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Whether you’re an advanced English learner or a professional, you may often find yourself struggling with grammar and punctuation. This could affect your productivity and impact your performance at work or school.
1. Present Tense
In English, we use verb tenses to show what happened at specific points in time. These tenses help us understand whether an action happened at the same time as another, which actions occurred first, and what the future holds for an action.
Present tense is one of the main tenses in English, and it shows that an action is happening now. It can also indicate reoccurring events or connect past and future actions.
The present tense is the simplest of all the verb tenses. It doesn’t have any special rules, but it does tell us a lot about how and when an action happens.
In the present tense, there are two forms of the verb to be: is and was. Is describes an action that is happening now to a person or thing, while was describes an action that happened in the past to a person or thing.
2. Future Tense
The future tense is used to speak about events that are happening or will happen in the future. It is also used to talk about intentions and assumptions related to the future, as well as a promise or a declaration of certainty that an action will be completed.
There are four future tenses in English: simple future, future continuous, future perfect, and future progressive. Each has its own characteristics, so it’s important to know when and how to use them correctly.
Simple future is the simplest form of the future tense. It is formed by adding “will” or “shall” to the first person present conjugated verb, and it expresses actions that will definitely occur at any time later than now.
3. Past Tense
There are 12 different verb tenses in English, so it’s important to know how to use them correctly. If you use the wrong one, your readers may get confused and your writing might not sound right.
For consistency, it’s best to use the same tense throughout most of your writing. But sometimes, a writer may change the tense of a verb to fit the context.
Grammarly offers a variety of ways to help you check your writing and ensure that it’s correct. This includes checking your spelling and grammar and even proofreading your work, so you can make sure it’s polished everywhere.
The past tense can be tricky to get right, so we’ve put together some fun activities to help you practice it. This sorting activity is a great way to teach kids how to identify the correct tense for each verb, while this jigsaw resource can be used in class or individually to test your pupils’ knowledge.
4. Conditional
The conditional present tense is used to say that something will or will likely happen if the condition is true. This type of grammar can be confusing, but it’s important to learn how to use it properly.
Depending on the situation, verb tenses can help express the meaning of a conditional sentence. For example, if you’re talking about a possible event in the future, you might use the simple future tense for the if clause and the past tense form of the verb for the main clause.
In a zero conditional, you use the simple present tense for both parts of the sentence. These sentences are often used to express general truths, like “If you rest, you’ll feel better.”
There are four types of conditional sentences. These include zero, first, second, and third conditional sentences.