, this table of adverbs and time expressions will help you 

to overcome the difficulties connecting with the recognizing tense forms of English verbs.

Certainly, each of the tense forms of English verbs has some peculiarities of using. But step by step we'll learn all of them.