ENGLISH TENSES (1) PRESENT SIMPLE

The English language has twelve tenses – four present, four past and four future, and these are all taught in courses for people learning English as a second language.

 Strangely, many native speakers, while they use these tenses regularly, are unable to identify them all, probably because they were not always taught in schools. From my own point of view, I learned to identify the twelve tenses only after obtaining a certificate in teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL). Before then, while I could use them correctly, I could not have named them all.

 PRESENT SIMPLE TENSE
 (e.g. I work.)

 Unlike many other languages, in English, we don’t use the present simple tense to describe something that we are doing now. We use the PRESENT CONTINUOUS for that, which will be covered in the next post in this series.

 The present simple tense is used for:

 (1) describing a habit (something we do regularly), e.g. “I go to the market to buy food every day.”

 (2) describing a (semi)permanent situation, e.g. “I live in Glasgow – a fantastic city.”

 (3) stating a fact, e.g. “Most geese fly south for the winter”

 (4) imperatives (commands or instructions), e.g. “Don’t [you] touch the wet paint” (The word “you” is normally omitted in such commands.)

 (5) newspaper headlines, e.g. “Hamilton Place fire causes Edinburgh travel disruption”

 (6) events planned for the future, e.g. “Tomorrow I go to the Capital for the Senate Health Committee Meeting where AB 1971 is on the agenda to be heard.”

 (7) narrative (historical present), e.g. “His athlete lottery funding eventually ceased and he says some people who had shown concern at first have since faded into the shadows.”

 Photo credit: Eduards Osis