What should you do if you need to learn English for travel, a job interview or for an exam, but you don’t think you are a language learning genius? Don’t worry. Everybody is capable to learn a foreign language. When people tell themselves they can’t learn a language, they mostly use this as an excuse for not putting enough effort in learning.
English verb tenses are a challenge to master. The English language has 12 tenses, which seems a lot at first sight. Using various verb tenses in appropriate situations takes time and a lot of practice to learn, but it isn’t impossible.
Below, you can find a chart that makes learning and understanding verb tenses easy. There are also some examples included to grasp the ideas. Why does the chart contain 16 tenses instead of 12? The reason is that we have also included the forms of the so-called future in the past, which describes a situation that took place in the past but refers to events that would happen in the future. It sounds complicated, but in practice it is a very simple and common concept.
What is the best way to practice verb tenses?
Study and practice the tenses 5–10 minutes a day, and make sure that you practice them every day. You should rather do shorter and more intense practice sessions than longer, sporadic ones. Regularity is always the best strategy if you want to learn fast. Before starting to learn the tenses, think of some real situations in your life, and write them down in 10–15 simple sentences. After that, reformulate and practice these sentences according to each English tense. The more you train your imagination in this exercise, the easier you will be able to master the tenses and their verbal form.
