Tenses - Past, Present & Future

Tenses - Past, Present & Future

​Tenses can be tricky

​In simple terms there are three tenses - past, present and future.

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​In reality, there are more, and these can be quite complex. We are going to stick to the relatively straightforward today.

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​We are going to talk about auxilliary verbs to help with tense, mood and voice, but we will try and keep them quite simple.

​Irregular verbs

​What can make tense management tricky is what we call the group of irregular verbs.

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​These are verbs which do not follow the normal way of changing tense.

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​Regular verbs use -ed to put themselves in the past tense and return to the base form to be used with auxilliary verbs in the future tense.

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​Present tense - They walk

Past tense = They walked

Future tense = They will walk

​Irregular verbs

​Irregular verbs don't follow the regular rules. They change in different and unusual ways and I'm afraid you just have to remember them

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​Present tense - They fall

Past tense - They fell

Future tense = They will fall

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​You will notice that the problems only really exist in the past tense. It gets even more confusing when we use what we call past participles. They are versions of the word that work in complex tenses like future perfect.

​They will have fallen

​Past, Present and Future

​But we will keep it relatively simple here.

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​Have go at the following questions - paying close attention to what the question asks you to do.

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​You don't need to rewrite the whole sentence just the word or words that are needed.

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​One word = walked Two words = will walk, have walked

Multiple Choice

Put this sentence in to the past tense.

We (drink) all the water.

• drinked

• dranken

• drink

• drank

Multiple Choice

Put this sentence in to the past tense.

Have you ever (wear) a cowboy hat?

• wear

• worn

• weared

• wored

Multiple Choice

Put this sentence in to the past tense.

After practice, they (take) us to dinner.

• tooken

• take

• took

Multiple Choice

Put this sentence in to the past tense.

I (make) my mom a cake.

• made

• make

• cooked

Multiple Choice

Put this sentence in to the past tense.

We (bring) my dog to the park.

• brung

• brought

• bring

• bringed