Incorrect verb tense

Express your ideas clearly and accurately with these grammar guides.

A tense is the time in which something takes place. English has a past, present and future tense. Mixing the tense of verbs within a sentence can cause a lot of confusion to readers so be consistent and stick to the same tense.

Regular verbs

Verb tense identifies the time of action described in a sentence. Verbs take different forms to indicate different tenses. Verb tenses indicate:

An action or state of being in the present
An action or state of being in the past
An action or state of being in the future
To form a regular past-tense or past-participle verb form, add -ed or -d to the end of a verb. You can avoid mistakes by understanding this basic pattern

Helping verbs, such as be and have, also work to create verb tenses, such as the future tense.

Present Tense:

Tim walks to the supermarket.

(Singular subject)
Present Tense:

Sue and Kimmy walk to the supermarket.

(Plural subject)
Past Tense:

Yesterday, they walked to the supermarket for milk.

(Plural subject)
Future Tense:

Tomorrow, Kimmy will walk to the supermarket to buy some bread.

(Singular subject)

Irregular verbs

The past tense of irregular verbs is not formed using the patterns that regular verbs follow. Study irregular verbs, which are the most common irregular verbs.

Tip

The best way to learn irregular verbs is to memorise them.

Simple Present	Past	Simple Present	Past
be	was, were	lose	lost
become	became	make	made
begin	began	mean	meant
blow	blew	meet	met
break	broke	pay	paid
bring	brought	put	put
build	built	quit	quit
burst	burst	read	read
buy	bought	ride	rode
catch	caught	ring	rang

choose	chose	rise	rose
come	came	run	ran
cut	cut	say	said
dive	dived	see	saw
do	did	seek	sought
draw	drew	sell	sold
drink	drank	send	sent
drive	drove	set	set
eat	ate	shake	shook
fall	fell	shine	shone ()
feed	fed	shrink	shrank)
feel	felt	sing	sang
fight	fought	sit	sat
find	found	sleep	slept
fly	flew	speak	spoke
forget	forgot	spend	spent
forgive	forgave	spring	sprang
freeze	froze	stand	stood
get	got	steal	stole
give	gave	strike	struck
go	went	swim	swam
grow	grew	swing	swung
have	had	take	took
hear	heard	teach	taught
hide	hid	tear	tore
hold	held	tell	told
hurt	hurt	think	thought
keep	kept	throw	threw
know	knew	understand	understood
lay	laid	wake	woke
lead	led	wear	wore
leave	left	win	won
let	let	wind	wound

Maintaining consistent verb tense

Inconsistent tense:

The crowd starts cheering as Melina approached the finish line.

Consistent tense:

The crowd started cheering as Melina approached the finish line.

Consistent tense:

The crowd starts cheering as Melina approaches the finish line.

Correct verb form activity

Complete the following sentences by selecting the correct form of the verb in simple present, simple past, or simple future tense.

Activity

Tip

In some cases, clear communication will call for different tenses. Look at the following example:

When I was a teenager I wanted to be a firefighter, but now I am studying computer science.

If the time frame for each action or state is different, a tense shift is appropriate.

Inconsistent verb activity

Edit the following paragraph by correcting the inconsistent verb tense.

Activity

Tense shift

Watch this video to learn more about tense shifts.

1:38

References

Tamu Writing Center. (2010) Tense shift. Video retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaRUAfaf2K8

Attributions

Show

English for business success. Parallelism. Lardbucket. Licensed under a Creative Commons by-nc-sa 3.0 license

Hero image: Scrabble letters by Christopher Walkey. Licensed under a Pixabay.com license

Incorrect verb tense

Regular verbs

Tim walks to the supermarket.

Sue and Kimmy walk to the supermarket.

Yesterday, they walked to the supermarket for milk.

Tomorrow, Kimmy will walk to the supermarket to buy some bread.

Irregular verbs

Tip

Maintaining consistent verb tense

Correct verb form activity

Tip

Inconsistent verb activity

References

Attributions

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