Grammar & Punctuation 学习笔记（一）

simple tenses

Simple present,simple past and simple future.

• Simple present is used to show something that happens regularly or doesn't happen regularly. It shows habit.
• For simple past tense we want to show something that happened in the past and finished in the past at a particular time.
• To show simple future, we use the word will plus the simple form of the verb. So, will play is used to show future tense.

progressive tenses

Then we have the progressive tenses. Progressive tenses show that an action is continuing at a certain period of time.

• Present progressive shows what is happening right now.
• For past progressive, we want to show an action that was continuing at a certain time in the past.
• Future progressive shows something that will be happening continuously at a time in the future.

perfect tenses

Now we're going to talk about the perfect tenses. Present perfect is used to show something that happened in the past before now at a non-specific time. Or something that happened regularly in the past, lots of times, but again at non specific times.

• The emphasis with present perfect is to show that something happened in the past before now. So it's related to the present but it shows something from the past.
• Past perfect is a little more difficult. Past perfect has nothing to do with the present. That's what different from present perfect. Present perfect now is important, in past perfect now is not important. When we talk about past perfect, we're talking about two actions in the past and we want to show that one of the actions happened before the other action, in the past. The one that happened before the others going to be the past perfect.
• And then we have** future perfect**. Future perfect refers to two actions in the future. Again, now is not important with future perfect. This future perfect shows me that this will happen before this time.

the perfect progressive tenses

Finally we have the perfect progressive tenses and these combine what we already learned about the perfect with what we already learned about the progressive.

• Present perfect progressive shows that something started before now and has continued and may continue even longer. Present perfect progressive is not very different from present perfect. The emphasis is on the time that the action goes on.
• Past perfect progressive shows that something was happening in the past and may have been going on before something else. The focus is on the length of time that he did this.
• Future perfect progressive emphasizes a continuous action in the future that lasts continuously. But because it's perfect and progressive, we're emphasizing the continuous action for some period of time. &