Formation of tenses in English with the word. Companion words of all times in English

2015-12-17

Hello my beloved readers.

Today we have a very important topic. Unlike foreigners, who will never be able to understand the meaning of the phrase “no, probably”, for us (even the most novice dummies!) to understand them 12 - I ask you to note, - sometimes it’s worth nothing. It's true?

And if you have ever had problems with them, then today we will solve them with you. Topic of the day: tenses in English. We will understand when, where, what is used, as well as time indicators.

Please note that for each time I attached color scheme with formulas and examples for clarity, after which you can follow the link to fix the time using exercises and online tests. Also, all the names of times (highlighted in red) are clickable - to go to separate page with more detailed rules and explanations and examples. Let's start in order.

Times are real

I was cooking when the phone rank.

The second most popular tense for many schoolchildren (the first, of course, is Present Simple) is . And the reason for this is simple: it is used if an event occurred BEFORE another event in the past (See for more details about this time).

See:

When she called I had already packed my suitcase.
I was ready to go when he called and told me that he had forgotten the keys.

No less amazing time denotes an event that began at some specific point in the past, and ended before some point in the past - or is still continuing in the past.

I had been doing this report for 3 hours when I found it in the Internet.

Future times

Commands what will happen in the future. Here are the cases in which it can be used:

Simple future event;
I will call you tomorrow.
Regular actions;
I will come here every year.
Description of the sequence;
I will come home, my mother will give us some food and we will hit the road.

Describes events at a specific future moment.

At 5 p.m. we will be conducting a meeting session. I expect you to be there.

C, everything is similar to its counterparts in other tenses: an action is described that starts in the future and ends then.

I will have spent a lot of time for preparation before taking part in this competition.

Many English language learners believe that they need to immediately master all tenses in order to put a long-awaited check mark on a long list of planned English tasks. But I’ll tell you as an experienced teacher - first you need to master 3-5 running times. When you know them by heart and know how to use them, then you can move on. Otherwise, you will get stuck at this stage and quit English without tasting all its charm!

By the way, I recommend to many of my friends (who want to remember or just learn the basics of English grammar) to take an online course from LinguaLeo « Grammar for Beginners» . You definitely won't be bored there. In addition, the information is as practical as possible. In addition to the 5 tenses that are proposed to be mastered in this course, everyone will find others there. basic grammar concepts, which will simply be impossible to forget after a bunch of interesting practical tasks.

How easy is it to remember all these times? A table with examples will help you with this. Everything you need in one place. Convenient, isn't it?

I hope, my dears, that now you will have much fewer questions about verb tenses. But if you still have unresolved questions, do not hesitate to write them under the article. I will be happy to answer them.

If you want to be the first to receive a selection where the best exercises on this topic will be collected - then subscribe to delicious my blog newsletter.

And for today I say goodbye.
Until we meet again, my dears.

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Today we are talking about such an important section of English grammar as verb tenses. To build an English dialogue, to form your own speech, you need to know as many English verbs as possible, as well as verb tenses. A verb is an action, so it is the most commonly used part of speech in any language. How to use the time table in practice?

The catch is that there are only three verb tenses in Russian. There are many more of them in English. But in Russian there are types - perfect and imperfect, which indicate the completeness and incompleteness of the action. All these nuances are reflected in English in individual verb tenses.

Let's create a table of English tenses together and see what goes where and what's what.

In order to get a table of the formation and use of verb tenses, we need to distribute the tenses into sections - Indefinite, Perfect, Continuous, etc. Let's try to create such a table with you and see what comes of it. Let's not take any irregular verb, so as not to complicate the task. Let's make our table using the example of the verb work - to work.

Tense	Affirmative Form	Interrogative Form	Negative Form	Examples
Present Simple	I/you/we/they work He/she work s	Do I/you/we/they work? Does he/she work?	I/you/we/they don’t work He/she doesn't work	Every day we work in the garden.
Present Continuous	I am working You/we/they are working He/she is working	Am I working? Are you/we/they working? Is he/she working?	I am not working You/we/they aren't working He/she isn't working	Andy is working now.
Present Perfect	I /you/we/they have worked He/she has worked	Have I/you/we/they worked? Has he/she worked?	I/you/we/they haven’t worked He/she hasn’t worked	I have just worked with my pupils.
Present Perfect Continuous	I/you/we/they have been working He/she has been working	Have I/you/we/they been working? Has he/she been working?	I/you/we/they haven’t been working He/she hasn’t been working	We have been working for three hours already.
Past Simple	I/you/he/she/we/they worked	Did I/you/he/she/we/they work?	I/you/he/she/we/they didn’t work	We worked in the garden yesterday.
Past Continuous	I/he/she was working We/you/they were working	Was I/he/she working? Were we/you/they working?	I/he/she wasn’t working We/you/they weren't working	Tom was working in the orchard when you called.
Past Perfect	I/you/he/she/we/they had worked	Had I/you/he/she/we/they worked?	I/you/he/she/we/they hadn’t worked	She said that she had worked with John in the studio.
Past Perfect Continuous	I/you/he/she/we/they had been working	Had I/you/he/she/we/they been working?	I/you/he/she/we/they hadn’t worked	She had been working for an hour when I came.
Future Simple	I/you/he/she/we/they will work	Will I/you/he/she/we/they work?	I/you/he/she/we/they won’t work	They will work tomorrow.
Future in the Past	I/you/he/she/we/they would work	Would I/you/he/she/we/they work?	I/you/he/she/we/they wouldn’t work	She said that she would work the next day.
Future Perfect	I/you/he/she/we/they will have worked	Will I/you/he/she/we/they have worked?	I/you/he/she/we/they won’t have worked	I will have worked with the article by noon.
Future Continuous	I/you/he/she/we/they will be working	Will I/you/he/she/we/they be working?	I/you/he/she/we/they won’t be working	This time next Sunday we will be working with the article.
Future Perfect Continuous	I/you/he/she/we/they will have been working	Will I/you/he/she/we/they have been working?	I/you/he/she/we/they won’t have been working	I will have been working at the article for a month when Tom joins me.

Here is a table with examples of the use of verbs. You can download it on our website, and it will always help you in learning and memorizing verb tenses.

What else you need to know about verb tenses

Let's remember what adverbs are used with some tenses. This is necessary to know, because if you know the correct adverb, you will always be able to use the correct verb. We bring to your attention the main adverbs for the main verb tenses.

So, Present Simple:

Today - today
Every day/night/morning/week/year - every day/night/morning/week/year
Always - always
Seldom - rare
Often - often
Usually - usually

Adverbs used in the Present Continuous:

Now - now
All day - all day
At the moment - at the moment

Present Perfect and its adverbs:

Already - already
Ever - ever
Never - never
Yet - yet
Since - since; since
Till - until
Until - until
Just - just now, already

Yesterday - yesterday
That day - on that day
The day before yesterday - the day before yesterday
Then - then
Two days ago - two days ago (three, four days, etc.)

Tomorrow - tomorrow
The next day/night/week/year - the next day/night/week/year
The day after tomorrow - the day after tomorrow

How to easily learn the table of times?

We remind you that you can download the times table on our website. We advise you to learn it so that you can easily and quickly cope with the exercises, as well as constructing sentences and dialogues in English.

It is no secret that one of the most popular grammatical topics for students and those interested in English is still the topic: tenses in English. Interest in it is quite justified, since the cases of using one or another tense in English differ from their understanding in other languages and thereby cause many difficulties.

There are such lovers of conquering linguistic peaks who strive, at all costs, to master everything English tenses. But in reality, even the British themselves do not use half of them.

English tense table

Of course, sketchiness will help to understand the ornateness of this topic. English tense table is a wonderful visual aid and should always be at hand for every beginner learning a language.

Answer unambiguously the favorite questions of beginners: “ How many tenses are there in English?? What to prepare for? Why so many? pretty hard. You could say 24! (16 in the active voice and 8 in the passive) and frighten students with the abundance of tense forms, especially continuous, complete and complete-continuous, the analogues of which seem to have no analogues in their native language.

Tense	Simple	Continuous	Perfect	Perfect Continuous
Present		I am doing		I have been doing He has been doing
Past	I did	I was doing	I had done	I had been doing
Future	I will do	I will be doing	I will have done	I will have been doing
Future in the Past	I would do	I would be doing	I would have done	I would have been doing

You can reassure us by answering that in English there are also three time planes - past, present and future, and then we are faced only with shades of actions. True, the verb forms that you have to comprehend will not become smaller from this :)

	Simple	Continuous	Perfect
Present	The work is done	The work is being done	The work has been done
Past	The work was done	The work was being done	The work had been done
Future	The work will be done	-	The work will have been done

Let's leave this question to the world's leading philologists, who have been arguing about this for many years, and let's focus on the use of tense forms.

Tenses in English seem quite complex, but this is only at first glance. It is important to understand some principles:

Firstly, it is possible to draw a parallel when studying tenses with the Ukrainian and Russian languages. The difference is that grammatical means are used to convey shades of actions in English, while lexical means are used in Ukrainian and Russian.

Secondly, the formation of tenses in English is much simpler and more logical. Memorizing these forms usually does not cause difficulties for students. It is much more difficult to decide where and what form should be used. This is what we will pay special attention to.

Active Voice / Active voice

	Simple	Continuous Long-term	Completed	Perfect Continuous Completed-long
	Data. Something we do with a certain frequency. Always used when you need to talk about a sequence of events.	Long procces. As a rule, it is translated by an imperfective verb.	Perfect action. Translated using perfective verbs.	An action that lasted a certain period of time and, accordingly, ended or ended at a certain moment.
Present The present	I cook and pizza sometimes. - Sometimes I cook pizza.	I am cooking a pizza now. - Now I'm making pizza.	I have just cooked the pizza. - I just made pizza.	I have been cooking the pizza for half an hour. - I have been preparing pizza for half an hour (up until now).
Past Past	I cooked the pizza, wrote the letter and went to the shop. - I made pizza, wrote a letter and went to the store.	I was cooking the pizza yeasterday. - I cooked this pizza yesterday (for a while).	I had cooked the pizza by the meeting. - I prepared pizza for the meeting (the action ends at some point in the past).	I had been cooking the pizza for twenty minutes when my friends came. - I had been preparing pizza for twenty minutes when my friends arrived.
Future Future	I will cook a pizza tomorrow. - I will cook pizza tomorrow (there is no emphasis here on the duration or completion of the process, we are simply reporting the fact).	I will be cooking a pizza tomorrow. - I will cook pizza tomorrow (within a certain time).	I will have cooked a pizza by the meeting. - I will prepare the pizza for the meeting (that is, the pilaf will be ready by this time.	I will have been cooking a pizza for twenty minutes by the time my friends come. - I will have been cooking pizza for twenty minutes by the time my friends arrive. (This form is used very rarely and, as a rule, in book speech).
Future in the Past denotes a future action relative to a specific moment in the past. As can be seen from the examples, the sentence necessarily contains a verb in the past tense in the main clause; without it, the use of Future in the Past is impossible.	He said that he would cook a pizza tomorrow.	He said that he would be cooking a pizza tomorrow.	He said that he would have cooked the pizza by the meeting.	He said that he would have been cooking pizza for twenty minutes by the time his friends came.

Passive Voice

	Simple	Continuous Long-term	Completed	Perfect Continuous Completed-long
The present	Letters are sent every day. - Letters are sent every day.	Letters are being sent now. - Letters are being sent now.	Letters have already been sent. - The letters have already been sent.
Past	Letters were sent yesterday. - The letters were sent yesterday.	Letters were being sent at 5 yesterday. - Letters were sent at 5 o'clock yesterday.	Letters had been sent before he phoned. - The letters were sent before he called.
Future	Letters will be sent tomorrow. - The letters will be sent tomorrow.		Letters will have been sent by 5 tomorrow. - Letters will be sent tomorrow before 5 o'clock.
Future in the Past

Tense agreement in English

If you have figured out the forms of construction of certain tenses and cases of their use, then the next difficulty may be tense agreement in English. Here you not only need to correctly construct the tense itself, but also understand the very principle of coordinating the main and subordinate parts of a sentence. This is difficult to explain at first glance. The good news is that special attention should be paid to the fact that if in the main sentence the verb is in the past form, then in the subordinate clause the verb must also be in one of the past tenses, and it does not matter whether it is about actions in the present or the future.

Table of tense agreement in English:

Time in direct speech	Present Indefinite	Present Continuous	Present Perfect	Past Indefinite	Past Perfect	Future Indefinite
Time in indirect speech	Past Indefinite	Past Continuous	Past Perfect	Past Perfect	Past Perfect	Future Indefinite in the Past

And the main thing is that in English you don’t need to know many tenses to communicate. After all, the British speak as easily as possible without a clutter of complex structures. The basic tenses (Present Simple, Past Simple, Future Simple) are quite enough, but it is also advisable to master the Present Continuous and Present Perfect. The use of complex tense forms in colloquial speech will only indicate your illiteracy.

Of course, for varied and sophisticated coherent speech while working and expressing your thoughts on paper, you should be patient and memorize the entire table of tenses. And we will be happy to help you, contact us, we offer classes in groups and individually:

English grammar seems complicated and confusing to beginners. However, first impressions are deceiving. For example, the tense system is an example of a clearly thought-out and logically constructed scheme that allows you to understand the time of events at the first glance at the verb. Desperate to grasp this logic and comprehend the essence of each aspect? Do not worry! The purpose of today's article is to explain in detail all the tenses in English for dummies, beginners and all those who dedicatedly learned the theory, but still do not know how to apply the memorized rules in practice.

Let's start with a general explanation of the English tense system.

In Russian speech we use three types of tense: present, past and future. In the English language, there are more than 12 types, as many believe. But this is not entirely the right approach.

In fact, the British have exactly the same 3 types of time, but each of them is divided into 4 more subtypes:

– just an action;
- an action taking place at a specific moment in time.
– completed action;
Perfect Continuous - an action that has been going on for some time, brings certain results, but has not yet been completed.

If you know how to understand these semantic shades, then the use of tenses will not cause any problems. We will try to develop this skill and provide accessible explanations for each aspect.

All the rules for tenses in English for dummies

Here we will find examples of all possible tense groups, an explanation of their use and detailed information about sentence construction.

Present

If for us the present is everything that relates to a given moment, then for the British the present plays with four different colors.

1) Present Simple

Facts, everyday actions, abilities, skills. This aspect carries the most generalized understanding of time.

I write poems - I write poems(always, every day, never, often, rarely).
He writes poems– in the 3rd person the predicate is always supplemented with –s.

For questions and negatives, remember to use the auxiliary do.

3) Present Perfect

The result of a completed action. Such sentences are always translated into Russian using perfective verbs (what did you do?). In this case, the duration of action is not indicated specifically, but approximately.

I have written poems- I wrote poetry(just now, already, not yet, once upon a time, by such and such a day, hour, month).

All types of statements are constructed using the auxiliary verb have (for the 3rd person has).

?	–
Have you written? Has she written?	I haven't written; she hasn't written

4) Present Perfect Continuous

An action that has already brought some results, but is not yet completed. The extent of events over time is emphasized.

I have been writing poemssince2005 – I write poetry since 2005(from childhood, from such and such a time, from ... to, all day, during, recently).

2) Past Continuous

Events took place at a specific moment in the past.

She was writing this letter at 5 o’clock yesterday –ShewroteThisletteryesterdayat 5hours(at that moment).

4) Past Perfect Continuous

An action that continued for a long time and was completed at a certain point in the past.

She had been writing theletterforafewdaysbeforeshesentit– She wrote this letter for several days before sending it.(before when).

2) Future Continuous

The action is planned to take place at a specific point in the future.

I will be flying to Spain at this time tomorrow –TomorrowVThistimeIwillflyVSpain.

4) Future Perfect Continuous

The action will last until a certain point in the future. This aspect is used in speech extremely rarely.

By April 15, I will have been living in Spain for 3 months –K 15AprilIwillliveVSpainalready 3month.

?	–
Will you have been living?	I won't have been living.

We hope we have coped with the task and clarified the tenses in English even for dummies. To consolidate the theory you have learned, we recommend solving practical exercises on verb tenses in English.

Verb forms in English are one of the most intimidating grammatical topics for Russian speakers. And it frightens not with its complexity, but with its volume. Surely, everyone has ever heard that in English, compared to Russian, there is simply a huge number of tense forms. There is some truth in this, but not everything is so scary. The English language has a very developed system of verb tenses. We'll talk about it today. And at the same time we will try to answer the main question:

It should be noted right away that this question is rather philosophical in nature. There are completely different possible answers here, and it all depends on “how to count.” If you use several reference books on English grammar at once, you may get completely different answers to the question posed. The possible options will be: 12, 14, 16 (in two ways), 24, 26, 32. The thing is that in some sources only the forms of the active voice are taken into account, in some they are added to the forms of the passive voice (10 forms), in some add here the forms “future in the past”, which are used only in indirect speech, or structures with modal verbs and to be going to. Now you understand that there are different possible answers to the question - how many tenses are there in English? It all depends on what you understand by the concept of verb tense. Each of the answers will be correct and scientifically based.

But still, most classic reference books on English grammar identify 12 main tense forms of the active voice. And I also advise you, in order not to get confused in the rather voluminous system of English tenses, consider that there are 12 tenses in the English language. You will become familiar with other nuances and forms of the English verb as you improve your language. In the meantime, don’t complicate what’s already “complicated.”

Please review the following table carefully. This is the form in which the English tense diagram is usually depicted in most textbooks.

Let's figure out how this tablet works and where the 12 times come from.

Past - Present - Future

In the rows of the table you see the so-called “absolute tenses”: Past - past, Present - present, Future - future. They describe "when the action occurs." So far everything is very similar to the tense system in Russian. These tenses work the same way as in Russian: if an action was performed in the past, we use Past; if it is performed in the present, we use Present; it will be performed in the future, we use Future.

Simple - Continuous - Perfect - Perfect Continuous

Now comes the hard part. The columns of the table indicate 4 subcategories, namely 4 types of tense forms of the verb: Simple - simple, Continuous - continuous, Perfect - perfect, Perfect Continuous - completely continuous. They determine not “when an action occurs,” but “how it occurs.” For comparison, remember that in Russian there are 2 types of verbs: perfect (expresses the result) and imperfect (expresses the process).

The tense forms in the Simple (Indefinite) group are translated as simple (indefinite) tenses. Simple tenses are used to describe an action or state in the past, present or future, without indicating the nature of the action. For example: I did it yesterday, I do it in general, I will do it tomorrow. That is, they describe the action in the most general way, without indicating duration, completion, or precedence.
Temporal forms in the Continuous (Progressive) group, translated into Russian as continuous (long) tenses, are used to emphasize the “duration” of an action. That is, they express an action as lasting (flowing) at some specific moment or period of past, present or future time.
The tense forms in the Perfect group are perfect (perfect) tenses. Perfect tenses usually imply the presence of some result of an action that is observed in the past, present or future. The main meaning of perfect tenses is to express the connection of a past action with the present time or to express the precedence of an action to any moment in the past or future tense.
The tense forms in the Perfect Continuous (Perfect Progressive) group combine the characteristics of the two previous groups. They are translated into Russian as completely long tenses. They express a long-term action that began before the moment of speech, or until some point in the past or future and lasted until that moment.

What happens in the end? When crossing 3 rows and 4 columns, we formed 12 combinations. Here they are, the main tenses of the English language:

Present Simple (Indefinite) Tense − Present simple (indefinite) tense
Present Continuous (Progressive) Tense − Present continuous (continuous) tense
Present Perfect Tense − Present perfect tense
Present Perfect Continuous (Progressive) Tense − Present perfect continuous tense
Past Simple (Indefinite) Tense − Past simple (indefinite) tense
Past Continuous (Progressive) Tense − Past continuous (continuous) tense
Past Perfect Tense − Past Perfect Tense
Past Perfect Continuous (Progressive) Tense − Past perfect continuous tense
Future Simple (Indefinite) Tense − Future simple (indefinite) tense
Future Continuous (Progressive) Tense − Future Continuous (Continuous) Tense
Future Perfect Tense − Future Perfect Tense
Future Perfect Continuous (Progressive) Tense − Future perfect continuous tense

However, many of these tenses are rarely used both in writing and in speech. In oral narration, the following tenses are most often used: Present Simple Tense, Past Simple Tense, Future Simple Tense, Present Perfect Tense, Present Continuous Tense.

Therefore, if you are just starting to learn tense forms of the English language, I advise you to start with the Simple group. This can be said to be the “basic” group of times. Having mastered them, proceed to the other two important tenses: Present Perfect Tense, Present Continuous Tense. And only then gradually introduce the remaining tenses from unfamiliar table cells that are not used very often in colloquial speech.

Looking ahead, I want to warn you that this is not all. 8 of the 12 tenses presented above can have, in addition to the active voice, also the passive voice. But this is a slightly different topic.

Let's summarize. The verb in English, unlike the Russian language, has a rather complex and extensive system of tenses. When asked how many tenses there are in the English language, we can safely answer that there are 12 main tense forms. They are formed as combinations of 3 “absolute” tenses - Past, Present and Future with 4 “species forms” - Simple, Continuous, Perfect , Perfect Continuous.