THE PRESENT

• The present moment

• General truths

• Regular or habitual actions

• Used in reviews

• Used in commentaries

• Used in reporting

Present tenses

• Vivid narrative

• Firm plans for the future

The present moment

• We are working with Robert just as this moment, recording an autumn series

• We are safe now

• Today

• This year

General truths

• Traditionally, the communist Party dose well in local elections

Regular actions

• I visit her about once every six months

• I never drink alone

Frequent actions

• It is always raining

• You are always looking for faults

Used in reviews

• In the film he plays the central character of Charles Smithson.

Used in commentaries

• Andy Gary takes the ball upfield again passes to John on the edge of the box

Used in reporting

• There are some fine railings in Westminster Abbey, I hear.

The present continuous

• The moment of speaking

• Emphasizing the present moment

• Progressive change

• Habitual actions

The moment of speaking

• My head is aching

Emphasizing the present moment

• She is spending the summer in Europe

• I am working as a British Council Officer

• The village is changing but it is still undisturbed.

Progressive change

Habitual actions

• Do you know if she is still playing these days?

The past

• Past situations– He lived in Paris during his last year

• Habitual and regular actions– We walked a great in my boyhood

(an activity that took part regularly or repeatedly in the past, ……no longer occurs,

The present perfect

• The past in relation to the present

• Do not want to state a specific time

• - I have done it yesterday. X

The past perfect

• To describe a repeated event that took place before a particular time in the past

The future

• General truths

• Indicating certainty– If you are sure that something will happen beca

use arrangements have been made

Our people will be going to their country more.

I’ ll be seeing them when I have finished with you.

The future perfect tense

• Has not happen yet but will happen

• Maybe by the time we get to the dock he’ll already have started.

still

• I am still

• It has still to agree

• They were still to come

• There are many other questions still to be answered.

yet

• Usually comes at the end of a sentence.

• If you wants to sound more emphatic, you can put yet before a simple verb after the auxiliary and negative word.– No one yet knows exactly what it means.– Has Mr. Li not come yet?– as yet, there is little to suggest ……

At

• At the age of twenty

• At seventeen

• At an early stage of the war

in

• in

In clause with more than one adjunct

• Manner place then time– They knelt quietly in the shadow of the rock

• Down

• Home

• I reached down slowly

• David drove home fast

Inversion after adjuncts

• Next to it

• Beyond them

• Never in history

• Seldom can there have been

Reference

• COLLINS COBUILD ENGLISH GRAMMARCOLLINS PUBLISHERS THE UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM1990