English Tenses Made Simple: A Chart You Will Actually Use
Forget confusing rules. A clean 12-tense chart with one example each and when to use it in real life.
7 min read · Published 2026-07-16
Tenses feel hard because books over-explain. Here is a simple working chart.
Present
- Simple: "I work." (habit)
- Continuous: "I am working." (now)
- Perfect: "I have worked." (result now)
- Perfect continuous: "I have been working." (duration to now)
Past
- Simple: "I worked." (finished)
- Continuous: "I was working." (past action in progress)
- Perfect: "I had worked." (before another past)
- Perfect continuous: "I had been working." (duration before past)
Future
- Simple: "I will work."
- Continuous: "I will be working."
- Perfect: "I will have worked."
- Perfect continuous: "I will have been working."
When to use which
For daily life, master present simple, present continuous, past simple and future simple. That covers 80% of talk.
Practice
Pick one tense a day. Write 5 sentences. Speak them on SpeakNow. The app checks tense use live.
Do not memorise all 12 at once. Build from the core four.
Put this into practice. Try the free SpeakNow speaking trainer →