RULES FOR USING TENSES
| Tense | Rule | Example |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Present Simple | Use for habits and facts. | She drinks coffee every morning. |
| 2. Present Simple | Use with scheduled events. | The train leaves at 6 PM. |
| 3. Present Continuous | Use for action happening now | He is studying for the test. |
| 4. Present Continuous | Use for near future plans | I am meeting her tomorrow. |
| 5. Past Simple | Use for finished actions in the past. | We visited Paris last year. |
| 6. Past Simple | Use with time expressions like "yesterday". | She called me yesterday. |
| 7. Past Continuous | Use for interrupted actions. | I was cooking when he arrived. |
| 8. Past Continuous | Use for parallel actions. | She was singing while I was driving. |
| 9. Present Perfect | Use for actions with a result in the present. | I have lost my keys. |
| 10. Present Perfect | Use for life experiences | He has travelled to Japan. |
| 11. Present Perfect | Never use with specific time | I have seen it. I have seen it yesterday. |
| 12. Present Perfect Continuous | Use for ongoing action that recently stopped. | I have been reading all morning. |
| 13. Past Perfect | Use for the "earlier past". | She had left before I arrived. |
| 14. Past Perfect Continuous | Emphasize duration before a past point. | We had been waiting for an hour. |
| 15. Future Simple | Use "will" for decisions made now. | I will call you later. |
| 16. Future Simple | Use for predictions. | It will rain tomorrow. |
| 17. Going to (Future) | Use for planned actio | We are going to visit grandma. |
| 18. Going to (Future) | Use for future for evidence | Look at those louds! It is going o rain. |
| 19. Future Continuous | Use for ongoing future actions. | I will be working at 10 AM. |
| 20. Future Perfect | Use for actions completed by a future point. | He will have finished the book by then. |
| 21. Future Perfect Continuous | Focus on duration until a point in future. | She will have been studying for 3 hours by noon. |
| 22. Present Simple (Storytelling) | Use for dramatic storytelling. | So he opens the door and walks in. |
| 23. Present Perfect | Use for recent news. | They have found the missing dog. |
| 24. Past Simple + Past Perfect | Use both for sequence | She had left before I got there |
| 25. Present Simple in Conditionals | Use with "if" in zero or first conditional | If it rains, we stay inside |
| 26. Would + Base Verb | Use in second conditional. | If/ had time, I would travel. |
| 27. Had + Past Participle | Use in third conditional. | If I had studied, I would have passed. |
| 28. Avoid Mixing Tenses Randomly | Keep your timeline clear. | example: I went home and slept. went home and sleep. |
| 29. Use Time Markers Wisely | Like "for", "since", "just", "already", "yet". | I have already eaten. |
| 30. Match Tense with Context | Choose tense by time reference, not complexity. | If it happened in the past, use past tense. |