upon the request of my dear friend; i will be talking about

“tenses”.

this is quite a broad subject and somewhat tricky to explain so i’ll have to give lots of examples!

in the tenses we have:

PAST- when we are talking about an event the has happened previously

PRESENT- when we are talking about something that is happening at that time

FUTURE- when we are talking about something that is going to happen.

there are breakdowns of each category into “continuous and simple”

CONTINUOUS- has a sentence usually containing a verb ending in “ing” and it is used to describe events that have begun but not been completed yet

SIMPLE- talking about a repeat of events

one was to talk about the past is by using the words “was” and “were” these two can be used in CONTINUOUS PAST TENSE (remember this is when using the verb ending in ing)

“they were walking to the supermarket” - were is used when talking about multiple people

“he was walking to the supermarket”- was is used when talking about one person


in SIMPLE PAST TENSE, the verb ending in “ing” is often replaced by the same verb ending in “ed” to show that the action has been completed

“they walked to the supermarket”

“he walked to the supermarket”

in CONTINUOUS PRESENT TENSE, the same “ing” principle is followed. however, instead of using “were” and “was” we use “are” and “is”

“they are walking to the supermarket”- “are” is used when talking about multiple people

“he is walking to the supermarket”- “is” is used when talking about one person

in SIMPLE PRESENT TENSE, it is slightly more complicated and there is no exact rule to it as it is used to describe a repetitive event

“i bite my nails”

“my brother bites his nails”