Teaching English as a Foreign Language

228 Part IV: The Grammar You Need to Know – and How to Teach It

✓ The simple tenses don’t use the auxiliary verbs ‘to be’ or ‘to have’ with

the main verb. The continuous and perfect tenses use these auxiliary (or

helping) verbs in their structure. For example, ‘I drink tea’ is in the pres-

ent simple. ‘I drank tea’ is in the past simple tense and ‘I will drink’ is the

future simple tense.

✓ The continuous tenses always include ‘to be’ in one form or another (is,

are was, were and so on – I go through ‘to be’ in Chapter 15) and another

verb ending with ‘ing’ (called a gerund). So the sentence ‘I am eating

now’ is in the present continuous tense. ‘I was eating’ is in the past con-

tinuous tense and ‘I will be eating’ is in the future continuous tense. In

each case ‘to be’ and a gerund form part of the structure of the tense.

✓ The perfect tenses always include ‘to have’ in some way (has, have,

had) and another verb that’s a past participle. So the sentence ‘I have

eaten’ is the present perfect tense. ‘I had eaten’ is in the past perfect

tense and ‘I will have eaten’ is the future perfect tense. In each case the

structure of the tense contains ‘to have’ and a past participle.

There may seem to be an endless number of tenses to remember, but actually

there are only twelve and you only need to teach them one at a time.

In Table 16-1 all the tense labels are set out using the first person ‘I’ and the

verb ‘to eat’, which is an irregular verb, to make model sentences.

Table 16-1 Tense Names

Past Present Future

Simple I ate I eat I will eat

Continuous I was eating I am eating I will be eating

Perfect I had eaten I have eaten I will have eaten

Perfect

continuous

I had been eating I have been eating I will have been eating

Although the table includes all the tenses, I cover other grammatical struc-

tures such as ‘conditionals’ in Chapter 17.

In Table 16-1, I use the subject pronoun I in each sentence. Fortunately, in

English the grammar changes very little when you use the other subject pro-

nouns. This is much easier than in other languages so don’t be surprised if

students seem to be overcomplicating the matter. They’re usually translating.