The 12 Basic English Tenses & What is tense?

The English Tense System

The links below are to lessons for each of the 12 basic English tenses. In each lesson we look at two aspects of the tense:

• Structure: How do we make the tense?
• Use: When and why do we use the tense?

Some lessons look at additional matters, and most of them finish with a quiz to check your understanding.

• Present Simple
  I do, I do do
• Present Continuous
  I am doing
• Present Perfect
  I have done
• Present Perfect Continuous
  I have been doing
• Past Simple
  I did, I did do
• Past Continuous
  I was doing
• Past Perfect
  I had done
• Past Perfect Continuous
  I had been doing
• Future Simple
  I will do
• Future Continuous
  I will be doing
• Future Perfect
  I will have done
• Future Perfect Continuous
  I will have been doing

Many English learners worry too much about tense. If you stopped 100 native English speakers in the street and asked them about tense, 1 of them might give you an intelligent answer - if you were lucky. The other 99 would know little about terms like "past perfect" or "present continuous". And they would know nothing about aspect, voice or mood. But they can all speak fluent English and communicate effectively. Of course, for ESL it helps to know about tenses, but don't become obsessed with them. Be like those native speakers! Speak naturally!

• What is Tense?

tense (noun): a verb-based method used to indicate the time, and sometimes the continuation or completeness, of an action or state in relation to the time of speaking. ORIGIN Latin tempus "time"

The concept of tense in English is a method that we use to refer to time - past, present and future. Many languages use tense to talk about time. Other languages have no concept of tense at all, but of course they can still talk about time, using different methods.
So, we talk about time in English with tense. But, and this is a very big but:

• we can also talk about time without using tense (for example, going to is a special construction to talk about the future, it is not a tense)
• one tense does not always talk about one time (for example, we can use the present tense, or even the past tense, to talk about the future - see tense and time for more about this)

Note that many grammarians take the view that there are only two tenses in English: present tense and past tense. That is because we make those two tenses with the verb alone - he walks, he walked. They do not consider that he will walk, he is walking or he has walked (for example) are tenses because they are not formed solely from the verb "walk". For English learners, most EFL teachers and books treat all these constructions as tenses. On these pages we do the same.

We cannot talk of tenses without considering two components of many English tenses: time and aspect. In simple terms...
Time expresses:

• past - before now
• present - now, or any time that includes now
• future - after now

Aspect can be:

• progressive - uncompleted action
• perfective - completed action or state

The following table shows how these components work together to create some basic tenses.

		time
		past	present	future
simple (no aspect)		sang	sings	will sing
aspect	progressive	was singing	is singing	will be singing
	perfective	had sung	has sung	will have sung

(Some say that simple tenses have "simple aspect", but strictly speaking simple tenses are simply unmarked for aspect.)
The progressive aspect produces progressive or "continuous" tenses: past continuous, present continuous, future continuous.
The perfective aspect produces perfect tenses: past perfect, present perfect, future perfect.
And the two aspects can be combined to produce perfect continuous tenses: past perfect continuous, present perfect continuous, future perfect continuous.

https://www.englishclub.com/grammar/verb-tenses.htm
https://www.englishclub.com/grammar/tense-what.htm