Do you know the 12 “tenses” in English? (Actually, strictly speaking English has only two tenses: past and not-past. To talk about the future we need an auxiliary verb, will. And the different kinds of past and not-past are called aspects. However, it’s useful for learning English to think of them all as tenses.
We can easily use a wide selection of these forms in a single story. Here’s an example:
Usually I’m a pretty laid-back sort of guy. I take life as it comes. I have always been like that. But the other day, I got quite angry. I was walking along the street, on my way to work. I had just bought a new pair of jeans and I was wearing them for the first time. It had been raining, and there was water on the road. Suddenly a car came past and splashed water all over me and my new jeans. I was furious. “I will get you for that!” I shouted at the driver. I wrote down his number. As he was driving away, he looked very shocked. I think he will be worrying, now, about whether I will tell the police.
Task 1: List each of the verbs underlined above, and for each one say which “tense” it is.
Task 2: Write a story about something in your own life. Try to use six or more of these “tenses”.
