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WHAT IS IT?
For GCSE there are basically 3 tenses, the present, the past and the future.
You use the present when you deal with actions which are happening now. Click here for more details on the present.
You use the future when you deal with actions which will happen… in the future! There are actually 2 ways of writing the future. You can either use the verbs to go (I am going to eat) or use the proper future (I will eat). At GCSE level you can use anyone you want but you must learn to recognise both. Click here for more details on the future.
You use the past tense when you deal with actions which happened … in the past! Actually there are 2 different past tenses which are used differently. To make the distinction between the two, each ended up with different names.
The Perfect tense is used when you know perfectly when it happened (at 3 o'clock, yesterday, last month…). You also use it when an action was very short (I tripped, I fell, I slapped him…).
The Imperfect tense is used when you don't know exactly when it happened (I used to like Bob) or when the action lasted a long time. In other words, if you cannot use the perfect, use the imperfect!
To be truthful, you can get away with only knowing how to write the perfect tense to get a grade C. However, if you want to get a higher grade you must learn to, al least, recognise the imperfect tense when it is written. If you can actually use it, then it's one step closer to your A*! Click here for more details on the past tense. And here if you want to learn more about the present!
When we know that there are at least 20 ways of writing the same verbs, it makes things easy to have one basic form that everyone agrees on. This basic form is called the infinitive. Click here for more details on the infinitive
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