Brief Overview of Verbs

The six basic tenses

There are six basic tenses in English. There are also progressive forms of the six tenses that show continued action and some conditional forms that talk about something that might or might not happen. The six basic tenses are listed below:

• The most important tenses for a beginner are the simple present (I dance), simple past (I danced), simple future (I will dance), and present progressive (I am dancing).
• Learners will find it difficult to understand tenses for which there is no corresponding tense in their first language.

Changing verb tenses

Regular verbs have a common pattern with changes in tenses as in the dance example above.

Irregular verbs don’t follow the same pattern. They are often our oldest verbs and are well used. For example, the following verb doesn’t use the ed ending.

• I eat. (I am eating. I can eat.)
• I ate. (I was eating.)
• I will eat. (I will be eating.)
• I have eaten. (I have been eating. I could have been eating.)
• I had eaten. (I had been eating.)
• I will have eaten. (I will have been eating.)

Verbs are changed to indicate the tense. They also agree with the subject of the sentence. For example, I dance changes to she/he/it dances.

Beginners will have to learn some of the irregular verbs that are very common as well as the regular verb pattern.

Handout 12.21