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Overview - Irregular
Verbs - Forms of "to
be" - Intensive
Grammar Course
Past Perfect Tenses - Past Tenses - Present Perfect Tenses - Present Tenses - Future Tenses
This section about tenses is a quick review on all important grammatical tenses in the English language. You will find brief explanations about the use of the different tenses, how to form them, and short examples for each tense.
If you need more information about all English tenses or a complete overview, I recommend you download the documents listed at the bottom of this page.
SOME GENERAL FACTS ABOUT ENGLISH TENSES:
Firstly, unless in many other languages like German, the English tenses follow very strict rules. However, it must be said that in real life, especially in the United States, these rules are not always followed as consequently as your teacher may tell you to do. All the rules can be found on the following pages.
In the English language, there are more tenses than in most languages because every tense can be put into two different forms, the "simple" form and the "progressive" form (also called "continuous" form or "ing" form). The differences between the two forms can sometimes be tricky, but they are usually very important to know.
Also, in English there are many different ways to talk about the future. Apart from the two most common future tenses - the "will" future and the "going to" future, there are several other tenses that can be used for future reference. This is also the reason why on this site, the tenses section has been divided into "normal" tenses and "future" tenses.
Finally, it should be mentioned that the English (irregular) verb "to be" is very important for the formation of several tenses (all progressive tenses and the "going to" future. Therefore, I have created a list of all forms of "to be" in all tenses.
Most other irregular verbs can be found in the irregular verb chart.
Overview - Irregular Verbs - Forms of "to be" - Intensive Grammar Course
Past Perfect Tenses - Past Tenses - Present Perfect Tenses - Present Tenses - Future Tenses
Intensive Grammar Course - Tenses (rightclick to download)
Intensive Grammar Course - key to exercises (rightclick to download)
In this Intensive Grammar Course you will find extensive explanations for all English Tenses. It discusses the use of different tense forms as well as the grammatical forms of all the tenses. Furthermore you can check if you have understood everything in short exercises after each chapter.
short overview of all tenses (except future tenses) (rightclick to download)
short overview of all future tenses (rightclick to download)
These two grammar charts give you a quick overview on all tenses. They are in PDF format, so you can print them out and stick them onto your wall. They can really help you get familiar with the English tenses, so I strongly recomend you download them and have a look!
Please visit the following sites for more on English tenses: