Simple Verb Tenses

What is tense? There are three standard tenses in English: past, present and future. All three of these tenses have simple and more complex forms. For now we’ll just focus on the simple present (things happening now), the simple past (things that happened before), and the simple future (things that will happen later).

  • Simple Present: works
  • Simple Past: worked
  • Simple Future: will work

Tenses

Present Tense

Watch this quick introduction to the present tense:

Past Tense

Watch this quick introduction to the past tense:

Future Tense

Watch this quick introduction to the future tense:

Note: You may have noticed that in the present tense video David talked about “things that are happening right now” and that he mentioned there were other ways to create the past and future tense. We’ll discuss these in further depth in Text: Advanced Verb Tenses.

Practice

Identify the tense of the following sentences. You can type your answers in the text field below:

  1. Alejandra directed a play.
  2. Lena will show me how to use a microscope.
  3. Isaac eats a lot of steaks.

Conjugation

Most verbs will follow the pattern that we just learned in the previous videos:

Person Past Present Future
I verb + ed verb will verb
We verb + ed verb will verb
You verb + ed verb will verb
He, She, It verb + ed verb + s (or es) will verb
They verb + ed verb will verb

To Walk

Let’s look at the verb to walk for an example:

Person Past Present Future
I walked walk will walk
We walked walk will walk
You walked walk will walk
He, She, It walked walks will walk
They walked walk will walk

Irregular Verbs

There are a lot of irregular verbs. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of memorization involved in keeping them straight. This video shows a few of the irregular verbs you’ll have to use the most often (to be, to have, to do, and to say):

Here’s a list of several irregular past tense verbs.

Practice

Change the tense of each sentence as directed below. You can type your answers in the text field below:

  1. Make this sentence present tense: Ysabella was really good at getting others to open up.
  2. Make this sentence past tense: Rodrigo will have a B+ in his math class.
  3. Make this sentence future tense: Amanda said she didn’t want to go to the party.
  4. Make this sentence past tense: Jordan does five hundred sit-ups.
  5. Make this sentence present tense: Marcela ran a car wash down the street from my house.