Verbs can show when something happens. Present tense is now: “I play.” Past tense is before: “I played.” Many verbs add -ed to show the past: jump, jumped; walk, walked.
Some verbs change in a different way: go becomes went, run becomes ran, see becomes saw. To talk about later, we use will: “I will play tomorrow.”
Keep the same tense all the way through a sentence, so your reader knows when things happened. If you start in the past, stay in the past.
Worked example
Choose the right word: “Yesterday I ___ to the shop.” (go)
- Yesterday means the past.
- Go is a special verb: its past is went.
Answer:Yesterday I went to the shop.
Key words
- present
- happening now
- past
- happened before
- future
- will happen later
Practise this
New questions every time.
Common Core-referenced: L.1.1e