Verbs tell us the time that an action in a sentence happened. The time that a verb shows is called tense. The most common tenses in the English Language are past tense, present tense and future tense.
| Past Tense - it already happened | Yesterday, I played outside. More Here on Past Tense Words |
| Present Tense - it is happening right now | I play outside. More Here on Present Tense Words |
| Future Tense - it has yet to happen | Tomorrow I will play outside. More Here on Future Tense Words |
| Root word | Present tense | Past tense | Future tense |
| To be | is/ am/ are | was/ were | will/shall |
| Past Tense; She was talking to her friends. | Was is the verb "to be". Talking is the verb root word. |
| Present Tense; I walk to school. | We make the present tense by using the verb root word or the verb "to be", am and an "ing" word, walking. |
| Present Tense; I am walking to school. | |
| Future Tense; I will go tomorrow. | We make the future tense by using the verb "to be" and the verb root word. Will is the verb "to be". Go is the verb root word. |
| Examples of Regular Verb Tenses | |||
| Root word | Past tense | Present tense | Future tense |
|---|---|---|---|
| Walk | I walked | I walk | I will walk |
| Walk plus to be | I was walking | I am walking | I will walk |
| Help | I helped | I help | I will help |
| Learn | I learned. | I learn | I will learn |
| Learn plus to be | I was learning | I am learning | I will learn |
Irregular verbs do not follow the spelling pattern of regular Verbs and some irregular verbs do not change their spelling at all.
| Root word | Past tense | Present tense | Future tense |
|---|---|---|---|
| Write | I wrote. | I write | I shall write |
| Write plus to be | They were writing | They are writing | They will write |
| Grow | It grew | It grows | It will grow |
| Teach | She taught | She teaches | She will teach |
| Teach plus to be | We were teaching | We are teaching | We shall teach |
| Think | He thought | He thinks | He will think |
| Root word | Past tense | Present tense | Future tense |
|---|---|---|---|
| cost | It cost | It cost | It shall cost |
| hit | They were hitting | They are hitting | They will hit |
| read | It read | It reads | It will read |
| let | She let | She lets | She will let |
| put | We were putting | We are putting | We shall put |
| shut | He shut | He shuts | He will shut |
Above we’ve described 3 verb tenses, but the answer to this question is either 2, 3, 12, or 16 depending on who you ask. This is obviously not a helpful answer so let’s have a brief and simplified explanation.
To be linguistically precise, the only tenses in the English language are the present and the past with the future “tense” being formed using a helping verb. However, most people, for the purpose of teaching English consider there to be 3 tenses – past, present, and future.
Most books and guidance refer to 12 different verb tenses. To get to the answer 12, we need to consider the aspect of a verb.
The aspect of the verb depends on whether an action as described by the verb is ongoing (progressive), completed (perfect), was ongoing but ended (perfect progressive), or neither ongoing nor completed – just a fact (simple).
So, if we consider the 3 tenses – past, present, and future - and then introduce 4 aspects for each, we can, for simplicity, say there are 12 tenses. This is shown below with examples:
| Tense | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Past | Present | Future | ||
| I danced | I dance | I will dance | Simple | Aspect |
| I had danced | I have danced | I will have danced | Perfect | |
| I was dancing | I am dancing | I will be dancing | Progressive | |
| I had been dancing | I have been dancing | I will have been dancing | Progressive | |
We know verbs have tenses and aspects, but they also have moods - more here . We won’t go into detail here other than considering the conditional mood. Verb tenses are sometimes shown with a conditional example for each aspect, usually including “would”. For example: I would dance; I would have danced; I would be dancing; I would have been dancing. If we add these to the more commonly accepted answer of 12, we get to 16.