TENSES

What is Verb ? What is Tense ?

• A Verb defines an action, while the time of action shall be
described by Tenses.

Tense answers to the question

“When that action is performed ?”

Basically, there are three tenses

Present, Past, Future

Each of the tense has four forms as follows

• John has traveled a lot. In fact, he was only two years old when he
first flew to the US. His mother is Italian and his father is American.
John was born in France, but his parents had met in Cologne,
Germany after they had been living there for five years. They met
one day while John's father was reading a book in the library and his
mother sat down beside him.

• John travels a lot because his parents also travel a lot.

• As a matter of fact, John is visiting his parents in France at the
moment. He lives in New York now, but has been visiting his parents
for the past few weeks. He really enjoys living in New York, but he
also loves coming to visit his parents at least once a year.

• This year he has flown over 50,000 miles for his job. He has been
working for Jackson & Co. for almost two years now. He’s pretty sure
that he'll be working for them next year as well. His job requires a
lot of travel. In fact, by the end of this year, he'll have traveled over
120,000 miles! His next journey will be to Australia. He really doesn't
like going to Australia because it is so far. This time he is going to fly
from Paris after a meeting with the company's French partner. He'll
have been sitting for over 18 hours by the time he arrives!
 Perfect Tense
• Has traveled – present perfect

• had met – past perfect

 Perfect Continuous Tense
• Had been living – past perfect continuous
Ex : “I had been working in the Chennai office for 5 years”.
This means, now I am not in that office and I was working in
that office for a time duration.

Has been visiting – Present Perfect Continuous

• Has been visting– present perfect continuous
Ex: “I have been working in this office for 5 years”.
This means, I am still working in this office. I didn’t quit the
job in this office.
 Continuous Tense
• Is visiting – Present Continuous Tense
It describes an action at the moment.

• Was reading – past continuous

• Will be working – Future Continuous – action that is going to

continue in future.
 Simple Present Tense
• Travels – Simple Present Tense
• Used for expressing Universal Truth and action that
occur regularly.
Examples : The Sun rises in the east
She goes to school regularly
• He lives in New York now.
• He loves coming to this place once a year.

• Sometimes a past tense may refer to a present tense or

future tense.

• I wish I knew the answer

• Let's wait till he comes.
• Will have traveled – Future Perfect

Ex: By 1:00 pm, I will have written the exam.

• Will have been sitting – Future Perfect Continuous

Ex: By 12:00 pm, I will have been writing the exam.

Each and Every form of the tense follows a format according to the
completeness of an action. For Example, To express an action that
was started in the past and is just completed, Present Perfect Tense
is used.

I have just completed my lunch. I completed my lunch.

I have finished my work. I finished my work
He has done his job well. He did his job well