The Main Tenses: Past, Present, and Future

This is your main control panel. Every action you describe will fall into one of these three primary settings.

• Past Tense: For actions that have already happened.
• Present Tense: For actions happening now, or that are consistently true.
• Future Tense: For actions that have yet to happen.

Each of these has four sub-settings, giving you a total of twelve powerful verb forms.

The Four Aspects: Simple, Continuous, Perfect, and Perfect Continuous

These are the fine-tuning buttons that tell you how an action is situated in time.

1. Simple Tense: The “Just the Facts” Setting

This is for basic, clear-cut actions, habits, and truths.

• Simple Present: For habitual actions (“He drinks tea every morning”) and general, unchanging truths (“The sun rises in the east”). It’s also used for:
  • Fixed timetables: “The next flight is at 7 a.m. tomorrow.” ✈️
  • Vivid storytelling: “Suddenly, the hero runs into the room and grabs the sword.”
  • Exclamations: “Here comes the bus!”
  • Introducing quotes: “Keats says, ‘A thing of beauty is a joy for ever’.”
• Simple Past: For a single, completed action in the past (“I ate breakfast yesterday”). It can also describe a past habit (“He studied for many hours every day”).
• Simple Future: For a future action or fact. The standard form is will/shall + verb (“I will go to the store”). It can also be used for:
  • Predictions: “I think Pakistan will win the match.”
  • Spontaneous decisions: “It’s raining. I will take an umbrella.” ☔

2. Continuous Tense: The “In Progress” Setting

This is for actions that are or were in the middle of happening. The “-ing” ending is your key signal.

• Present Continuous: For an action happening at this exact moment (“She is singing now”) or a temporary one happening around the present (“I am reading ‘David Copperfield'”). It’s also used for arranged future actions (“I am going to the cinema tonight”).
• Past Continuous: For an action that was in progress at a specific time in the past (“We were playing hockey all morning”). It’s often used with “while” to show two simultaneous actions (“While I was eating, he was reading“).
• Future Continuous: For an action that will be in progress at a specific time in the future (“This time tomorrow, I will be sitting on the beach”).

3. Perfect Tense: The “Before This” Setting

Perfect tenses link two points in time. They describe an action that was completed before another action or a specific time. The word have/has/had is your signal.

• Present Perfect: For an action completed in the immediate past (“He has just gone out”) or an action that started in the past and continues to the present (“He has been ill for five days”).
• Past Perfect: The “past of the past.” It shows which of two past actions happened first (“The simple past is used in one clause and the past perfect in the other”). For example, “She had already left when I arrived.” 🏃‍♀️
• Future Perfect: For an action that will be completed by a certain point in the future (“By next year, I will have graduated from university”). 🎓

4. Perfect Continuous Tense: The “How Long” Setting

This is the most detailed setting. It combines “in progress” with “before this” to show an action that was ongoing for a duration.

• Present Perfect Continuous: For an action that started in the past and is still continuing now (“He has been sleeping for five hours”). It can also explain a present result (“My clothes are wet because I have been watering the garden”). 💧
• Past Perfect Continuous: For an action that was in progress for a duration before another past action occurred (“At that time, he had been writing a novel for two months”).
• Future Perfect Continuous: For an action that will have been in progress for a duration leading up to a specific time in the future (“By next March, we will have been living here for four years”). This tense is not very common.

Special Future Forms and Other Rules

Your reference document highlights several other ways to talk about the future and other essential grammatical rules.

More Ways to Express the Future

• ‘Going to’ form (be going to + verb): Used for pre-decided plans (“I am going to resign the job”) or for things that seem likely based on present evidence (“Look at those clouds; it’s going to rain“). ☁️
• ‘Be about to’ form (be about to + verb): For the immediate future (“The train is about to leave“).
• ‘Be to’ form (be to + verb): For official plans and arrangements, often in news reports (“The Prime Minister is to visit America next month”).

The Sequence of Tenses

This is a rule for complex sentences. It means the tense of the verb in the main clause often determines the tense of the verb in the subordinate clause.

• Main Clause Past Tense: The subordinate clause is usually also Past Tense.
  • Correct: “He hinted that he wanted money.”
  • Exception: If the subordinate clause is a universal truth, you can use the Present Tense.
    • Correct: “The teacher said the earth goes round the sun.”
• Main Clause Present/Future Tense: The subordinate clause can be any tense that makes sense.
  • Correct: “He thinks that she was there.” or “He thinks that she will be there.”

Verb Agreement

A fundamental rule: the verb must agree with its subject in number (singular/plural) and person (first, second, or third). For instance, “I am” but “He is.” This rule is the foundation of all your tense constructions.

Summary for MDCAT English Grammar

• There are 12 tenses (3 main × 4 aspects).
• Most tested in MDCAT: Simple Present, Past Simple, and Present Perfect.
• The sequence of Tenses is critical for error-spotting MCQs.