Verb Tenses

Verb Tenses

Past, Present, and Future Tenses

Present Tense

• Present tense verbs show action that happens NOW. Most present tense verbs end with -s. Most present tense plural verbs do not.

• Marge picks flowers from the garden. They pick flowers.

Past tense

• Past tense verbs show action that has already happened. Most of these end with -ed.

• The flowers in the vase wilted after two days.

• Some regular verbs change spelling when -ed is added. For verbs ending in e, drop the e and add -ed: liked, baked.

• For verbs ending in a consonant an a y, change the y to i and add -ed; hurried, carried.

Past Tense Continued

• For most one syllable verbs that end in one vowel followed by one consonant, double the consonant and add -ed: stop/stopped, brag/bragged

• IRREGULAR verbs change spelling to form the past tense:

• are/were, break/broke, bring/brought, build/built, buy/bought, do/did, make/made, sit/sat, go/went, have/had, is/was, keep/kept, see/saw, take/took, teach/taught, tell/told, wear/wore, write/wrote

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Future Tense

• Future tense verbs show action that will happen. Add will (or shall) to most verbs to show the future tense.

• Flowers with no water will wilt soon.

Multiple Choice

noted

• past

• present

• future

Multiple Choice

tell

• past

• present

• future

Multiple Choice

will study

• past

• present

• future

Multiple Choice

explains

• past

• present

• future

Multiple Choice

shipped

• past

• present

• future

Multiple Choice

saw

• past

• present

• future

Multiple Choice

discovered

• past

• present

• future

Multiple Choice

will teach

• past

• present

• future