Present Tenses

24 tense forms in English?! Are you serious?

At school we were always being told that there are 24 tense forms in English and we should learn all these tenses.

Guys, let's be honest! English like all other languages of the world has only 3 tenses - Past, Present and Future and the rest is only the grammatical forms of these tenses (simple/continuous, perfect forms, active and passive forms).

Today we are going to refresh our knowledge about Present tenses (active forms).

Present Simple

It's the simplest form of Present tenses, that's why we start learning Grammar from Present Simple. The only thing that we should remember forming this tense is adding s (-es) in 3rd person singular (she/he/it).

For example, she works every day from 8 A.M. to 8 P.M.

For verbs ending -ss, -o, -x, -ch, -sh + es, for instance: "He usually watches TV in the evening."

Negative sentences are formed with don't and doesn't, interrogative forms (questions) with do / does.

Let's look through the ways of using Present Simple:

1. for repeated actions / general situations / for describing the habits
2. facts
3. for schedules

Emphatic do

Normally, for positive sentences we do not use the auxiliary verb do. But if we want to emphasize (stress) something, we may use it.

For example: I do apologize for my rude behaviour (more formal) = very, very sorry (informal)

Present Continuous

This tense is used to:

1. desribe things happening now
2. describe things in process
3. for planned actions
4. describe changes happening now

We form Present Continuous using to be (am, is, are) +Ving (e.g. I am reading now)

Negative form to be+not Ving, interrogative to be+subject+Ving.

5. Also we use Present Continuous to show our anger and irritation.

For example: I've lost my phone. Ugh, I'm always losing things.

6. We use am/is/are being to say how somebody is behaving.

I can't understand why he's being so selfish. He isn’t usually like that.

To be continued...