Tense Tips and Tricks for Government Exams

Introduction

• In English grammar, verbs are often used in a way that it indicates or denotes the time when an event occurred. These verbs that take up different forms to indicate the time of an action, event or condition by changing its form are called as tenses.

Types

1. Past tense

• The past tense is used to describe an activity or an event that has happened in the past or a past state of being and needs to include a time marker for when the event or action took place.

2. Present tense

• The simple present tense or present tense is one of the most basic tenses in English. We use present tense to talk about something that is currently going on, something that is habitually performed, or a state that generally or currently exists.

3. Future tense

• The future tense is a verb tense used to describe an event or action that has not yet happened and is expected to happen in the future. Structural formula, Subject + shall/will+ verb (s/es) + object.

Tips

1. Understanding the question form:

• Understand the questions first and try to find out if it needs change or not as sometimes there are a few questions which requires no change and are given merely to confuse the reader.

2. Right Form of Verb:

• While answering the questions related to tenses, make sure you understand the time of action as it will help in choosing the right form of verb.

3. Different Types of Tenses:

• There are other tenses also other than present, past and future, such as perfect, progressive tense as well as present progressive.

4. Parallelism

• As a general tip, make sure that you use consistent form of verb all over the sentence or text, until the theme or time of action needs to change. This helps you to avoid parallelism in a sentence.

5. Changing Verbs:

• Verbs change constantly within a text, therefor, having a thorough understanding of the forms of verbs is quite necessary.

6. Re-Read Sentence:

• Make sure you read the sentence after answering the questions as it will help you in taking out grammatical errors, if any.

Solved Examples