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How To Master English Verb Grammar
How To Master English Verb Grammar
Are you confused by the difference between the Present Simple and the Present
Continuous? Or between the Present Perfect and Past Simple?
A famous Italian, Vilfredo Pareto, defined the 80:20 cause and effect rule: twenty
percent of causes produce eighty percent of effects. In terms of English grammar
20% of misunderstandings in verb tenses cause 80% of mistakes and problems.
We are going to focus on the twenty percent of concepts that will influence 80% of
your ability to speak English.
This means that if you focus on the four key English verb tenses that you need to
understand and use correctly, this will greatly improve your mastery of the English
language.
This article will show you how to use these four tenses correctly.
Once you’ve mastered this critical 20%, all the other verb forms, including the
conditional and future forms, are relatively simple.
Before we explore these key verb tenses in detail, we need to understand the
difference between the tense and the aspect.
You answer:
To talk about an activity or event happening right now, at the moment, today, this week, this month, this
year, etc., you have to use the Present Continuous in English.
The English Present Continuous describes an event, activity or situation that is happening now, or around
now:
So, in reality, you don’t use the Present Simple to talk about the present…
The Present Simple is … not simple. It’s one of the most confusing tenses to understand when you’re
learning English, but if you get this one right, the rest is easy.
Using the Present Simple correctly is important
As a non-native speaker of English you can make yourself understood without using the correct auxiliary
or word order when you ask questions. But don’t you want to make a good impression? A bella figura? If
you can master the rules for using the Present Simple correctly, your English will sound 80% better.
We use the Present Simple to make generalisations, to talk about truths, to express opinions, to talk about
routine or cyclical events. Without it we would not be able to discuss philosophies, concepts and theories.
When the main verb is the verb ‘to be’, you don’t use the auxiliary ‘do’ in questions and negatives.
Pay attention to the exact order of the subject, auxiliary and verb in the negative and question forms.
Positive:
You travel to work by train.
= Subject + verb
Question:
Do you travel to work by train?
Negative:
You don’t travel to work by train.
We often use adverbs of frequency with the Present Simple, such as always, often, sometimes, rarely,
never, etc. Again, the word order is not flexible.
Positive:
You always travel to work by train
= Subject + adverb + verb
Question:
Do you often travel to work by train?
= Auxiliary + subject + adverb + verb
Negative:
He doesn’t usually travel to work by train
= Subject + auxiliary + not + adverb + verb
5. You must add an ‘s’ to verbs in the 3rd person singular
In the 3rd Person Singular of the Present Simple, we have to add an ‘s’ (or ‘es’) to the verb; in
questions and negatives, the auxiliary ‘do’ becomes ‘does’.
I walk to work, you take the bus to work, but he drives to work.
Native speakers of English sometimes speak ungrammatically and make mistakes, but they never, ever
forget to use this ‘s’. How do they know how to do this? Because they all do it, they grow up listening
to people speaking and pick up the habit of using this ‘s’. You need to develop the habit as well.
NOTE: It’s not sufficient to write the ‘s’ on 3rd person singular verbs in the Present Simple, you also
have to pronounce it. English is not like French, where the ‘s’ at the end of a word isn’t always
pronounced – you have to pronounce them all, in the 3rd person singular and in plural nouns.
Going back to the 80:20 rule, the difference between pronouncing the s and not pronouncing it might
seem unimportant to you, but to a native English listener, you will sound 80% better, more fluent and
more competent.
To summarize,
it’s important for Italians to remember that there are clear and important differences in
English between the Present Simple and the Present Continuous. In Italian you can use the simple and
continuous aspects interchangeably – but not in English.
The Present Simple is not simple. There are five key points to remember:
5. don’t forget the ‘s’ at the end of 3rd person singular verbs
Sometimes, but not always, verbs in the Past Simple are anchored to the past with expressions like ‘five
minutes ago’, ‘five hundred years ago’, yesterday, this morning, last year, etc.
The problem for Italians is that the Present Perfect is structurally very similar to the Passato Prossimo.
I have already eaten.
Ho gia mangiato.
Don’t be fooled by this apparent similarity. They are NOT the same. This mistranslation leads you to
make two types of mistake:
WRONG: My first job was in Spain. I’ve worked there for a year.
CORRECT: My first job was in Spain. I worked there for a year.
Here you are using the Present Perfect to talk about something that is past, finished, over, done. You need
to use the Past Simple here.
The two most important things to remember about the Present Perfect are:
1. Be careful. It looks similar to the Passato Prossimo, but we use the Past Simple to talk about
‘the past’: ‘I went to university in Rome’, NOT ‘I’ve been to university in Rome.’
2. Italians use the present tense to talk about things that are still true, ongoing, unfinished: ‘Vivo
qui da 9 anni.’ In English you have to use the Present Perfect to express this: ‘I’ve lived here for 9
years.’
Here is a graphic summary of some of the different time expressions you use with the Past Simple, the
Present Perfect and the Present Continuous. It shows time expressions which are unique to each tense, for
example, ‘last year’, ‘so far’ and ‘at the moment’, or associated with two of the tenses, for example,
‘recently’ and ‘today’.
The time period that YOU SELECT determines which verb tense you must use
You can also see how the Present Perfect provides a ‘bridge’ between the present and the past.
1. The 4 key English verb tenses are: the Present Simple, the Present Continuous, the Present
Perfect and the Past Simple.
2. We use the Present Simple and the Present Continuous to express very different ideas – the
Present Continuous is for talking about the present time, now. The Present Simple is for talking about
general truths and routine.
3. The Present Simple is not ‘simple’ – there are 5 things you need to remember to use it
correctly, such as the ‘s’ at the end of 3rd person singular verbs.
4. The Present Perfect looks very similar to the Passato Prossimo, but in reality it’s very
different. In English we only use the Present Perfect to emphasize activities and events that happen in
time periods that stretch from the past to the present.