Present Simple Tense

Tenses

Present Simple
- Used to talk about habits or things we do regularly (repeated actions that continue for a long time)
- Used for permanent situations that we feel will continue for a long time
- Used in the first and zero conditionals
Present Progressive (Continuous)
- Used to talk about actions that are taking place at the moment of speaking
- Used to talk about actions that are taking place around "now" but not at the exact moment of speech
- Used with words such as "always" or "constantly" to express the idea that something annoying or irritating happens very often
- Used to talk about an action or event in the near future, which has already been planned
- Used for temporary or new habits
- Used to describe situations that are changing
- Used to describe temporary situations
Past Simple
- Used to talk about a completed action in the past
- Used to talk about a series of completed actions in the past
- Used for stories or lists of events in the past
- Used with the second conditional
- Used to express habits in the past (actions that happened several times in the past)
Past Progressive (Continuous)
- Used to talk about actions in progress at a time in the past
- Used to talk about an ongoing action in the past that was interrupted by another action in the past
- Used for the background in a story written in the past tense
- Used to express changing states
- Used to express parallel actions in the past
Present Perfect Simple
- Used to talk about recently completed actions whose results are visible in the present
- Used to talk about an action which happened within a specific time period which is not over at the time of speaking
- Used to talk about past experiences
- Used to talk about how much of something we have done or how many times we have done something up to now
- Used with stative verbs, like be, know, have, etc., to talk about situations that started in the past and still continue
Present Perfect Continuous
- Used to talk about things that are generally true, especially for laws or rules
- Used to talk about future situations we believe are real or possible
- Used to imagine present or future situations that are impossible or unlikely in reality
- Used to imagine a different past, where something did or did not happen, and to imagine a different result

Passive Voice

Uses of the Passive
- When who or what causes the action is unknown or unimportant
- When it is obvious to the listener or reader who the agent is
- When we want to change the focus from the agent to the recipient of the action
- To focus on objective or factual information, like in scientific writing
- With a generalized agent (people in general are the agents)
- In describing processes, when the emphasis is on the actions and not on the people who perform them

Articles and Adjectives

Uses of the definite article "the"
- With a superlative adjective
- With adjectives like rich, poor, elderly to talk about groups of people
- With countries whose names include words like kingdom, states or republic
- With nouns that refer to something or someone that is unique
- When a particular noun has already been mentioned previously

Verbs and Verb Forms

State verbs which change their meaning when in the continuous form
- have
- be
- see
- think
- weigh
Five categories of verbs that are not normally used in progressive forms
- Verbs of feeling
- Verbs of thinking
- Verbs used for the senses
- Verbs of measurement
- Verbs of possession
Uses of could
- To express possibility in the present and the future
- To make suggestions
- To ask for permission
- To talk about past ability
- As a conditional
Uses of would
- To make polite requests or offers
- As a conditional to describe what we would do in imaginary situations
- To talk about repeated actions in the past
- To describe past beliefs about the future
- As the past form of "will" in reported speech
Uses of the pronoun "it"
- Singular noun (a thing/place/organization/animal/abstract)
- To represent a young baby of either sex
- To "anticipate" something which appears later in the sentence
- To refer to an already stated action or information
Uses of the to infinitive
- After certain verbs particularly verbs of thinking, feeling and saying
- To express purpose
- With the adverbs too and enough to express the reasoning behind our satisfaction or insatisfaction
- After adjectives of emotion such as: angry, happy, glad, sad, sorry, surprised
- After a WH- word such as: how, what, where, whether, which, who, whom
Uses of bare infinitive (short infinitive)
- After modal verbs
- After the interrogative word 'why'
- After the expressions 'had better' and 'would rather'
- After the prepositions 'except,' 'but,' and 'than'
- After verbs of perception (see, watch, notice, observe, feel, hear…)
Uses of the gerund
- In compound nouns
- After the expressions can't help, can't stand, to be worth, & it's no use
- Verbs followed by gerund/infinitive (love, prefer, remember, forget, like)