Learn English in No Time

OVERVIEW

THE FIVE KEY TENSES

The first and most important thing to understand is that there are only FIVE tenses that native speakers use every day in regular speech. These FIVE must be understood and used if an ESL student wants to be confident and wants to communicate quickly and effectively.

THE MAIN VERBS

The second and equally important thing to learn is that in English, there are THREE MAIN VERBS that each have TWO main uses:

These verbs are TO BE, TO DO, and TO HAVE.

One of these uses is as something called an auxiliary verb, which relates to using 4 of the 5 main tenses.

As a part of the 12 major tenses, FOUR of the critical FIVE tenses use auxiliary verbs and ONE tense uses a modal verb to ask and answer questions with the verb. As well, auxiliary verbs/modal are used to express the negative and to emphasize the verb supported. This system of auxiliary/modal verbs has been in English for many hundreds of years.

This site encourages each student, in the beginning, to refresh by using his or her favorite verbs when practicing these FIVE tenses, and by firmly associating each tense with its related auxiliary/modal verb(s). As in the examples shown, begin by using the singular tense only. Use the examples to graduate to plural tenses as command is gained.

The site, for purposes of example, will use the verb TO DRINK, because it is an important verb in all languages; it also breaks down into ALL of the subject example areas, using dreadful participles, etc.

This site always recognizes verbs by CATEGORY first and then tense, like SIMPLE future tense.

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And you’re on your way to speaking esl better!