Complete English Tenses MP3
Complete English Tenses MP3
Complete English Tenses Made Easy
The present
The present tense (e.g. I am, she works, we swim, they believe) is also called the present simple or simple present. It's mainly used in the following ways:
to describe things that are currently happening or that are currently or always the case (I love chocolate ice cream; my parents are in New York this week; he has fair hair and blue eyes; some birds eat worms and insects).
Continuous and perfect tenses
There are two further types of tense: the continuous and the perfect. These tenses are sometimes referred to as aspects rather than tenses. The term aspect is used in grammar to talk about the form of a verb that shows, for example, whether the action happens once or repeatedly, is completed or still continuing.
Continuous
These tenses (also called progressive tenses) are used to talk about actions that continue for a period of time. They are formed with the relevant tense of the auxiliary verb to be and the present participle of the main verb. There are three main continuous tenses:
the present continuous (I am working)
the past continuous (I was working)
the future continuous (I will be working)
Perfect
Perfect tenses are typically used to talk about actions that are completed by the present or a particular point in the past or future. They are formed with the relevant tense of the auxiliary verb to have and the past participle of the main verb. There are three main perfect tenses:
the present perfect (I have worked)
the past perfect (I had worked)
the future perfect (I will have worked)
Perfect continuous
There is a final set of tenses which combine features of the perfect and continuous tenses. They are formed and used as follows:
the present perfect continuous (I have been working): used to talk about how long something has continued up till now (I have been working there for a week)
the past perfect continuous (I had been working): used to talk about something which continued up to a particular moment in the past but is now completed (I had been working there for a week before I resigned)
the future perfect continuous (I will have been working): used to talk about something which is expected to end by a particular time in the future (By December, I will have been working there for 6 months)