An Overview of the 12 Tenses in English: Pay Attention to These Reflective Insights!

Introduction

Have you ever wondered about the difference between “I read a book” and “I am reading a book” or maybe “I watch TV,” “I watched TV,” and “I will watch TV”? They are easy to utter, yet difficult to analyze, particularly their tenses.

Many language learners find it difficult to study tenses in English despite their best efforts. They consistently misuse, misunderstand, and misapply the tenses in English even in their speaking practices. This situation is inevitable, especially for language learners who have difficulty understanding and applying the tenses.

For some language learners, tenses are less important and emphasized as long as the meaning of the statement they want to convey is clear and comprehensible.

However, it is better to be more familiar and conscious of the sentence construction with correct tenses to have a more appealing statement. It is also more appropriate than relying solely on the meaning of the context.

Of all the parts of speech, the verb is the most complicated. It has a lot of considerations. Tenses are not an exception. Did you know that tenses in English are the most important part of the language? They play a major role in getting the meaning of sentences

What are the tenses in English and why do we study them?

Simply, tenses essentially express the timing of a specific action at a particular period. The three main tenses in English verbs are the Past, Present, and Future Tenses. If you want to talk about something in the past, you can’t use a tense that is in the future or the present. The same is true with other things. You cannot use a tense in the past if you are talking about something at present or a plan in the future.

The Past tense talks about actions that were done permanently in the past. For example, “My father walked to the supermarket yesterday.” This sentence happened at a past time and it is already finished.

The Present tense talks about actions or events that are permanent. It also talks about habits and routines. For example, “He drinks a can of beer before going to bed every night.” The doer of this action regularly drinks, and that is every night.

Some other uses of the present tense are to show scientific, mathematical, geographical, and other facts. For example, “Mount Fuji is located in Japan.” This is a geographical fact stating the location of Mt. Fuji. Another example is “Jupiter has many moons” which is a scientific fact.

The Future tense talks about actions that will be done in the future. This expresses plans or predictions about a specific point in time in the future. We use “will or be going to” to express a future plan. For example, “I will visit my friend at the hospital after work today.” Another example is “My cousin is getting married next month.”

will vs be going to

Generally, both expressions are used in the future but they have slight differences. “Will” is used for sudden or unplanned actions. It means the doer of the action just decided to do something. On the other hand, “be going to” is used for predictions or pre-arranged plans.

Why do we study tenses in English in the first place? This is a question that is not that difficult to answer. We study tenses because we want to be clearly understood, so we have to observe the correct tense when expressing our ideas, our opinions, our sentiments, and other things. Without using the correct tense, the meaning we intend to convey is not clear.