Tenses in English Grammar with Examples & How to Learn Them (AJ #16)

Hello. This is Jack from ToFluency.com and this is Ask Jack, the free series where I

answer your questions about learning English and the English language. So, today we have

a question about the tenses in English. So, here it is. Dashiev from Russia asks, "Why

are there so many tenses in English? In Russian, there are only 3."

Thank you for your question, Dashiev. So, what I’m going to do is to go through the different

tenses in English and then talk about what you should do about this, you know, what you

should do to learn these tenses.

So, literally speaking, there are only 2 tenses, the past and the present. But, the idea of

a tense is extended. So, most people when they talk about tenses they extend the idea

of what a tense is and don’t worry too much about this.

So, here are the list of tenses. So, we have the Past Simple, the Past Continuous, the

Past Perfect and the Past Perfect Continuous. We have the Present Simple, Present Continuous,

Present Perfect and Present Perfect Continuous. And then, we have the Future Simple, using

will here, Future Simple, Future Continuous, Future Perfect and Future Perfect Continuous.

And, you can also add ‘Going To’ as well to this because this is used like were using

a verb tense.

That has given you an overview of the different tenses that we use in the English language.

Now, to go back to your question where you asked ‘Why are there so many tenses in English?’

The simple answer is I don’t really know, but I do know that the language evolved to

use these different tenses. My advice is to accept that there are more

tenses in English than there are Russian. And then, get used to them. Learn these different

tenses. Explanations will help you but to really know how to use them, you need to get

lots of exposure to see them used in different context and also to practice using them too.

And, it might seem like they’re strange now or that they’re really complicated at

the moment. But, with this exposure and practice, these tenses will soon feel normal to you.

Now, my question for this video is this, “Are there more tenses in English than your language?”

Are there more tenses in English than in your language? So, leave your answers below this

video. Thanks for watching and I’ll see you next time.