--- title: Tense consistency and verb forms — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Tense consistency and verb forms», a lesson of the english course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Tense is the time a verb points to: "I walked" is past, "I walk" is present, and "I will walk" talks about the future. --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/31-tense-consistency-and-verb-forms/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [English](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/) / Tense consistency and verb forms # Tense consistency and verb forms Lesson 31 of the english course of Mova's primary school: 19 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/english/31-tense-consistency-and-verb-forms/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/31-tense-consistency-and-verb-forms/0/) — Tense is the time a verb points to: "I walked" is past, "I walk" is present, and "I will walk" talks about the future. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/31-tense-consistency-and-verb-forms/1/) — A story is like a film shot from one seat in the cinema: if you write "I went to the park and I see a dog", the camera jumps from yesterday to now and the reader wobbles, so you keep one tense unless the time really changes. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/31-tense-consistency-and-verb-forms/2/) — Each tense has helpers: "I am running" (am + -ing) is happening right now, "I was running" was going on in the past, and "I have eaten" (have + eaten) is past but still matters now, because you are full. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/31-tense-consistency-and-verb-forms/3/) — Time words are clues: "yesterday" needs the past, "tomorrow" the future, so "Yesterday I will go to the zoo" is broken, like a clock running backwards. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/31-tense-consistency-and-verb-forms/4/) — Homes and towns have their own verb habits: a Lancashire gran may say "I were going to't shop" ("to't" is "to the"), and that is real dialect with its own rules; in school writing the standard form is "I was going to the shop". - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/31-tense-consistency-and-verb-forms/5/) — Tense shows when something happens: past, present or future. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/31-tense-consistency-and-verb-forms/6/) — The simple present ("I run") is used for habits and things that are generally true; the present progressive ("I am running") is for something happening right now. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/31-tense-consistency-and-verb-forms/7/) — The progressive forms use a form of "be" plus a verb ending in -ing: "I am playing" (present), "I was playing" (past). - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/31-tense-consistency-and-verb-forms/8/) — The present perfect uses "have" or "has" plus a past form like eaten, gone or seen: "I have eaten" links a past action to now. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/31-tense-consistency-and-verb-forms/9/) — The simple past ("I ate") tells about a finished action, often with a time: "I ate at six." - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/31-tense-consistency-and-verb-forms/10/) — "Had" plus a past form, like "had started", shows something that happened before another past event: "When we got there, the film had started" means the film started first. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/31-tense-consistency-and-verb-forms/11/) — In a piece of writing, keep the same tense unless the time really changes; "I was tired, so I'm going to bed" changes on purpose, because the bed is now. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/31-tense-consistency-and-verb-forms/12/) — Time words such as yesterday, now and tomorrow must agree with the tense of the verb. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/31-tense-consistency-and-verb-forms/13/) — Modal verbs (might, could, should, must, will) show how sure, able or obliged someone is; in school grammar they are helping verbs, not tenses. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/31-tense-consistency-and-verb-forms/14/) — In some Northern English dialects "were" is used with every person ("I were", "she were"); Standard English uses "I was" and "she was". - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/31-tense-consistency-and-verb-forms/15/) — "I been knowing that", from some American dialects including African American English, means "I have known that for a long time"; in standard writing it is "I've known that". - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/31-tense-consistency-and-verb-forms/16/) — "I seen it" is common in speech in many places; the standard forms are "I saw it" or "I have seen it". - [17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/31-tense-consistency-and-verb-forms/17/) — In London slang "bare" means very or lots of, as in "bare tired". - [18](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/31-tense-consistency-and-verb-forms/18/) — Reading your work aloud is the quickest way to hear an accidental tense slip. - ← previous: [Relative clauses](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/30-relative-clauses/) - next →: [Active and passive voice, modal verbs](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/32-active-and-passive-voice-modal-verbs/) - ↑ back to [English](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/)