These are traditional linguistic terms for what many people call the 16 English tenses:ġ. These sentence patterns all have their own names. Some other common parts are: am/are/is do ing, have/hasdo ne, and will. Other parts can be added to make other tenses.
Many common verbs have their own past forms. In English, there are two basic tenses, present and past:Īn -ed can be added to change most verbs into the past form. Here are four simple parts that are added to verbs to add meaning.
To understand tenses, all you have to do is become familiar with the patterns and understand what they mean. Let’s start with the meanings of the parts that make up the traditional tenses. When we communicate, we think about meaning. We don’t think about rules when we make sentences in our first language(s), so why should we in another language? It is very hard to apply these rules in real-time, and many students struggle to form sentences when speaking. This quickly becomes complicated because there are so many different rules to remember for different situations and exceptions to these rules. Tenses are often taught starting with grammar rules. Here is a simpler way of thinking about English tenses.
