Introduction
Tense is the grammatical device English uses to locate an action or state in time — past, present, or future — and to show whether that action is finished, ongoing, or repeated. Every finite English clause carries a tense, so mastering tense is the single most useful grammar skill for the BCS, Bank, and IT-officer exams: it powers fill-in-the-blanks, sentence correction, narration (direct-indirect), sequence-of-tense, and conditional questions, which together make up a large share of the English section.
Tense in English is built from two ideas working together:
- Time — when the action happens (past / present / future).
- Aspect — how the action unfolds in that time (simple / continuous / perfect / perfect continuous).
3 times × 4 aspects = 12 tenses. This lesson teaches every one from first principles, with the exact "signal words," rules, and traps that examiners love.
Learning objectives
- Define tense, time, and aspect, and explain why they are not the same thing.
- Form and use all 12 tenses (structure, meaning, and signal words) in the active voice.
- Choose the correct tense from context in fill-in-the-blank and correction questions.
- Apply the special rules examiners test: universal truths, sequence of tense, conditionals (if-clauses), subject-verb agreement, "since/for," "ago," and reported speech.
- Recognise and fix the common tense errors that appear in BCS and bank exams.