Many of those who study English know that it contains two groups of tenses.
Three main ones:
- Present;
- Past;
- Future.
The presented times, depending on the situation, add up with minor times:
- Simple;
- Progressive;
- Perfect;
- Perfect Progressive.
The result of adding these two groups is the presence of 12 tenses in English.
The tenses listed are usually arranged in a table that clearly shows what form the verb takes when it is in a particular period of time.
Also in the table you can see the first indications of how to determine the time in English.
This is interesting
To better remember complex material, you need to study it effortlessly, for this, in addition to the scientific table of times, we will show you a comic one, which forsome will be easier to learn.
Rules for determining times
Having considered how the verb forms are correctly called, we will answer the question of how to determine the time in English. For an answer, consider a step-by-step instruction.
- The first step is to translate the sentence we are working on to make it easier to understand what information is being given to us.
- The second step is to determine the time marker. In each time in the language we are considering, there is a marker - a word that easily allows you to determine the time. Similar words indicate a specific point in time or a relative one. For example, in Present Simple, such markers are words such as: every day, often, constantly. These markers, as can be seen from the example, indicate regular time, but not only this sign denotes this type of time. Another marker is the usual action name: I like watermelon. In this case, it does not indicate exactly when you like it, and you just talk about your action, without specifying the time period.
This example shows that such markers provide ease of recognition and correct determination of time in a sentence. Based on this simple example, we want to show that each time has its own markers - words by which you can easily understand what time is in front of you. The main thing is to remember the markers.
The third step is to remember what time the marker belongs to
The fourth step is to determine the time
Having considered how to correctly determine the time in English, let's pay attention to the following point: how to determine the tense form of the verb.
Rules for determining the tense of a verb
To solve this problem, as in the previous case, we will use the step-by-step instructions.
- The first step is to underline the verbs we see in the sentence.
- The second step is to remember whether this is a correct verb or not, because, according to English reference books, a verb has three properties by which it is easy to determine:
- Time is one of the main ones: past, future or present.
- Type of time – subtime defined by the marker.
- Voice- passive (an action is performed on the speaker) or active (an action is performed on the speaker).
If the verb is regular, you can refer to the dictionary or lexicon, otherwise - to the table of irregular verbs or again to the verbs you learned of the same form.
The third step is to find a compound next to the main verb that refers directly to time
For example, for the group Past - was, did …; verb ending in -ed.
For Present: do, does…; verb ending in -s.
Such examples most clearly show that it is easy to determine tense for any verb, and answer the constantly arising question of those who are just starting to figure out how to determine tenseverb in English.
Summarizing
So, summing up, we want to note that we have considered the main and hard-to-perceived questions when learning English, focusing on the first one: how to determine the time in English, since it is the key to correct and quick learning. In addition to answering the main question, we also described how to easily learn and understand each tense, as well as recognize it in a sentence.
Finally, I would like to give advice: give the maximum amount of time and attention to the topic "How to determine the tense of a sentence in English." The main thing here is practice and its regularity. Then you can easily answer the question of how to determine the time in English. Good luck.
