difference between tense and aspect

what is the difference between tense and aspect? if it would be possible could you please give me some examples to illustrate the difference, i realise that it would be only a slight difference, but it still does confuse me.
Please help thanks

[Casiopea]

Tense refers to the time when the action of the verb occurs. The action can occur in one of three time periods: past, present, or future. They form a time line.

Ex: I ate, I eat, I will eat.

Aspect refers to the time when the action of the verb occurs either across or between those periods. That is, the times on the time line can be extended (progressive aspect) or combined (perfect aspect):

Progressive aspect
The action is continuous.

Ex: When Sam called, I was eating.

Perfect aspect
The action happened at some unknown time between then, the past, and now, the present time of speaking.

Ex: I have eaten today.

There are more examples here: Verb - Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Does that help so far?

[tigger]

thanks that does help. i think i may have been taught that there is no future tenses, they are called modal auxillaries or something. Not exactly sure. Also with the aspects do they normally end with -ing for progressive and -en for perfect aspects?
thanks again

[elena vazquez]

he's learning french
you could have asked me
tense is technical term and aspect...