English Corner – Simple Present Tense

If you’re a student of the English language, chances are good that you’re familiar with the ‘Present Tense’ grammar form. In order to form basic sentences in your writing or to make yourself understood verbally when speaking to a native speaker, it’s important to learn the ‘Present Tense’ especially before moving on to the ‘Past’ and ‘Future’ tenses which is slightly more advanced and complicated to master.

The ‘Present Tense’ is divided into two forms: the ‘Simple’ present tense and the ‘Continuous’ or ‘Progressive’ present tense. In order to fully understand the present tense grammar form, it’s important to understand both the ‘simple’ and ‘continuous’ aspects to this concept. Please follow along and read through this blog post if you’re a student of English grammar and want to better understand the ‘Simple Present Tense.’ For next month’s edition of English Corner, we will focus on the ‘Present Continuous Tense’ and how that grammar tense is formed correctly.

The Simple Present tense is regarded as being the easiest to learn and most vital tense to master in order to the basics of English grammar down. For example, the simple present tense uses verbs like “to be” and changes the form into singular or plural depending on if you are referring to one more person or more.

For Example:

• He is on his way to the store to pick up some fruits and vegetables.
• They are at the ballpark tonight to watch the baseball game.

We can see from these examples how the verb “to be” is put into the simple present tense using the word ‘is’ or ‘are’ depending on if the subject of the sentence is singular or plural. For the subject ‘He’, the corresponding simple present tense form of “to be” would be is which is singular. For the subject ‘They’, the corresponding simple present tense form of “to be” would be are which is plural. With the subject word ‘I’ which is singular, we will use the word am which is singular but is different from the word ‘is’ which is used for ‘he’, ‘she’, or ‘it.’ The subject words of ‘they’, ‘you’ or ‘we’ would be used for the word ‘are’ as mentioned before.

The structure of the present simple tense is quite easy to form correctly when compared to other English tenses. You simply need to put the subject and the main verb together to form the basis of a sentence. This goes for positive sentences which don’t have a negative connotation or which form the basis of a question.

For Example:

1) I do like to swim with my friends at the lake.

The subject for this sentence is the word ‘I’ and the verb form is ‘do’ and it is possible sometimes to follow one verb with another verb or two verbs, as is the case with this sentence. ‘Do’ and ‘like’ can be together as well as ‘to swim’ and then to finish off the sentence with ‘my friends’ who are the objects and ‘at the lake’ which is the location along with a prepositional phrase.

The first verb in a sentence when there are other verbs after is known as the auxiliary verb, which comes before the main verb(s). Once again, it’s important to note that ‘I do’ can change form into becoming ‘He does’ or ‘She does.’ It is a common rule that the verb must be modified to change depending on which subject word in English is being used.

If you need to make a simple present sentence negative, it’s important to add the word ‘not’ after the auxiliary verb of ‘to do.’

For Example:

1) I do not like to dance because the basic moves are hard for me.

2) He does not want to go to work because he does not like his boss.

Regardless of the subject word being ‘I’ or ‘He’, there will always be a ‘not’ after the auxiliary verb. You can have multiple verbs being used in a simple present sentence as well. There is no limit to the amount as long as the sentence makes grammatical sense to the audience.

In order to form a question using the simple present tense, the order of the sentence needs to change slightly in order to reflect this shift. Instead of the ‘subject word’ leading off the sentence, the auxiliary verb of ‘to do’ must be at the beginning. You can either put ‘do’ or ‘does’ at the beginning of a simple present tense sentence. After that, you can place the subject word whether it is ‘I’ or ‘you’ right after the auxiliary verb. In this case, after the auxiliary verb and the subject comes the main verb and then finally the object which is wrapped up with a question mark to finish the sentence.

For Example:

1) Do you like to go skiing?

2) Does he know who you are?

It’s important to remember that the positive form of a simple present tense sentence doesn’t have an auxiliary verb in it while there is one in both the negative and the question form of the sentence. With the main verb for the positive form, it’s important to add an ‘s’ to the end of the word especially if it’s a third-person subject like ‘it’, ‘he’ or ‘she’ in order to make the sentence grammatically correct.

For Example:

• He likes to dance salsa on Saturday night.
• She knows that it’s important to study for the Chemistry exam.

When it comes to the negative and question forms of the simple present tense, certain rules must be observed. The auxiliary verb form must be used in both cases and also needs to be conjugated. The main verb form does not change and often comes in its’ normal form which is ‘to ____’. For negative sentences, the word not must come between the auxiliary verb and the main verb for the sentence to be coherent. Lastly, The auxiliary verb has to come at the beginning of a question sentence while the subject comes afterwards which is a reversal of what you would see in a positive or negative form of the simple present tense.

In terms of using the simple present tense correctly, it’s best usage comes in terms of describing general times and situations. Action verbs like ‘to do’, ‘to eat’, ‘to work’, ‘to dance’, and ‘to swim’, etc. are apart of the simple present tense umbrella of usage. This grammar tense is instrumental in describing a statement, which is always true as well as describing actions, which are continuous, habitual, or come from a routine. The simple present tense is most often associated with the verb ‘to be’ which can describe whom somebody is, what they do, where are they going, and why they are unique. The simple present tense can describe those actions, which happen in all forms of time whether it is the past, present, and future.

Out of all English grammar forms, the ‘Simple Present’ tense forms the base of a simple sentence. For any Basic English language student out there, it’s a necessity to master this concept before moving on to other forms of the present tense. After successfully understanding the methodology and the usage behind the simple present tense, an English learner will be ready to move on to the next challenge: The ‘Present Continuous’ tense.