Basic subjects about verb tenses
This a list of subjects that you should know before proceeding to reading pages about the English tenses. There are pretty basic, still it's good to have a peek at them.
1. Each and every tense let you form questions. This can be done using inversion.
2. Past tenses use the past form of the verb. Perfect tenses employ the past participle. Either form can sometimes be irregular.
3. In informal writing and speech, contractions are often used.
4. Each tense uses at least one auxiliary verb (some as many as four!)
5. If we say what somebody else said (=relate it), the sequence of tenses is affected.
6. The conjugation of the auxiliary verb "to be" is required to form the Present Continuous
7. The conjugation of the auxiliary verb "to have" is required to form perfect tenses.
Comments
Are some parts of the verb missing?
Sir
I read this in a magazine under reptiles behaviour: 'Sometimes found in small bushes.' I would like to know the word 'found' is write to use without any help verbs eg Sometimes they are found in bushes." isn't it better write it this way
Thank you.
Regards
Srilal
Implicit Object
Srilal,
Is that sentence the heading of a section of the article? In that case, it is clear that reptiles are the implicit object of the verb found. it is perfectly acceptable in a heading, or as an adjectival clause in a sentence.
Geoffrey
i have been living here for
i have been living here for 20 years. ( am i living here presently or not? ) - yes
i had been living here for 20 years. ( am i living here presently or not? ) - no
I have been living here for
I have been living here for 20 years.
i had been living there for 20 years.
You can't say you had been living 'here' if you are no longer living there.
I think you can if you are
I think you can if you are there showing the house to someone else...
i think you could still say
i think you could still say ' i had been living here for 20 years but still not live there. For example, from 1980 to 2000 I lived in Vancouver. I moved out east. In 2005 I back to Vancouver to visit a friend and I said 'I had been living here for 20 years when I met Roger and we moved to Toronto.'
i had been living here for 20
i had been living here for 20 years. This means that you are no longer living there.
I am going to make an assumption that you are, for example, talking to a friend, and that you are showing a photograph of an old house. It would be more appropriate to say, i was living here for 20 years, unless you add some more information:
I had been living here for twenty years, when my car was stolen.
here means 'this one' - close to me
there means `that one` - far from me
i have a doubt?
hellow sir,
i have been living here for 20 years. ( am i living here presently or not? )
i had been living here for 20 years. ( am i living here presently or not? )
I wanna know if I can use
I wanna know if I can use one of the cartoon boxes for my power point presentations. If yes, How can I do it?
Thanks for this useful site!
:D
Halooo ...
It's a very interesting and useful site for me as a teacher in non-English speaking country. Can I participate in this site by up-loading some points that I use to teach my students? Thanks. Keep on the good work ...
Wanna....
Hi
I dont know you Who you are and Where you are from?Now i'm going to IELTS class everyday so that i decide to do voice chat with people Who knows english well or able to speak fluently..Because i found out chatting is simpler way to enhance or to learn language well and then i having problem to speak in english..please do it as a help and try to do voice chat with me.If possible to you please send me orkut invitation or other greet to my mail id:
jagadeeshwaran2009@gmail.com
Jagadeeshwaran D
Tamilnadu,India
student
hello sir , im learing English in uk.our tutor asked us to give an example of future tense, I said : This class will have been finished in March......................................he said to me is wrong......didnt understand why!!!! could you please explained to me? many thanks.
answer
The Future Perfect expresses the idea that something will happen before a specific time in the future.
You could say:
- This class will be finished in March
- This class will have been finished by March
Thank you
Dear sir
Thank you very much it is much easier now. Really many thsnks. the student of marian
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