Guide to English Tenses
The twelve English tenses at a glance
English builds its tenses from three times (present, past and future) and four aspects (simple, continuous, perfect and perfect continuous). The guide above shows each one with a timeline, its structure, its signal words and the mistakes learners make most often. Here is the same map in one list, with an example of each tense.
Present
- Present simple for habits, facts and routines: I work at home. My English class starts on Sunday at 12.
- Present continuous for actions in progress now or around now, and for arrangements: I am writing an essay. I am having a class on Sunday.
- Present perfect for a completed action connected to the present: I have changed my glasses. Have you done your homework yet?
- Present perfect continuous for an activity that started in the past and continues until now: I have been living in Paris for ten years.
Past
- Past simple for finished actions at a known time: We watched a film last night.
- Past continuous for an action in progress at a past moment, often interrupted: I was cooking when the phone rang.
- Past perfect for the earlier of two past actions: When I reached the platform, the train had already left.
- Past perfect continuous for how long something had been happening before a past moment: She had been waiting for an hour when the bus came.
Future
- Future simple for predictions, promises and decisions made at the moment of speaking: I will call you tomorrow.
- Future continuous for an action in progress at a future time: This time next week I will be flying to Rome.
- Future perfect for an action completed before a future point: By June I will have finished the course.
- Future perfect continuous for duration up to a future point: By 2030 he will have been teaching for twenty years.
Practise each tense with the free worksheets with answers: start with past perfect practice (B1), then move on to conditional sentences and modal verbs. The self-test quiz at the end of the guide checks all twelve tenses, and if you are not sure of your level the free placement test takes ten minutes.