23 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).
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:
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 |
Practice
Change the tense of each sentence as directed below. You can type your answers in the text field below:
- Make this sentence present tense: Alejandra directed a play.
- Make this sentence past tense: Lena will show me how to use a microscope.
- Make this sentence future tense: Gabrielly eats a lot of hamburgers.
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Show Answer
- Alejandra directs a play.
- Lena showed me how to use a microscope.
- Gabrielly will eat a lot of hamburgers.
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:
- Make this sentence present tense: Ysabella was really good at getting others to open up.
- Make this sentence past tense: Rodrigo will have a B+ in his math class.
- Make this sentence future tense: Amanda said she didn’t want to go to the party.
- Make this sentence past tense: Jordan does five hundred sit-ups.
- Make this sentence present tense: Marcela ran a car wash down the street from my house.
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Show Answer
- Ysabella is really good at getting others to open up.
- Rodrigo had a B+ in his math class.
- Amanda will say she doesn’t want to go to the party.
- Notice that when the tense of the first verb changed, the tense of the second verb did as well.
- Jordan did five hundred sit-ups.
- Marcela runs a car wash down the street from my house.