Tenses

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ramaa24

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Dear All

i am the beginner in English, and i really want to know about all Tenses, because i still don't understand about it.
can someone explain to me? which is i need the patterns from every tense, and how to use that.


thanks, for the answering


cheers Rama :)
 

colloquium

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Rama,

Your English seems okay. You have used verbs quite successfully in your post. Do you not have a specific question?


The base form of the English verb is the unconjugated, non-finite form:

To work.

In this form it does not exhibit tense.

If it is a regular verb you form the past tense by adding the suffix ed.

Worked.

If it is irregular, the past form does not follow this rule, and it must be learnt as a new word.

To buy = bought.

The present tense is very simple to use as it is the unconjugated form of the verb. It only changes when it must agree with a singular subject in the 3rd person. (We add an s to the verb)

I/You/We/they buy...

John/He/She/It buys...


We form the continuous tense by adding ing to the verb in its unconjugated form. The tense is determined by a form of to be which preceeds the ing form of the verb.

I am/was working.

Verbs are not inflected to form the future tense. We use present tenses and auxilary verbs to form the future tense.

I leave at 9:00 (present simple).

I am working later (present continuous).

I will/shall decide what I want to do next week (will/shall auxilaries).

I am going to buy a new car (be going auxilary).


This is a very, very rough outline which leaves much to be said. A lot of what I have written is not definitive: it does not apply universally. There are exceptions.

If you have a specific question regarding a particular use of a tense in context, you will receive a much more useful answer.
 

ramaa24

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Rama,

Your English seems okay. You have used verbs quite successfully in your post

thanks for your appreciation, but sometimes i'm not confidence with my self if i make some english paragraph, i'm too affraid if i wrong and get shamed :oops:

but thanks for the help about the tenses, that's very help :)
 

colloquium

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Making mistakes is one of the best ways to learn. It's nothing to feel bad about.

Once you know how not to do something, you're one step closer to knowing how to do it :)
 

RonBee

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Free advice. ;-) (Suggestions in blue.)

i am the beginner in English, and i really want to know about all Tenses, because i still don't understand about it.
can someone explain to me?
I am a beginner at English, and I really want to know about tenses, because I don't understand them.
:)
 

ramaa24

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Free advice. ;-) (Suggestions in blue.)


I am a beginner at English, and I really want to know about tenses, because I don't understand them.
:)

thanks for fixed my mistakes :)
 

ramaa24

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I want to ask something, I still confused about amount of tenses in English is 12 or 16?



thanks for answering :)
 

Soup

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I want to ask something, I still confused about amount of tenses in English is 12 or 16?
There are 12 ways to dress up a verb:

Present 'I ate'
Present Continuous 'I am eating'
Present Perfect 'I have eaten'

Past 'I ate'
Past Continuous 'I was eating'
Past Perfect 'I had eaten'

Future 'I will eat'
Future Continuous 'I will be eating'
Future Perfect 'I will have eaten'

Conditional (Type 0 & 1) 'If I eat, I (will) gain weight'
Conditional (Type 2) 'If I ate, I would gain weight'
Conditional (Type 3) 'If I had eaten, I would have gained weight'


Note, however, that,
English has two [grammatical] tenses by which verbs are inflected, a non-past tense (present-tense) and a past tense (indicated by ablaut [vowel change] or the suffix -ed). What is commonly called the future tense in English is indicated with a modal auxiliary (i.e., will) not verbal inflection.

Source Grammatical tense - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 

RonBee

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Present 'I ate'
Present Continuous 'I am eating'
Present Perfect 'I have eaten'
Shouldn't the first one be "I eat"?

:)
 

LouisaMay

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Hello,

I have a specific question about verbal inflection and how best to explain the correct usage and a general question about verb tenses/conjugation and how best to explain correct usage.

Sometimes explaining these things in a way that helps people to understand can be very difficult. I am a computer programmer mentoring a young woman who is very skilled at programming but speaks very poorly. I would like to do a better job of helping her recognize and correct some of her more glaring mistakes as her poor speech causes others to dismiss her as unintelligent when in fact she is quite bright. Unfortunately for me I started reading at a very young age and totally ignored my teachers when all of this was being discussed in class because correct syntax was already ingrained so I didn't bother learning the rules and terminology. That leaves me at a loss when I need to explain the correct usage to others.

Specific question: How would you go about explaining that to say "He ran the race yesterday" is correct, but to say "He had already ran the race when I called him" is not correct. In other words, the second sentence should be "He had already run the race when I called him."

General question: I've tried correcting younger people who say, for example, "They does their work very well" only to be told "does" is correct because "they" is plural and so the verb has to have an "s". Do you have any suggestions for me in helping to correct these kinds of misunderstandings?

Thank you!
LouisaMay
 

bhaisahab

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Hello,


Specific question: How would you go about explaining that to say "He ran the race yesterday" is correct, but to say "He had already ran the race when I called him" is not correct. In other words, the second sentence should be "He had already run the race when I called him."

General question: I've tried correcting younger people who say, for example, "They does their work very well" only to be told "does" is correct because "they" is plural and so the verb has to have an "s". Do you have any suggestions for me in helping to correct these kinds of misunderstandings?

Thank you!
LouisaMay

For your specific question, you will have to explain that with the simple past entence 'He ran the race yesterday' we use the simple past form of the verb 'to run' which is 'ran'. The second sentence is a tense called 'past perfect', in which we use the past form of the verb 'to have' + the past participle of 'to run' which is 'run'. You will probably have to explain that verbs have 3 forms, the infintive, the simple past and the past participle.
Get youself a list of common English verbs, it will help a lot.

For your second question, you could explain that verbs don't have a plural form, they take an 's' or 'es' only in the third person singular.
Take the verb 'to do' for example:
I do
You do
He/she/it does (third person singular)
You do (plural)
We do
They do

I hope this helps.
 

LouisaMay

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For your specific question, you will have to explain that with the simple past entence 'He ran the race yesterday' we use the simple past form of the verb 'to run' which is 'ran'.
...
I hope this helps.

Yes, this does help me as I begin to get familiar with the terminology of language. Thank you very much.

It does make me wonder, though, how much can really be done to help native English speakers who never learned to speak and write correctly. It seems the first step is to be able to recognize when something "sounds" wrong. When we are exposed to correct language structure as children this is acquired naturally. I think if one reaches adulthood without having had this exposure it can be much more difficult. And if your family and close friends -- i.e., the people with whom you spend most of your time -- do not speak correctly you are constantly exposed to both incorrrect and inconsistent language structuring. If one's workplace is a somewhat professional setting this can allow for more exposure to correct language but I don't know that that is enough to help such individuals relearn English and repattern their own speaking and writing habits as I imagine a certain "pattern" for processing language has been "hard-wired" into the brain to some extent by the time one reaches adulthood. Does anyone have any thoughts or suggestions or additional resources that I could check into? Also, does anyone know of any research in this area?

Thank you very much!
 

anupumh

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Hey,
There is a lot of stuff which is available on the internet on various issues which you have mentioned. There are many ebooks on 2nd language acquasition and similar stuff. I have done a lot of internet research on these issue and found a lot of useful and enriching stuff on the internet.
 

nitikasnv

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tenses

Hi,

For learning tenses i am suggesting you the name of website from where you can learn the tenses well.

The name of website is englisch-hilfen.de/en/index.htm,ego4u.com

I think it is sufficient.

Thanks
 
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