Tenses are an important part of grammar as they tell you about an event that has occurred, or is happening or is going to happen. There are three tenses namely Past, Present and Future tense. In English language, we use tenses when we refer to time. Today, we will learn about Simple Present tense and its usage.

We use Simple Present tense to speak about habits, general truths, repeated actions or unchanging situations, emotions and wishes. The simple present tense indicates that the speaker believes a fact to be true before, is true now, and will be true in the future. It is not important if the speaker is correct or incorrect about the fact. Let’s try to understand with examples.

Examples:
. I play cricket.
. He lives in Texas.
. She likes to cook.



When to use Simple Present tense:

1. When something happens again and again in the present, we also use adverbs of frequency like often, sometimes, always, never in the sentence.

Examples:
. I watch BBC news daily.
. Neha eats panipuri every weekend.
. They always go for shopping.

2. When something is always true in nature.

Examples:
. Our body has 206 bones.
. Light travels faster than sound.

3. When something is fixed in the future

Examples:
. The exam starts next week.
. The train arrives at 9am.
. My flight departs at 8pm tomorrow.

4. For making questions and negative sentence in simple present tense, we use "do" and "does". We use does for the third person (she/he/it) and we use do for others.

However, for making negative sentences, we use does not (doesn’t) for the third person (she/he/it) and we use do not (don’t) for the others.

Examples:
. Where does she live?
. How do you do that?
. Why don’t you have a look at it?
. Doesn’t he look like Brad Pitt?

With the above examples you must have got an idea about Simple Present tense. It’s time to take some test:

1. What time (the banks/open) ________ in Mumbai?
2. She (not/wake) _______ up early on Sundays.
3. Vegetarians’ ________ eat meat.
4. A liar is someone who _______ the truth.
5. Bad driving (cause) _______ many accidents.

Answers: 1. do the banks open 2. doesn't wake 3. don't eat 4. doesn't tell 5. causes

We use many sentences in our daily conversations so it is important to clear the basics. Using wrong tense can led to confusion so it’s better to join a Spoken English course and improve English communication.

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