Tag: tenses
Future in the past – What were you going to do?
In English, there exists a concept called “future in the past”. This is when you talk about how the future was going to be at some point in the past (whether it actually happened or not). Before you continue this article, if you are unfamiliar with either the future tense or the past tense, please…
Reported Speech – He said, she said
Sometimes when you are telling a story or relaying information someone told you, you don’t necessarily want to say absolutely everything in exactly the same way as it was told to you (i.e. direct speech). Sometimes you simply can’t remember and other times exactly what was said was important. So what do you do instead?…
Past habits – Over and over again
In this article we will cover: You can describe past habits (or actions that happened repeatedly in the past) in three different ways in English: used to, would and the past simple tense. Used to If you have learnt about modal and semi-modal verbs before, you may be familiar with used to. In fact, this…
Reported Speech in English
In English, there are two types of speech: direct and indirect, also known as reported. Direct speech is when you say exactly what someone else said. Quotes are an example of this: “The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.” – Nelson Mandela Another form: He…
Past Simple vs Present Perfect
English can be a difficult language to use, especially when it comes to verb tenses (for a comprehensive review click here). Like other (often related) languages, English can use one verb tense but actually refer to a different point in time. An excellent example is when talking about the future. English has two distinct ways…
Present Perfect Verb Categories
The present perfect is a verb tense that is used very often in English. While many languages either do not have a present perfect tense or use it the same way as the past simple, English uses these two tenses very differently. Unlike the simple aspect (i.e. present simple or past simple), the present perfect…
Past Simple Verb Categories
The past simple is probably the hardest tense to learn in English in terms of the wide variety of irregular verbs. While these sometimes fall into categories, identifying whether a verb should fall into one category or another can be a difficult if not impossible task. For example, ‘cleave’ (to cut something in two) becomes…
A Review of Conditionals and Conditional Sentences
Conditionals sentences are an integral part of the English language. They are used every day in many situations; from the bank to driving to giving directions, they can be found just about anywhere. Let’s go through a review of conditional sentences. Basics of Conditional Sentences While conditional sentences come in many forms, shapes and sizes,…
A Review of Active Tenses in English
A challenge that learners of English often face is the number of tenses in English and when to use them. Especially if their native language has only a few tenses (such as Mandarin), the variety of tenses in English can be daunting. For students whose native language also has a large number of tenses (such…
Telling the Future: Will vs Going to vs Shall/Should
Like many of the languages related to it, English has more than one way to talk about actions in the future. The first is the future tense, which is the ‘will‘ future (and the closely related ‘shall‘). The other is the ‘going to‘ future. If you are not familiar with the ‘going to‘ (present progressive)…
The Grammar of Scientific English: Verbs, Voices and Abbreviations/Acronyms
If you think you have graduated from spacing, numbers and hyphens, try this post on for size! How do you feel about verbs/voices, abbreviations/acronyms and Latin? Now we are getting into the hard parts! Verbs/Voices – Active and Passive When someone refers to the ‘voice’ of a verb, they are talking about whether the verb…
