Basic English Grammar
Verbs (verb)
Present
| Past | Perfect | Future
A verb is the most important word in the sentence. It
is the action or doing word.
(work, call, sing, jump).
The form of the verb which tells when the
action takes place is called the tense.
The three most common tenses are:
Present Tense
What happens now, or usually happens.
I work every
day.
I am eating right now. |
When you use He, She, or It in a present tense sentence,
add -s to the verb -- he plays,
she plays, it plays.
This is called third person.

Past tense
Expresses an action that ended sometime in the past.
I went
to the horse races yesterday. |

Perfect tense
Shows an action that happened at some indefinite time
in the past,
or when an action was repeated several times in the past.
The perfect tense always needs Have or Has
in front of the verb.
Susan
has gone
away. |
My
mother has worked
hard all her life. |

The Future Tense
In English there are several ways of talking about the
future,
but WILL and GOING TO are the two most common forms.
I'll
(I will) see you later. |
We're
going to (are going to) see a film
tonight. Do you want to come? |
The speaker chooses a future form depending on when the
decision was taken and how the speaker sees the future event.
Use will ('ll) when you decide to do something
at the time of speaking (right now).
The speaker has not made a decision before.
Jane: |
Let's go on a
vacation. |
Jack:
|
That would be
wonderful!
I will make the reservations.
(Jack decides at the same time Jane speaks.) |
Use going to when the speaker has already
decided to do something.
Jack: |
Jane
and I have decided to take a vacation.
We are going to go to Stockholm.
(Jack had already decided to take a vacation before he spoke to
Peter.) |
Peter: |
Oh,
how nice. |
Examples:
"John
is going to get married." |
|
"Really?
How wonderful. I will buy him a present." |
"There's
someone at the door for you." |
|
"Yes,
it's Sue. We are going to go to a party." |
Sometimes there is not much difference between will
and going to.
For example, you can say:
I
think the weather will be nice tomorrow. |
I
think the weather is going to be nice
tomorrow. |

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