TENSE help

TENSE

INDEX: Present Tense[]Past Tense[]Future Tense

Now, what IS TENSE?

Basically, the tense of a verb tells the time of an action. It tells us WHEN something happened or WHEN something existed.

Practice:
Say whether the tense in these sentences is PAST, PRESENT or FUTURE:
[1] The bull sleeps beside the river.     [Answer]
[2] The small boy had a huge headache.     [Answer]
[3] We will play tennis later.     [Answer]

PRESENT TENSE:
PRESENT TENSE verbs tell us something is happening right now, at the present time.

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As an example, in this sentence: "My dog wants marshmallows", wants is a present tense verb. My dog wants the marshmallows NOW. It doesn't wanted them. That would be PAST tense.

PAST TENSE:
Verbs which tell about actions which happened some time ago are past tense verbs.

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As an example, in this sentence: "My dog wanted marshmallows", wanted is a past tense verb. My dog wanted the marshmallows before now.
It doesn't want them. That would be PRESENT tense.
It used to want marshmallows, so I change wants to wanted to place this event in the PAST.

FUTURE TENSE:
Verbs which tell about actions which are going to happen are future tense verbs.

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There aren't any real FUTURE TENSE VERBS in English, but we use special words to talk about things that will happen: will, going to, shall, aim to, etc.

As an example, in this sentence: "My dog will want marshmallows", will want indicates future tense.

My dog didn't want the marshmallows before now. It doesn't wanted them. That would be PAST tense.

It does want the marshmallows now. It doesn't want marshmallows. That would be PRESENT TENSE.

My dog will want the marshmallows. Not now. Later. In the future.

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