Lingua
English has twelve tense forms in the usual textbook count: three times (past, present, future) multiplied by four aspects (simple, continuous, perfect, perfect continuous). The chart below shows all twelve with a formula and an example each. The more useful news is that five of them carry most of what people actually say, and the other seven can wait until those five come out without thinking.
Key points
- Twelve forms, one logic: pick the time, pick the aspect, and the auxiliaries follow. Learn the grid once and it stops being a list of twelve rules.
- Present simple, present continuous, past simple, present perfect and the future with will or going to cover most of everyday speech. Start there.
- Signal words help, but they are hints, not switches. Most tense mistakes come from your first language, so know where it misleads you.
What are the 12 English tenses? The chart
Read the chart as coordinates. The column tells you when, the row tells you how the action is seen: as a plain fact, as something in progress, as something completed before a point, or as something that has been going on up to a point. V2 is the past form (went, worked), V3 the past participle (gone, worked).
| Aspect | Past | Present | Future |
|---|---|---|---|
| Simple | V2: She worked late yesterday. | V / V-s: She works from home. | will + V: She will call you tomorrow. |
| Continuous | was/were + V-ing: She was working when I called. | am/is/are + V-ing: She is working right now. | will be + V-ing: She will be working at six. |
| Perfect | had + V3: She had left before I arrived. | have/has + V3: She has finished the report. | will have + V3: She will have finished by Friday. |
| Perfect continuous | had been + V-ing: She had been waiting for an hour. | have/has been + V-ing: She has been working since nine. | will have been + V-ing: By June she will have been working here for ten years. |
Two footnotes. First, strictly speaking, grammarians count only two tenses in English, present and past, because only those two are marked on the verb itself; continuous and perfect are aspects, and will is a modal verb. The UCL Internet Grammar sets this out. The twelve-box chart is a teaching device, and a good one, as long as you know it is one. Second, going to (She is going to move) is not in the grid at all, yet it is one of the most common ways to talk about the future.
Which tenses should you learn first?
Five forms carry real conversation: talking about your life, what is happening, what happened and what comes next.
- Present simple for habits, facts and states: I live in Lyon. She doesn't eat meat.
- Present continuous for what is in progress now or around now, and for arrangements: I'm cooking. We're meeting at eight.
- Past simple for finished events at a finished time. This is the storytelling tense: We met in 2019.
- Present perfect for the past seen from now: experience, results, news. I've been to Japan. I've lost my keys.
- The future with will or going to. Going to for plans already made, will for decisions made on the spot, promises and predictions: I'm going to look for a new job. I'll get the door.
Then, around the intermediate level, add the present perfect continuous (I've been waiting for ages), the past continuous for background in stories and the past perfect for the earlier past. The future continuous, the future perfect and both perfect continuous forms in the past and future are real but rare in conversation; you will recognise them in reading long before you need to produce them. According to the Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English (Biber et al.), verb phrases with neither perfect nor progressive aspect are by far the most common in conversation and in writing, so the order above is not laziness, it is frequency.
Signal words: the time markers for each tense
Time expressions often point to the tense, which is why school charts list them. They are useful for a first guess:
| Tense | Typical signal words |
|---|---|
| Present simple | always, usually, often, every day, on Mondays |
| Present continuous | now, right now, at the moment, Look!, this week |
| Past simple | yesterday, last year, two days ago, in 2019, when I was a child |
| Present perfect | already, yet, just, ever, never, so far, since, for |
| Past continuous | while, at eight last night, when + past simple |
| Past perfect | by the time, before, after, already + past context |
| Future | tomorrow, next week, soon, in two days, I think |
Now the caveat. Markers point, they do not decide. For works with the past simple when the period is over: I lived there for two years (and then moved). Just often goes with the past simple in American English: I just saw him. Now sits happily in the present simple: I live in Madrid now. The real question is always the same one: is the time finished, or does it reach the present?
Where your own language sets the traps
Most tense errors are imports. Your first language has its own way of slicing time, and it quietly suggests a form English does not use.
- French, Italian, German. Your everyday spoken past (passé composé, passato prossimo, Perfekt) is built like the present perfect and mostly behaves like the past simple. Hence I have seen him yesterday, which English rejects: a finished time takes the past simple.
- Spanish and Portuguese. The compound perfect exists but works differently. In much of Spain it covers anything that happened today, even at a stated hour; in Latin America the simple past often does the job of I've already eaten; in Portuguese tenho feito means a repeated action lately, not a single result.
- Russian and other Slavic languages. Perfective and imperfective aspect is not the English perfect, and one past tense has to be split into I did and I have done.
- Most European languages. Duration up to now is said in the present: German seit, French depuis, Spanish desde hace, Italian da, Portuguese há, Russian a bare пять лет. English needs the perfect: I have lived here for five years, not I live here since five years.
- Japanese and Korean. Japanese -te iru (kekkon shite iru, shitte iru) and Korean -go itda (algo itda) are not always -ing: I am married, I know, not I am knowing. A Korean past form for a present state (neujeosseoyo, literally a past, meaning I'm late) has to become a present in English.
- Vietnamese and Chinese. Verbs do not change, and time markers are optional when context makes things clear. English marks the tense on every verb, every time: Yesterday I went, never Yesterday I go.
- French, Italian, Russian. After when, if, as soon as about the future, English uses the present (quand j'arriverai, quando arriverò, когда приеду all use a future): Call me when you arrive, not when you will arrive.
If your language is on this list, that line is worth more than the whole chart. If you want to see why, do you need grammar explains when a rule earns its place: exactly when your first language does the opposite.
How to practise tenses so they stick
Tables are for checking. Speech comes from sentences you have said many times. For each of the five core forms, write five sentences about your own life and say them aloud until they arrive whole: what you do every day, what you are doing this week, what you did last weekend, what you have never done, what you are going to do next. Then change one thing at a time: the subject, the time, a negative, a question. A pattern you have said in thirty variations is a pattern you own.
Keep the language around you in volume as well, through daily listening and reading: every story you read is a lesson in when English switches from present perfect to past simple. And plan the order, not just the content; the first month plan shows how to fit fifteen minutes a day around it.
In LinguaPair
The English course introduces the tenses in the order of this article, not the order of the chart. A1 brings the present simple, the present continuous and going to; A2 the past simple, will against going to and the present perfect, including its contrast with the past simple; B1 the present perfect continuous, for and since, the past continuous and the past perfect; B2 the future continuous and the future perfect. Every lesson opens with a short lecture in the language you use the app in, and the exercises are sentences to translate, complete, put in order and say aloud. A0 and A1 are free, and if you already know some English, the placement test puts you on the right lesson instead of the first one.